Zen Energy signs new long term power purchase deal with NSW solar farm

Ross Garnaut-led renewables gen-tailer Zen Energy has signed up a new offtake partner, inking a deal with Greek developer Mytilineos to purchase power from its Wagga Wagga South solar farm.

Zen, which just last year announced its intention to “write a lot of PPAs,” says the contract with Mytilineos will see it take 80% of the electricity and LGCs generated by the 18.7MW plant, which is expected to enter commercial operation on the NSW grid later this year.

“Zen is continuing to expand our PPA profile, now on a monthly basis,” said the company’s executive general manager of future energy, Mark Sinclair, on Thursday.

“We actively seek to work with innovative partners with a laser focus on delivering renewable projects as fast as we can.”

Mytilineos has financed and built five solar farms across NSW and Queensland since entering the Australian market in 2019, and has two more under construction.

The Greek industrial and energy giant has also been active in the PPA market in Australia, securing deals to sell roughly half of the 75MW Wyalong solar farm’s output to NBN Co under a 10-year power purchase agreement.

The company’s 110MW Moura solar farm, in Queensland’s Banana Shire, has a PPA with state-owned utility CS Energy, while the 53MW Kingaroy project – also in Queensland – has a PPA with Smartest Energy, an electricity retailer owned by Japanese investment company Marubeni.

For its part, Zen has plans to increase the amount of “cheap baseload” electricity it sells to Australian businesses each year from 1 terawatt-hour to 10TWh by 2025.

“How do we get from 1TWh of load contracted today to 10TWh by 2025? We start by writing a lot of PPAs (power purchase agreements), with the priority on solar and battery storage,” said Zen CEO Anthony Garnaut in 2022.

“Bringing on a series of mid-range assets enables us to support the regional aspirations of our customers,” added Sinclair this week.

“It means they can access offtakes where they are located, like regional distribution centres. We are continuing to focus on creating agreements with progressive companies like Mytilineos, taking on PPAs across regional Australia.”

Earlier this year, Zen unveiled plans to develop its first big battery, after buying up a 111MW/270MWh project near Gawler in South Australia.

The more than $200 million Templers Battery Project, located around 60km north of Adelaide, has approval to connect to the grid, with its previous owner RES having run an efficient Generation Performance Standards (GPS) approval process in partnership with AEMO and ElectraNet.

Zen says the battery is on track to complete financing arrangements in coming months, with construction planned to begin in the second half of this year.