AMPYR Solar Europe, Edinburgh Airport sign 20-year solar/storage PPA

AMPYR Solar Europe and Edinburgh Airport have signed a deal to develop a 9-MW solar farm linked with battery storage and electric vehicle charging infrastructure at Scotland's busiest airport, ASE said March 11.

ASE and local construction partner Absolute Solar & Wind are to install 9 MW of solar PV capacity, 1.5 MW of battery storage and 40 EV charging points. A substation upgrade, meanwhile, will wrap the package into a private network for the airport.

"Edinburgh Airport will buy the power produced by the solar farm through a 20-year Power Purchase Agreement with ASE, generating long-term energy and carbon savings for the airport," Matthew van Staden, Senior PPA Originator at Hartree Partners, told S&P Global Commodity Insights.

ASE is a joint venture between Hartree Partners and sustainable project developer AGP.

The project, meeting around 30% of the airport's power needs, is in the late stage of design, with construction planned to start this summer and be fully operational by the start of next year.

It is being supported by a GBP2 million grant from the Scottish Government's Low Carbon Infrastructure Transition Programme, with the rest of the financing coming from ASE.

"The PPA will generate good savings for the airport in the long term compared to the costs of retail electricity, with the battery and the EV chargers complementing the solar PV system," van Staden said, without divulging a price.

"The solar PV system was designed with the airport's consumption profile in mind, with the battery further supporting any fluctuations in demand," he said.

"Edinburgh is leading the charge with a 2040 net zero goal, but we see many businesses across the UK looking at the current market conditions and saying we really need to think about energy security, reducing our costs and our carbon," van Staden said.

Sleeved solar

ASE has a project pipeline of around 5 GW in the UK, the Netherlands and Germany.

The bulk of the projects were large ground-mounted solar PV plants "for which we're looking for sleeved PPA offtakers," van Staden said.

This is where an intermediary, usually a utility, takes the energy from a project and handles the transfer of money and energy with a buyer.

"Hartree has the ability to wrap this for the customer in the UK. In addition we offer carbon offset and optimization services," he said.

Can-do Scotland

The European Commission's REPowerEU plan to front-load renewables development was testament to the pressing need for energy security, van Staden said.

"The Scottish Government has stepped up in Edinburgh and helped accelerate this project. At the same time we're seeing a huge uplift in the industry with more and more companies seeing a real need for these sorts of agreements," he said.

UK solar PPA offers on marketplace LevelTen's platform averaged GBP63.00/MWh in Q4 2021, up from GBP56.20/MWh in Q3 21.

S&P Global assessed the UK solar capture price on March 9 at GBP349.03/MWh. For context, the assessment averaged GBP36.32/MWh in 2020, rising to GBP117.13/MWh in 2021.