corporate PPA

IHS Markit’s analysts have mapped out what they are keeping an eye out for in the year ahead. Aside from higher installation figures, the number-crunchers predict a continued battle for multi-function in the hard-fought inverter segment and a potential watershed year for utility-scale storage.

Audax Renovables has signed an agreement with Welink under which the Spanish company will buy – for 20 years at a fixed price – the energy produced by solar facilities with a total 708 MW of generation capacity that Welink will develop in Spain and Portugal. German group Allianz will buy the solar plants after completion.

Global technology giant Google this week announced that it has signed an agreement to purchase the output from a 10 MW PV installation in Tainan City, Taiwan, to power its Changhua County data center on the island’s west coast. The agreement represents Google’s first move to procure renewable energy anywhere in Asia, and the first agreement made since a recent change to Taiwan’s Electricity Act allowed non-utility companies to buy renewable energy directly.

According to a new report from Rocky Mountain Institute, corporations have signed contracts for 2.8 GW of solar in the United States this year, a gigawatt more than the deals signed in all previous years combined.

According to Rocky Mountain Institute corporations have signed contracts for 2.8 GW of solar in the United States this year, a gigawatt more than the deals signed in all previous years combined.

Mercedes Benz has announced plans for all of its German factories to be supplied with CO2 free energy by 2022. Meanwhile, Renewables investment firm Octopus Energy has signed a five-year PPA with Shell Energy Europe to provide the global energy giant with power from several unsubsidized PV projects it is constructing in Italy.

Allianz Capital Partners, on behalf of German insurance company Allianz, has acquired a 46 MW solar PV project in Portugal.

The company’s renewable energy unit EDPR will sell power to an unnamed client from a solar plant to be located in Ferreira Barreto, in the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo. The Portuguese utility and wind power specialist began making investments in solar in recent times.

Something interesting is happening in the PV market. We’re not just seeing an emergence of corporate power purchase agreements (cPPAs) in parity geographies – but also compelling innovation in the commercial models which underpin them. Despite the challenges of offtaker risk, contract duration, and assorted other contractual oddities when financing renewable energy projects in this way, leading lenders are just about getting used to the idea of private offtake agreements. But are they ready for other commercial-disrupters like blockchain; ‘power and flexibility agreements’; pooling of medium-sized energy suppliers; and PV-storage hybrid projects?