Spain’s buoyant subsidy-free solar scene has witnessed a fresh PPA signing, featuring renewables giant Statkraft as the offtaker.
Starting in 2020, the Norwegian government-owned firm will acquire 330GWh of clean energy supply from the 50MW Bargas solar park, a project of Swiss player aventron.
The signing of the five-year power purchase agreement (PPA) comes just weeks after aventron hit financial close for the scheme, planned in Spain’s Toledo province.
Earlier this month, the Swiss firm explained Bargas would be backed by a debt package from Spanish financier Banco Sabadell, with a debt-to-equity ratio understood to be around half-and-half.
The project, already under construction at a site some 80km south of Madrid, is slated to reach commercial operation by July 2020.
The Bargas plant is one of two aventron will deploy alongside co-developer Synergia Energy Solutions, a subsidy-free 100MW pipeline first unveiled in January 2019.
The Toledo project, as well as a 50MW sucessor in the southern province of Murcia, will be built by Spanish EPC Solarpack Corporación Tecnológica.
The new Spanish duo is meant to help aventron progress towards its 1GW installed renewable capacity goal, with an interim 600MW target set for late 2020.
The subsidy-free PPA is the latest of a series for Statkraft, which last April became the offtaker for BayWa r.e.’s unsubsidised 175MW Southern Spain plant Don Rodrigo.
The Norwegian group has also notched up PPA wins on the development side. As it noted in results it published also today, these deals are an "important" avenue for its business in Spain.
Under 10-year deals signed in 2019 alone, Statkraft's solar projects will supply an annual 300GWh and 525GWh to Fortia Energía and Audax, respectively.
Sean Maguire, commercial VP for European PV and wind at Statkraft, shared the firm's reservations around long-term PPAs at this year's Intersolar 2019.
“I think people hark back to the old days of subsidies,” he told a panel attended by PV Tech. “We hear questions around 10- to 15-year fixed-price PPAs but in a lot of the markets we’re present in, to go that long-term is a challenge.”
