Energy crisis stimulates industrial solar generation on roofs

European companies are rushing to install solar panels on roofs and open spaces around their businesses to offset their exposure to the latest surge in natural gas and energy prices since Russia invaded Ukraine.

Building some solar power generation capacity is a relatively quick fix for sky-high energy bills and with installations taking less than a year.

That means the new panels could help Europe’s energy-intensive businesses cut costs after natural gas prices have nearly tripled in the last three weeks.

That surge has sent customers flocking to Harald Overholm, chief executive of Alight AB, a Stockholm-based company that builds and operates on-site solar farms for businesses and then sells them the power at fixed prices in 10- to 20-year contracts. years. Alight’s sales funnel has ballooned to almost 500 megawatts, up from 170 megawatts just a few weeks ago.

“It’s crazy what’s happening now.” Overholm said in an interview. “They are panicking about energy prices”. Solar panels at European businesses will increase about 15% this year compared to 2021, according to data from BloombergNEF.

On-site solar panels may not cover all of a company’s power demand, but they can complete the planning and construction phase in as little as nine months, according to Overholm. And speed is of the utmost importance for customers who can’t get relief from price gouging fast enough.

“People want it tomorrow”, said.

While demand for corporate power purchase agreements comes primarily from tech companies like Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc., those deals are typically to buy power from massive arrays of solar panels and wind turbines far from the site of consumption that a They would often require years of work to obtain approvals from local authorities and permission to connect to the power grid.

Overholm says demand for the smaller on-site solar plans it offers comes from industrial customers like cement and paper producers. Customers with many plants so that, even if the size of each solar panel is limited, they can add up to reduce a significant amount of demand.