From pv magazine Spain.
After signing a 20-year PPA for the 46 MW Ourika PV plant in Portugal on Tuesday, with Irish firm WElink Investment Holdings, Spanish renewable energy company Audax Renovables today inked another 20-year PPA – for a 708 MW portfolio of plants to be developed in Spain and Portugal by WElink.
The PPA, which includes the Ourika plant, “marks a historic milestone in the European energy market for energy produced with photovoltaic solar technology”, said Audax.
Under the terms of the agreement, Audax will buy, at an undisclosed fixed price, all the electricity produced by the Solara4 and Ourika plants plus that generated by projects to be developed this year and next by WElink in Iberia. Audax, however, will not be buying the power from WElink, as German insurance group Allianz Capital Partners will acquire the completed facilities from WElink.
The Solara4 plant, being built in Alcoutim, in Portugal’s southern Algarve region, will have a capacity of 218.8 MW, and will be connected to the grid by the middle of this year. It will incorporate 700,000 high-efficiency modules and will be the largest subsidy-free solar plant in Europe backed by a long-term private PPA. Ourika, also in the south of Portugal, is currently the largest operational PV plant in the country.
Soaring share price
According to Spanish media, the agreement raised Audax’s stock price, which is among the most bullish on the Spanish stock market after shooting up around 4% and reaching a price of €2.69 per share. The company’s stock price has risen more than 118% this year.
Audax Renovables is Portugal’s sixth biggest energy supplier to small businesses and seventh largest for industrial clients, according to the Market Liberalized Electricity Report published by the nation’s Energy Services Regulatory Authority in December.
The Portuguese government has stated an ambition to develop 31 new PV projects up to 2021, with a total generation capacity of 1.1 GW, of which Audax will manage 267 MW.
In March last year, Audax signed a PPA with Cox Energy for around 660 MW of solar capacity, a deal which was at that point the largest agreement signed to purchase energy from PV to date – a benchmark the company has now smashed.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
2 comments
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.