RWE Supply & Trading is going to market electricity produced in a new solar power plant – developed, built and owned by the company Enerparc – in Lauterbach, Germany. The plant with a total installed capacity of approximately 57 megawatts (MW) is currently being constructed on a 54-hectare site in the Vogelsbergkreis district (between Fulda and Giessen) and will consist of around 125,000 modules. With the PPA in place, the share procured by RWE Supply & Trading does not require funding according to the Renewable Energy Act and will be able to supply the equivalent of around 10,000 homes with electricity.
“Solar farms make an important contribution towards the success of the energy transition. We are delighted to support Enerparc in implementing another solar plant and to expand our renewables portfolio in this way,” says a delighted Dr Hendrik Niebaum, Head of Commodity Solutions at RWE Supply & Trading. “RWE is already a global leader in electricity production from renewables. We have a very substantial green electricity portfolio, with power generated both at our own or at third-party plants. With our ‘Growing Green’ growth strategy we want to expand that portfolio massively and thus help our industry customers and municipal utility partners to reach their climate protection targets.”
“In order to comply with the Paris Climate Agreement, an accelerated expansion of photovoltaics is required in Germany. Currently, the total capacity of photovoltaic plants in Germany adds only up to 59 gigawatts. According to governmental policies this is to be expanded to 200 gigawatts by 2030. We are therefore very happy to have taken another step towards reaching the Paris goals and driving the energy transition forward with the PPA between Enerparc and RWE. Our trading subsidiary Sunnic Lighthouse GmbH is responsible for the delivery of the green electricity to RWE according to the agreement,” says Christoph Koeppen, CEO and Chairman of the Board of Enerparc.
Long-term power purchase agreements are increasingly becoming an option for operators of existing as well as new renewables plants. One advantage of PPAs is that they do not require participating in tenders for subsidised rates. This leads to more flexibility in terms of the location and new projects can be implemented faster.
RWE Supply & Trading already supplies many large industrial customers in Germany and other countries directly with green electricity via PPAs, including Dutch company ASML, the German companies Deutsche Bahn, Bosch, BMW and VW, as well as large customers in Europe, the U.S. and Canada.