Octopus Renewables Infrastructure Trust (ORIT) has agreed to conditionally acquire a 32.6MW solar site in Ireland for approximately €27 million (£23.13 million).
ORIT will complete the purchase for the entire cash total after the solar site has completed operational testing. It is due to begin construction soon and is expected to be operational in the second half of 2026.
It will be the sixth project located at the operational Ballymacarney complex already owned by ORIT, which is part of the Octopus Energy Group. The additional site, dubbed Irishtown, will increase the total complex capacity to 274MW, a 14% increase.
This acquisition is in line with ORIT’s stated capital allocation policy, to make selected accretive investments as part of its ongoing capital recycling programme.
Statkraft is developing the Irishtown site, as it did the rest of the Ballymacarney complex. Irishtown will share the existing grid infrastructure used by the rest of the site.
ORIT stated that it has secured a power purchase agreement (PPA) for the site with a US technology company, which ORIT’s chair Phil Austin said “sits well with ORIT’s well-established strategy of de-risking portfolio cashflows through securing long-term fixed revenue”.
Austin said: “We remain acutely focused on disciplined capital allocation, and have been clear that new acquisitions will only be made where there is a compelling case to do so. This forward purchase reflects the opportunity to expand our presence at Ballymacarney in a cost-efficient manner using the site’s existing infrastructure.”
ORIT completed acquisition of the fifth solar site at Ballymacarney in October last year, making the then five-site complex the largest in Ireland, which ORIT claimed would meet around 2.5% of the Irish national solar target of 8GW by 2030. The total acquisition cost of the first five sites was a combined £165 million, in part financed using an £87 million 20-year debt facility provided by Allied Irish Banks and La Banque Postale.
The investor signed a five-year term loan facility worth £100 million earlier this year, comprising equal commitments from existing investors Santander, National Australia Bank and Allied Irish Banks and is secured against ORIT’s UK onshore wind and solar assets.
While the PPA signatory for the Irishtown site is unnamed, the other five sites benefit from a 15-year PPA with Microsoft.
The technology giant has a vested interest in the state of Ireland’s grid, as the nation is a global hotspot for data centre developments.
As reported on our sister site, Current±, figures from the Central Statistics Office for Ireland showed that in 2023 data centres took a 21% of total metered electricity consumption, more than the total amount for urban dwellings (18%) and for rural dwellings (10%).
