Statkraft and Eurowatt conclude three power purchase agreements

Statkraft will purchase power and capacity certificates from the wind farms of la Crémière, l'Arbre Chaud and Grand Rullecourt Ouest 1, located in Northern France, with a total capacity of 30.5 MW.

"2018 is set to be the year when the aggregation market really takes off in France", explains Laurent Talbot, Business Developer France at Statkraft. "Producers are paying close attention to the financial solidity of market access providers and at their competencies in the management of intermittent renewable energy. We offer them a purchase agreement and a set of processes based on our knowledge of the French market and on the experience in market access for wind and solar energy that we’ve developed since 2010."

“Eurowatt used several criteria to select Statkraft as partner to access the electricity market: technical capabilities and requirements to sell energy and capacity certificates but also future products such as system services and one day guarantees of origin, the prices and their strategy to control costs, financial strength and ethical standards. Statkraft ticked all the boxes”, explains Dominique Darne, Managing Director at Eurowatt. “We intend to develop a real long-term partnership with Statkraft to address future needs and opportunities to value best our production”.

The three wind farms will be commissioned in early 2019. They are all located in the Pas-de-Calais department, ca. 80 km south of Lille. These wind farms will be added to the existing 250 MW installed capacity of Eurowatt in Europe, of which 220 MW are located in France. Eurowatt plans to add further 80 MW of capacity to its installed capacity in the second half of 2019.

Market access in France: "complément de rémunération" and feed-in tariff exit

Since the introduction of the "complément de rémunération", the French Feed-In Premium scheme for renewable energies, producers must choose how to sell their energy on the market. Statkraft offers them a safe and simple market access solution, both for projects under the new regime and for facilities exiting the feed-in tariff.

With a portfolio of roughly 15,000 MW Statkraft is the leading renewable energy aggregator in Europe. In Germany alone, Statkraft steers approx. 1,300 wind and solar generation facilities through a virtual power plant. With a total capacity of 10,000 MW it is presumably the largest virtual power plant of its kind in the world. The company has been active in the French energy market for more than 15 years. In 2009, Statkraft opened an office in Lyon.