Mix of companies to take portion of output from North Carolina solar plant

摘要

Five global corporations formed a coalition to enter into a virtual power purchase agreement for a portion of the output of a BayWa AG subsidiary's 100-MW solar project in North Carolina. Bloomberg LP, Cox Enterprises Inc., The Gap Inc., Salesforce.com Inc. and Workday Inc. agreed to obtain 42.5 MW from Fern Solar LLC's Fern Solar Project as the Corporate Renewable Energy Aggregation Group. According to a Thursday statement, the companies claim their deal is the first example of nonutility customers aggregating similar amounts of clean energy demand to enter a virtual power purchase agreement, or PPA, and serve as an anchor tenant for a large offsite renewables facility. The deal was coordinated by LevelTen Energy, an aggregator of both buyers and sellers of renewable energy resources. The corporate procurers and the project developer said the virtual PPA is a solution to businesses not being able to procure smaller amounts of energy loads directly from large offsite renewable energy projects due to limited demand.