The situation
An energy-intensive UK manufacturing group with several sites. Energy costs were high and varied from site to site across the group, it needed to decarbonise, and it was doing all of this in a sector under pressure. Buying power site by site meant different contracts, different prices and no single view of what the group was paying or where its power came from.
The arrangement
The group moved to a single, unified energy procurement strategy, built from two parts that work together.
- Off-site. A multi-site PPA through a private energy market, anchored by an off-site solar farm, so every site draws on the same named generation.
- On-site. A portfolio of ground-mount and rooftop solar on the group’s own sites, supplied over private wire, so that power never touches the network.
The term is fifteen years, part fixed and part dynamic. The fixed share gives the group a price it can budget against for a large part of its power; the dynamic share keeps some exposure to the market, so it is not locked into one price for the whole of a long term.
Our role
Export Energy helped structure the arrangement, working alongside a delivery partner.
Why it works
On-site private wire gives the lowest unit cost where the sites can host generation. The private market PPA covers what the sites cannot generate for themselves, from a named solar asset rather than an anonymous pool. And one strategy across the group replaces a collection of site-level contracts that were never designed to work together.
The parties are not named at their request.