Energy tech company Limejump has added its first hydropower asset to its pioneering Virtual Power Platform (VPP) by signing a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with DHG Hydro Ltd / Canaird River Company Limited. Limejump will manage the generation from DHG’s 1.2MW Langwell hydropower plant, located near Ullapool, Scotland.
The PPA deal will provide Langwell with wholesale energy market trading access, valued at £300,000 per year. It also strengthens Limejump’s renewable dominated VPP, allowing Limejump and its customers to compete against traditional fossil-fuel power plants.
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 hydropower plant that Limejump has utilised in their aggregated balancing unit.
This hydro plant, 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. 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.”
“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,” added Limejump’s Vice President of Sales, Joe McDonald. “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.”
