Germany’s ib vogt Begins Construction on Spain Project, Signs PPA with Google

German’s turnkey PV plants provider, ib vogt has started construction on the 149 MWp Garnacha solar power plant located in the province of Zamora in Spain. The project signed a power purchase agreement (PPA) with Google for a period of 12 years, signaling the first major collaboration between ib vogt and Google.

With a €90m long-term project financing facility provided by Norddeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale (NORD/LB) and Santander Corporate & Investment Banking (Santander CIB), financial close was reached on August 25th, 2022, with start of construction following shortly thereafter on September 14th, 2022. Construction of the plant is expected to take approximately 12 months with commercial operation (COD) planned by October 2023.

Firm’s Spain Investment

The solar project marks another significant investment from ib vogt towards Spain’s renewable energy sector with a total commitment of EUR 118 million. The power plant is part of the company’s IPP platform, proving to be another success in ib vogt’s newly established IPP business model with additional value added expected throughout the remainder of the project lifetime.

The plant is located near the city of Toro in the northwest of Spain and will support the region’s transition towards clean energy. The project covers an area of 224 hectares of land on extremely low-quality soil and will consist of more than 270,000 solar panels built on north-south single-axis trackers for optimal performance. With an output of up to 300 GWh per year, the panels will produce clean solar electricity equivalent to the average consumption of 85,000 households while saving up to 50,000 tons of CO2 per year.

“We are pleased to have broken ground for yet another major project in Spain, contributing towards the country’s own renewable electricity targets and doing our part to power the energy transition,” said Anton Milner, CEO of ib vogt. “We are also excited to be working together with Google and contributing to their important environmental objectives. Thanks to the outstanding support of the local, regional, and national administrative bodies and our partners at NORD/LB and Santander CIB, we were able to pursue an aggressive project development and financing timeline and look forward to adding more clean solar energy to the Spanish electricity market.”

Heiko Ludwig, Global Head of Structured Finance at NORD/LB, stated, “The development of ib vogt‘s Garnacha power project and the successful closing of the project financing is a great example of the combined power of different industries like renewable energy, global tech and financial services working together to achieve a contribution towards the green transition of the economy. We are very proud to play a part in this and are glad to continue NORD/LB’s growth in the promising Iberian renewable energy market.”

Bartholomew White, European Head of Structure Finance at Santander CIB, said, “We are proud to be supporting our clients through the green transition and look forward to many more projects to help us achieve our net zero targets and continue reinforcing our leadership in the renewables sector. Congratulations ib vogt and everyone involved in the execution of this project.”

Marc Oman, Infrastructure & Energy Principal at Google remarked, “We are delighted to work with ib vogt to add new clean energy to the grid while significantly improving Google’s carbon footprint in Spain. By 2025, and with help from ib vogt’s Garnacha project, Google’s Spanish cloud region and offices will operate on carbon-free energy nearly 90 percent of the time.”

ib vogt recently completed the development of 180 Mwp solar power project in Spain that was completely subsidy free. The solar power project is owned by Talanx, which claims to be the third-largest German insurance group The project is situated in Bienvenida in Badajoz province. The solar site employs more than 550,000 solar modules and its the largest project ever developed by ib vogt.

In addition to developing the project, ib vogt is providing an end-to-end service as EPC contractor, and upon completion of the plant, Operations & Maintenance and Asset Management services as well.