RWE and PPC joint venture Meton Energy has made the final investment decision for the construction of three solar projects totalling 259MW in northern Greece.
The projects are combined in the Amynteo Cluster 2 and will be built on the site of the former Amynteo opencast lignite mine in northern Greece in the region of Western Macedonia.
Construction work is scheduled to begin in autumn of this year and all three sites are scheduled to start operations by the end of 2024.
Meton Energy is building five large solar projects in this region, which includes the Amynteo Cluster 1, comprising 175MW.
For the green electricity generated in the three solar parks, Meton Energy has signed bilateral power supply agreements with PPC via the respective project companies.
The term of the contracts is 15 years.
The total investment of €196m for the realisation of the three solar projects will be financed with EU funds of €98m from the NextGenerationEU fund as part of the Recovery & Resilience Facility Plan “Greece 2.0”.
For the remaining amount, commercial debt financing of €59m was agreed by Alpha Bank, Eurobank and the National Bank of Greece, plus €39m in equity.
Including the sites under construction, the joint venture between RWE and PPC Renewables is developing solar farms with a total capacity of up to 2GW in Greece.
PPC Renewables has contributed nine solar projects for development with a total capacity of up to 870MW to Meton Energy and RWE, a development pipeline for solar sites in Greece of similar size.
Costas Papamantellos, chief executive RWE Renewables Hellas and Meton Energy, said: “Following the investment decision for the first five projects of our Amynteo pipeline at the beginning of this year, we have now reached the second important milestone by making the investment decision for the next photovoltaic plants.
“Long-term financing agreements are in place and the marketing of the electricity is secured by the signing of the electricity supply contracts with PPC.
“We will continue to develop the remaining projects in our joint solar pipeline at the same high pace.”