Energy tech company, Limejump, has added another major renewable asset to its Virtual Power Platform (VPP) by signing a Power Purchase Agreement with DHG Hydro (DHG) / Canaird River Company.
Limejump will manage the generation from DHG’s 1.2MW Langwell Hydro Power Plant, located near Ullapool, Scotland. DHG Hydro has one of the largest UK portfolios of hydro-electric plants in operation or under development, outside of the major utilities.
The PPA deal will provide Langwell with wholesale energy market trading access, valued at £300,000 per year, strengthens Limejump’s renewable dominated VPP, allowing Limejump and its customers to compete against traditional fossil-fuel power plants and ensuring that distributed sources of renewable energy are a mainstay of the UK electricity system.
In addition, with this PPA in place, Limejump can enter Langwell into National Grid’s Balancing Market (BM) as part of its VPP aggregated balancing unit. It will be the first hydro power plant that Limejump has utilised in their aggregated balancing unit. This unique Hydro structure, built in 2016, comprises of an intake, a dam, a 3km long pipeline a powerhouse and an outfall allowing it to react to instructions in a similar fashion to pumped storage power plants like Dinorwig. The generation profile that can be achieved by such an asset can be optimised across wholesale and ancillary energy markets, to achieve peak return trading performance. Limejump’s machine learning AI allows advanced forecasting to trade DHG’s generation at Langwell at the optimal time to provide the best return on DHG’s investment.
The type of PPA signed is via Limejump’s Track ‘n’ Trade deal, whereby DHG will utilise market pricing information to ‘track’ the market and lock their price in at their optimum time. This methodology can reward sophisticated trading and flexibility with higher returns whilst managing the price fluctuation risk.
Nicholas Curtis, Commercial director of DHG said: “We’re looking forward to working with Limejump in order to maximise the investment we have made at Langwell. Accessing markets, optimising assets and delivering investment return proves that sustainable resources, and in particular Hydro can compete with any generation type, cleanly and securely.”
Limejump’s Vice President of Sales, Joe McDonald said: “Including Langwell hydro power in our VPP, to combine with our other varied renewable technologies and battery storage assets, allows us to continue to advance our ability to replicate the traditional singular brick and mortar power plants and push for full decarbonisation and a sustainable energy future.”
“We are excited that sites such as Langwell are starting to see the benefits a true Virtual Power Plant can bring to smaller distributed energy sites in the UK compared to the current standard Power Purchase Agreements available from traditional suppliers.”