CEE Group solar park portfolio grows to 118 MWp in the Netherlands

Ham­burg-based CEE Group, asset man­ag­er for renew­able ener­gy, has acquired a ground-mount­ed solar park in Roosendaal, the Nether­lands, from Dan­ish project devel­op­er Obton. The solar park has an out­put of around 35 megawatt-peak (MWp). This means that the CEE Group now has solar ener­gy plants with a total capac­i­ty of 118 MWp in the Nether­lands alone. The com­plete CEE port­fo­lio com­pris­es a total of 42 onshore wind tur­bines and 34 pho­to­volta­ic plants with an installed capac­i­ty of 595.2 MW in the wind sec­tor and 551.7 MWp in the solar sec­tor, respec­tive­ly.

The ground-mount­ed solar park in Roosendaal, the Nether­lands, has a peak out­put of around 35 MWp and will thus pro­duce around 32,000 megawatt hours of renew­able ener­gy per year in the future. The plant is equipped with solar mod­ules from the man­u­fac­tur­er Cana­di­an Solar. Con­trary to the usu­al south ori­en­ta­tion, the mod­ules are arranged in an east-west ori­en­ta­tion, which has enabled a more com­pact design of the plant. The invert­ers are from the Chi­nese man­u­fac­tur­er Huawei. The pur­chase agree­ment with the project devel­op­er Obton was already con­clud­ed in Decem­ber 2020. Both par­ties have agreed not to dis­close the pur­chase price. The plant is sched­uled to be com­mis­sioned in August 2021. The clos­ing of the trans­ac­tion, the full han­dover to CEE Group, took place in Sep­tem­ber 2021.

Roosendaal is a munic­i­pal­i­ty in the Dutch province of Noord-Bra­bant. There, the solar park fits well into the sur­round­ing land­scape, which is already the site of sev­er­al wind tur­bines. From an eco­log­i­cal point of view, it should also be empha­sized that exten­sive land­scape com­pen­sa­tion mea­sures have been imple­ment­ed. In addi­tion, part of the area on which the pho­to­volta­ic plant is locat­ed is used as a water reser­voir for ground­wa­ter man­age­ment.

Investment security through stable framework conditions in the Netherlands

“The new­ly acquired plant in Roosendaal char­ac­ter­izes the CEE Group’s pur­chas­ing pro­file for new­ly emerg­ing or already com­plet­ed renew­able ener­gy plants. With around 35 MWp, the plant has a scale that makes it eco­nom­i­cal­ly inter­est­ing for investors. In addi­tion, the tech­no­log­i­cal stan­dard in the Nether­lands is com­pa­ra­ble to that which we find in Ger­many, for exam­ple,” explains Detlef Schreiber, CEO of the CEE Group.

Accord­ing to Euro­stat, the sta­tis­ti­cal office of the Euro­pean Union, the Nether­lands is one of the EU mem­ber states with the low­est share of renew­able ener­gies in gross final ener­gy con­sump­tion. How­ev­er, the basic con­di­tions for invest­ments in renew­able ener­gies in the Nether­lands are good. The SDE+ sup­port sys­tem for renew­ables pro­vides a fixed tar­iff for at least 15 years and cre­ates the nec­es­sary income secu­ri­ty. In addi­tion, if a plant falls short of its planned out­put, the tar­iff will con­tin­ue 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 extreme­ly com­pet­i­tive due to its good reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work. For project devel­op­ers, investors and financ­ing banks, these are extreme­ly advan­ta­geous, as a cash flow is gen­er­at­ed on the part of the projects that is secured by gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tions,” explains Schreiber. In most oth­er mar­kets, such sup­port sys­tems with pre­dictable rev­enues are often no longer to be found. There, oper­a­tors of renew­able ener­gy plants have to mar­ket the elec­tric­i­ty they pro­duce via so-called Pow­er Pur­chase Agree­ments (PPAs).

Spatial proximity is an important location factor

“Beyond the sta­ble reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work for renew­ables, spa­tial prox­im­i­ty is also a fac­tor for us that should not be under­es­ti­mat­ed when select­ing new projects. The Nether­lands is with­in easy reach for us as an investor and oper­a­tor, so our teams can make reg­u­lar ’site vis­its’ there,” says Schreiber.

“In Roosendaal, we worked with the inter­na­tion­al­ly active project devel­op­er and investor Obton for the first time. We would like to thank all those involved in this trans­ac­tion for their pro­fes­sion­al and trust­ing coop­er­a­tion and look for­ward to fur­ther joint projects to pro­mote the expan­sion of renew­able ener­gies across coun­tries,” Schreiber express­es his thanks.

Anders Mar­cus, CEO at Obton: “The coop­er­a­tion and suc­cess­ful clos­ing of our first joint trans­ac­tion with CEE Group is also a recog­ni­tion of our spe­cial exper­tise in the devel­op­ment and real­iza­tion of inter­na­tion­al solar ener­gy projects. We look for­ward to fur­ther cross-bor­der projects with our new part­ner.”

Osborne Clarke and Ever­gy also par­tic­i­pat­ed in the trans­ac­tion as legal and tech­ni­cal advi­sors, respec­tive­ly.