Altenex Offers Renewable Energy PPA for Use by Large Customers

Boston-based Altenex – an Edison Energy company that provides renewable energy advisory and procurement services – went public on May 18 with its proprietary Renewable Energy Purchase Agreement (REPA), designed to be used by commercial, industrial, and institutional clients.

According to Altenex, the power purchase agreement (PPA) for renewable energy already “has been used by multiple Altenex clients, including Fortune 1000 companies, government agencies, and universities in the successful execution of more than one gigawatt (GW) of transactions across all major U.S. power markets.”

By releasing the PPA to the market, Altenex intends to help companies and institutions to accelerate their renewable energy purchasing efforts.

“For organizations looking at renewable energy procurement, the lack of a contract that appropriately mitigates buyer risk can be a significant barrier to entry,” said Altenex Senior Managing Director Duncan McIntyre, adding, “Corporate buyers, especially, need to manage a number of critical risks in any renewable energy transaction, and we believe one of the best ways to do that is through the contract.”

Indeed, the company said, an issue as simple as scheduling ongoing maintenance of a wind or solar facility can have major production/economic performance implications for the off-taker, if a facility is to be  powered down during peak-production/peak-usage times.

Other major areas of contract-addressable risk include project operations, volume/resource considerations, operations, market price protection, counterparty risk, renewable energy certificate devaluation, regulatory change, intermittency, and hedge effectiveness.

“Most companies don’t have their own proven PPA sitting around on a shelf,” said McIntyre. “The contractual protections … included in the Altenex PPA provide a high level of confidence for our clients….”

The REPA is available for free download by commercial, industrial and institutional energy users on the Altenex website.

In March, Edison International became one of the first utilities to move beyond selling electricity by launching Edison Energy to “identify and execute opportunities to help [customers] lower costs in managing their entire energy portfolio, reduce complexity, and delivery on increasingly important sustainability objectives,” the company said in a formal announcement.