wiredInUSA October 2018

Floating PV project wins wide support

Wind finds a market

Google has signed a ten-year agreement to buy renewable energy from three new wind farms, currently under construction in Finland. Google said that the Finnish deal is the first where it will buy power from a European project not receiving government subsidies. “In a growing number of locations, the cost of new renewable energy is competitive with the cost of power from the grid,” said Marc Oman, Google’s head of EU energy. The three farms are being built by developers Neoen of France and Germany’s CPC and WPD, and will have a combined capacity of 190MW.

Image: www.akuoenergy.com

French independent power producer Akuo Energy is planning to deploy a 17MW floating PV power plant near Piolenc, in the Vaucluse department of the Provence- Alpes-Côte d’Azur region of southern France. The company says that, once completed, the O’MEGA 1 project will be the largest floating PV facility in Europe, and that it will use the Hydrelio technology of French floating PV specialist Ciel&Terre on a water surface at a former quarry. The project, part-financed through crowdfunding, is being developed under the framework of France’s tender scheme for large-scale solar. Investment bank Natixis’s renewable energy financing subsidiary, Natixis Energeco, has agreed to part-finance the project with around $14 million. Akuo has a renewables asset portfolio of around 1GW. Most of its projects are in France, although its largest PV facility is the 50MW Kita plant in Mali.

wiredInUSA - October 2018

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