Victorian manufacturer taps cheap renewables in PPA with Flow Power

Up and comping corporate energy retailer Flow Power has inked a new 10-year deal to supply a Melbourne-based manufacturer with locally generated renewable energy sourced from the Ararat wind farm in Victoria.

In a statement on Tuesday, Flow Power said it had signed ANCA, a market leader in the manufacture of computing machinery and systems, to its Renewable Corporate Power Purchase Agreement, giving it direct and long-term access to clean energy at wholesale prices.

Flow Power’s corporate PPA scheme, designed to give the retailer’s business customers access to significantly discounted electricity supply, was launched in September last year, off the back of a deal with the Ararat wind farm.

The deal gave Flow Power access to up to 50MW of capacity from the 240MW Ararat facility, for terms of around 10 years. And over time the company has plans to to contract up to 1000MW of both wind and solar, an initiative that would likely underwrite new renewable projects.

At the time of the deal, Flow Power founder and managing director Matthew van der Linden said it meant that businesses could access power at less than 10c/kWh, a significant discount on what they are paying now.

“That is a game changer for businesses …. and could be the difference between business customers going broke and customers being able to operate,” he said.

The deal with ANCA will see the company buy a fixed percentage of wind power directly from Ararat in real time, calculated at 30 minute intervals under a ‘take or pay’ arrangement, meaning that ANCA will only pay for what it uses.

It follows a similar deal just over a week ago with the Australian arm of global agribusiness group, Olam, which Flow Power said could potentially save the company thousands of dollars in energy costs.

In comments on the ANCA agreement on Tuesday, van der Linden described the corporate PPAs as “game changers” for the delivery of power to small to medium business and industry.

“Finally, we’ll begin to see Australia to catch up with other international markets that have proven this model to be a success,” he said.

“Our Renewable Corporate PPAs will open up the market to more Australian businesses and allow them to access lower power prices through agreements that have only previously been available to big corporations with the scale to negotiate one-to- one with large renewable plants.”