Aquila Capital, a European asset manager of alternative investments, has signed a power purchase agreement (PPA) with renewable energy company OX2 for a turnkey wind farm with 41 turbines in northern Sweden.
According to Aquila, the investment is secured by a 10-year PPA contract with Google for the purchase of electricity from the wind farm.
The wind farm will be built in Lehtirova, located between the municipalities of Gällivare and Pajala, and the expected average production is 490 GWh per year – making the facility one of the largest wind power projects to date in the Nordics.
“We have been successfully active in Scandinavia for several years now. This wind farm is remarkable in many regards: Because of its sheer size, the technical layout [is] designed to optimally capture the strong and steady wind resources at site and the set-up, with the seller OX2 as experienced developer and full-wrap EPC supplier and Google as off-taker for a defined proportion of the wind farms’ output,” says Susanne Wermter, head of special infrastructure team at Aquila Capital.
“This set-up in combination with a technically strong project offers ideal conditions to involve ourselves deeper into the value chain of renewable energies and to enter a project at an earlier stage,” she added.
Francois Sterin, Google’s director of global infrastructure, said, “Google has been carbon-neutral since 2007, and we are committed to powering 100% of our operations with renewable energy sources. Today’s announcement is Google’s 7th European wind power deal to date and reinforces our position as the world’s largest corporate renewable buyer.”
The construction project will be executed as an EPC project by OX2, who expects to hand the commissioned wind turbines over to Aquila Capital in December 2018. OX2 will then continue its involvement with a long-term technical and commercial management contract of the wind farm.
