Independent power producer (IPP) Low Carbon has appointed Danske Commodities to provide balancing services for a UK solar power plant.
Under a balancing agreement between the two companies, Danske Commodities will provide market access and balancing for the 49.9MW Feldon Vale solar plant, located in Stratford-upon-Avon. The Feldon Vale solar site is currently under development.
Head of European origination for Danske Commodities, Sofie Duedahl, said: “We want to be a preferred partner for British asset owners through energy market services covering both renewable and flexible energy generation.”
The Danish energy trading company, which was acquired by Equinor in 2019, says it has a strategic ambition to support the UK’s energy transition. Danske Commodities has been active in the country since 2009 and has a British power portfolio spanning onshore wind, offshore wind, solar and battery storage.
It signed a three-year optimisation agreement for the 35MW Welkin Mill battery energy storage system (BESS) owned by Equinor and developed by Noriker Power, last year. The year before that it signed its first UK optimisation agreement for the 25MW/50MWh two-hour duration battery storage asset Blandford Road, also owned by Equinor.
Danske Commodities is a fully owned subsidiary of Equinor. The Norwegian company recently announced it would integrate its solar PV and wind renewable energy portfolios with its gas generation and energy storage flexible power portfolios into a new combined business area.
Around the same time, Low Carbon announced it had formed a strategic partnership with insurance company Paratus, a move that would mitigate risks associated with its renewable portfolio.
Working with Paratus, a specialist in energy price (re)insurance, would mitigate the exposure of power purchase agreements (PPAs) and route-to-market (RTM) strategies to energy market fluctuations that could adversely affect them, Low Carbon said.
Low Carbon’s UK PV portfolio includes the 500MW Gate Burton Energy Park project in Lincolnshire, which was granted a development consent order (DCO) by energy secretary Ed Miliband last year.
In October 2024, its 49.9MW Layer Solar Farm in Essex was energised, marking Low Carbon’s fourth large-scale solar project in the UK to come online. The three other projects are the 23MW Crouch Solar Farm near Basildon, Braintree’s 35MW Links Solar Farm and the 25MW Maldon Wycke Solar Farm.
The IPP is also in the early stages of developing another nationally significant infrastructure project (NSIP), a 500MW solar and energy storage project in Kent for which it began early consultations in November 2024.
