The OKKO group of companies, as part of business diversification, began buying industrial solar power plants and plans to build Energy storage with a total capacity of 40 MW, its CEO Vasyl Danyliak said.
"We buy ready-made solar stations from the market. We have already bought one, three more are in the process. We are buying at a feed-in tariff. We remain in the balancing group of Guaranteed Buyer," he said in a commentary to Energy Reform on the sidelines of the Business Energy forum from Forbes.ua.
Danyliak explained that as long as the feed-in tariff is maintained (until the end of 2029), and Guaranteed Buyer "will at least pay somehow," it will make sense to work in such conditions, and after that the company intends to sell electricity from solar power plants on the market through its own trading division.
As for the total capacity of the solar power plants that the company plans to purchase, then, according to Danyliak, "we will buy as much as we can buy in the price range that we have approved." At the same time, he refused to name the amount of funds that the company is ready to allocate for the purchase of renewable energy generation.
At the same time, the head of the OKKO group of companies shared plans to build Energy storage in Ukraine - two stages of 20 MW each.
"We want to build Energy storage. We won't finally design it until the end of this year, but perhaps we'll do it before the end of the first quarter of next year. And if we hold all the tenders and the equipment arrives on time, then, approximately, next summer we will start building it. We are planning the first and next stages of 20 MW each," he explained.
Danyliak noted that such energy storage systems would work "both in the ancillary services market and in the arbitrage market, when we charge at peak production and supply electricity at peak consumption."
During his speech at the forum, Danyliak explained the company's plans for work in the renewable energy sector, including interest in wind generation, by the need to diversify the business, since the fuel market no longer implies growth.
"Our market has a growth problem, including due to the development of electric vehicles. Therefore, we needed to look in some direction that would organically continue the business of our industry. And this is the market for production, storage and transmission of electricity. We started analyze different types of generation and storage," he said.
In addition, Danyliak noted that international financial institutions stopped lending to the fuel business, and the company, having extensive lending experience and a vote of confidence, began to look for opportunities to attract financing in other areas. At the same time, according to him, if the terms of lending to the main business were seven-nine years, then for renewable energy sources they reach ten-18 years.
The head of the OKKO group of companies explained the purchase of ready-made objects by the long development period of the projects, noting, in particular, that "land issues are being resolved from scratch for a very long time."
