The Swiss energy company MET, previously primarily active in trading, is expanding its generation business with renewable energies. The utility has also built up a project pipeline in Germany. energate spoke to Christian Hürlimann, Renewables CEO at MET Group, about its ambitions in the German market, the challenges of concluding PPAs and the opportunities in the storage market.
energate: Mr Hürlimann, MET has so far mainly developed renewable energies in other European markets. Now you are increasingly looking to enter the German market. What are your plans?
Hürlimann: Our current focus is on internationalising our renewable energy portfolio based on our first successful projects in Southern, Central and Eastern Europe. As part of this, we have acquired our first German solar project in Kentzlin (Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania), which will go into operation in the middle of the year. However, we have also realised that there is intense competition on the German market for predeveloped projects and prices are correspondingly high. We are therefore focusing on building up our own pipeline, with a focus on PV. We are currently endeavouring to develop more of our own projects and to secure grid connection points and the corresponding land. For example, we have a 60 MW project in Saxony at an advanced stage of development. This start forms a good basis for further expanding our activities in the German market.
energate: What goals have you set yourself?
Hürlimann: We have decided to build solar parks in Germany in combination with a battery storage system as standard. The 60 MW project in Saxony, for example, will also include a 60 MW/240 MWh battery storage system. We see that the capture prices for solar have come under severe pressure due to the cannibalisation effect. In addition, our projects are increasingly moving towards a size for which Renewable Energy Sources Act surcharges are no longer granted. In this respect, we will structure the business case in such a way that we also optimise the marketing of solar power via the batteries and use it to structure PPAs, for example.