Limejump has signed a power purchase agreement with DHG Hydro Ltd/Canaird River Company Limited under which Limejump will manage the generation from DHG’s 1.2-MW Langwell small hydropower plant.
DHG Hydro has a large portfolio of hydroelectric plants in operation or under development. The company develops, builds, operates and owns hydroelectric schemes in Scotland and Wales. It has been operating for more than 15 years in the hydropower sector.
The Langwell project is located near Ullapool, Scotland, and was built in 2016. It consists of an intake, a dam, a 3-km-long pipeline, a powerhouse and an outfall, which Limejump says allows it to react to instructions in a similar fashion to pumped-storage power plants like Dinorwig.
Limejump says the PPA deal provides Langwell with wholesale energy market trading access, valued at £300,000 (US$339,600) per year, strengthens Limejump’s renewable-dominated Virtual Power Platform (VPP), and allows Limejump and its customers to compete against fossil-fueled power plants.
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 Limejump has used in its aggregated balancing unit. The generation profile that can be achieved by such an asset can be optimized across wholesale and ancillary energy markets, to achieve peak return trading performance, according to a press release. 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 PPA was signed via Limejump’s Track ‘n’ Trade deal, whereby DHG will use market pricing information to “track” the market and lock their price in at their optimum time. This methodology can yield with higher returns while managing the price fluctuation risk.
“We’re looking forward to working with Limejump in order to maximize the investment we have made at Langwell,” said Nicholas Curtis, commercial director of DHG. “Accessing markets, optimizing assets and delivering investment return proves that sustainable resources, and in particular Hydro can compete with any generation type, cleanly and securely.”
