Solar investor Aquila European Renewables plc has re-assessed the lifetime of its solar assets and decided it can be extended from the expected 30 years with an extra ten years of life.
It said following the conclusion of technical and legal due diligence the lifetime of its 180MW of Spanish solar PV assets would be changed from from 30 to 40 years in line with the peer group. It intends to roll out asset life extensions progressively across the remainder of the portfolio, an additional 284MW, subject to due diligence.
At an upcoming meeting the company, which now has 464MW in operation, will ask its shareholders to approve borrowing against its solar PV portfolio, which has a fair value of approximately €250 million to fund further investment opportunities as well as return additional capital to shareholders
The company said it “strongly believes that there remains an attractive and sizeable opportunity to deploy incremental capital to help fund the build-out of the very substantial construction pipeline (over 10GW in European geographies) developed by Aquila Capital. It is the ambition of the Board to build a larger-scale portfolio to further enhance the investment proposition for our current and future shareholders.”
The company and is currently monitoring investment opportunities, primarily in hydropower, battery storage and solar PV, with a total capacity of 0.4 GW.