Statkraft has signed a hybrid power purchase agreement with Warrington Borough Council for its 35MW solar farm in York, co-located with 27MWh of battery storage.
Under the deal, Statkraft will take all the power from the site and trade the flexibility from the batteries in a bid to get best returns across merchant and contracted services.
Statkraft said it hoped the bespoke PPA “sets a blueprint” for other local authorities to follow.
Adding Warrington to its ‘Unity’ virtual power plant, Statkraft revealed that the VPP now exceeds 2.6GW of aggregated generation in the UK, across solar, gas, wind and batteries.
Statkraft is the largest offtaker of renewable energy and the largest long-term offtaker in the UK market. As such, the VPP is set for further substantial growth, with a deal struck last year with Statera to add another gigawatt.
In Germany, the Norwegian state-owned firm’s VPP tops 12GW and wraps in small scale distributed assets.
The company ultimately hopes to take a similar approach in the UK via subsidiary b2b supply arm, Bryt Energy.
The York solar-storage scheme was built in five months by Gridserve, a company which is also bidding to build out a network of EV charging forecourts alongside co-located solar and storage. Read an interview with CEO Toddington Harper here.
Details on the Warrington deal here.
Find out more about Statkraft’s VPP plans here.
Related stories:
Tesla makes applies for UK generation licence in VPP play
Statkraft strikes gigawatt VPP deal with Statera
Statkraft: When is a VPP not a VPP?
Statkraft and RedT ink solar storage deal
Statkraft plans 2GW UK virtual power plant by summer
Statkraft eyes new retail and flexibility models
Follow us at @EnergystMedia. For regular bulletins, sign up for the free newsletter.
