Featured in Going global – 09-2022

Mining for gold in legacy PPAs

As the pace of solar installations quickens, developers are racing to find the best remaining sites and optimize their position in interconnection queues. But what if the best investment opportunity is hidden in a site built a decade or more ago? Time gets the better of us all, and many early solar sites no longer perform as expected. Yet those sites generally sell power at prices today’s developers can only dream of. Chris Chappell and Stephen Shirey of Clean Energy Associates examine what can be done to unlock the value in these legacy sites.
Image: Voltalia

When a utility-scale solar site is first connected to the grid, the power purchase agreement (PPA) between the off taker and developer spells out how much power will be generated, the price for that power, and penalties for non-compliance.Underperforming systems cause headaches for system operators, and not just because of PPA penalties. There is also …

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