CEE Group expands its PV capacity in the Netherlands to over 160 MWp

The Ham­burg-based CEE Group, asset man­ag­er for renew­able ener­gies, has acquired a ground-mount­ed solar park in Hard­er­wold, the Nether­lands, from the Dan­ish project devel­op­er Obton. The clos­ing of the pur­chase agree­ment and thus the com­plete han­dover to CEE Group took place recent­ly on site in the Nether­lands. The solar park has an out­put of around 44 megawatt peak (MWp). This means that the CEE Group has solar ener­gy facil­i­ties with a total capac­i­ty of 162 MWp in the Nether­lands alone.

The ground-mount­ed solar park in Hard­er­wold, the Nether­lands, has a peak out­put of around 44 MWp and will thus pro­duce around 45.1 gigawatt hours of elec­tric­i­ty from solar ener­gy per year.

The site belongs to the munic­i­pal­i­ty of Zee­wolde in the Dutch province of Flevoland and was real­ized there on a for­mer golf course with an area of around 36 hectares. Flo­ra and fau­na are giv­en spe­cial con­sid­er­a­tion in this solar park: The park is sur­round­ed by wide water­cours­es instead of fences so as not to impede the migra­tion of ani­mals. Flow­ers and plants are giv­en plen­ty of space, and sheep can graze between the rows of mod­ules. Tree hedges ensure that the solar plant is not vis­i­ble to traf­fic on the near­by N302 high­way.

General conditions in the Netherlands secure revenue side for at least 15 years

“The new­ly acquired plant in Hard­er­wold fits our pur­chase pro­file for renew­able ener­gy plants. With around 45 MWp, the plant has an extreme­ly inter­est­ing eco­nom­ic scale for investors,” explains Detlef Schreiber, CEO of the CEE Group.

The con­di­tions for invest­ments in renew­able ener­gies are par­tic­u­lar­ly good in the Nether­lands in an inter­na­tion­al com­par­i­son: The SDE+ sub­sidy sys­tem for renew­able ener­gies pro­vides for a fixed tar­iff for at least 15 years and thus cre­ates the nec­es­sary income secu­ri­ty. In addi­tion, if a plant falls short of its planned out­put, the tar­iff con­tin­ues to be paid for the 16th year. The Nether­lands is thus one of the few coun­tries still oper­at­ing with such a state-guar­an­teed tar­iff sys­tem.

“The Dutch mar­ket is high­ly com­pet­i­tive due to its excep­tion­al reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work. For project devel­op­ers, investors and financ­ing banks, these are very advan­ta­geous, as a cash flow is gen­er­at­ed on the part of the projects that is secured by gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tions,” Schreiber explains. In most oth­er mar­kets, such sub­sidy sys­tems with pre­dictable rev­enues are already no longer avail­able. There, oper­a­tors of renew­able ener­gy plants mar­ket the elec­tric­i­ty they pro­duce them­selves via so-called Pow­er Pur­chase Agree­ments (PPAs), which entails risks and chances.

“The renewed coop­er­a­tion with the inter­na­tion­al­ly active project devel­op­er Obton was char­ac­ter­ized by a very fair, prag­mat­ic and com­pe­tent coop­er­a­tion. We would like to thank all those involved in this trans­ac­tion for the extreme­ly pro­fes­sion­al and trust­ing coop­er­a­tion and look for­ward to fur­ther joint projects,” empha­sizes Schreiber.

Anders Mar­cus, CEO at Obton: “The renewed coop­er­a­tion with CEE Group with­in one year speaks for our spe­cial exper­tise in the devel­op­ment and real­iza­tion of inter­na­tion­al solar ener­gy projects. We thank them for the excel­lent coop­er­a­tion and would very much like to imple­ment fur­ther projects togeth­er with CEE Group.”

The PV plant in Hard­er­wold is equipped with solar mod­ules from the Chi­nese man­u­fac­tur­er LON­Gi. The invert­ers come from the man­u­fac­tur­er Sun­grow. The pur­chase agree­ment was con­clud­ed with the project devel­op­er Obton from Den­mark. Legal advice was pro­vid­ed by BJKT, and Bankhaus von der Hey­dt act­ed as advi­sor on the sell­er side. The tech­ni­cal due dili­gence was car­ried out by Ever­gy, the tax due dili­gence by Deloitte. Legal advice to the sell side was pro­vid­ed by Dirkzwa­ger N.V. The trans­ac­tion was sup­port­ed by financ­ing from Rabobank. Both par­ties have agreed not to dis­close the pur­chase price. The com­mis­sion­ing of the plant is planned for 31.12.2022.