At 175 MW, the Don Rodrigo solar plant in Southern Spain is the first power plant of this size in Europe to refinance without subsidies.
Image: Baywa r.e.
From pv magazine Germany
Baywa r.e. has both completed the 175 MW Don Rodrigo solar power plant in southern Spain and sold it to Meag, an asset management company owned by Munich Re.
While the parties have agreed not to divulge the sale price, a €100 million bridging loan recently provided by Nord LB gives some indication. The selling price is likely to be a around 10% above this.
The scheduled sale before New Year’s Eve helps parent company Baywa AG fulfill its “overall expectations for 2018”, says CEO Klaus Josef Lutz.
A total of around 500,000 solar modules, covering an area of 265 hectares, were installed at the facility, which is located 20 km south of Seville. It took just 10 months to complete. In the next few months the system is expected to be grid connected.
Don Rodrigo is not only the largest solar project that BayWa r.e. has installed to date, but it is also the biggest subsidy-free project of its kind in Europe, reaping revenues from a power purchase agreement, rather than via subsidies.
“This is groundbreaking,” said Benedikt Ortmann, managing director of BayWa re Solar Projects. He added that the project demonstrates that it is not only possible to operate such a large solar plant on the European grid, but that it can beat the cost levels of coal-fired power plants.
While it is known that Statkraft will purchase the generated electricity for a period of 15 years, the exact conditions of the power purchase agreement for Don Rodriguez have not been published. The price should be between 3.5 and 4 cents per kilowatt-hour, however.
According to Ortmann, Baywa r.e. currently has a pipeline of over 1 GW of such non-subsidized power plants in Spain. Two of these could be built in 2019. The company also has other southern European countries in view, he said.
Source: pv magazine
