Pooled PPA: when several companies buy from one plant

A solar park or a wind farm usually produces far more power than one mid-sized company uses. A pooled PPA solves that: several companies share one plant, each taking a part of its output. In Danish it is sometimes called a pulje-PPA. In English you will also see multi-buyer or aggregated PPA.

Pooled PPAs in Denmark

• Mesballe, Djursland (2024). 25 Danish companies, among them Kvadrat, Aquaporin, JP/Politikens Hus and the Danish Society of Engineers, signed a five-year PPA for most of a new solar park’s output, about 14 GWh a year. The partners were the developer Energicenter Nord and the electricity supplier Reel.
• Søby Energipark, Norddjurs (2026). Four companies, among them Polar Seafood and Heimstaden Denmark, buy fixed volumes at fixed prices from a solar park expected to produce about 53.7 GWh a year. Reel balances the park.

The pattern is the same in both: a park no single buyer would take alone, filled by several companies, with an electricity supplier as part of the deal.

Two ways to set it up

1. Separate contracts, same terms. Each buyer signs its own PPA with the producer for a share of the output. The contracts are close to identical. If one buyer stops paying, the others are not affected. Only that share needs a new buyer.
2. One contract, passed on. One party, often a supplier, signs a single PPA with the producer and passes shares on to the buyers. The buyers deal with one counterparty. The party in the middle stays responsible for the whole volume, even if a buyer drops out.

What the buyers share, and what they don’t

• Shared: the plant and the core terms. Output, curtailment and negative hours are usually split in proportion to each share. Buyers normally accept the same price and the same security requirements.
• Not shared: credit risk. Buyers rarely answer for each other. Each one is assessed on its own, and may have to provide a bank or parent company guarantee.
• Your own GOs. Each buyer gets the guarantees of origin for its own share. See what a GO gives you, and what a PPA adds.
• Less privacy. Expect the other buyers to know who you are.

A share that fits your hours

In a pay-as-produced deal you take your share of the output in every hour the plant produces. Take too large a share and you have surplus power at noon on sunny days, which is sold back at the spot price, sometimes below zero. A pool lets each buyer choose a share that fits its own hours, instead of the whole plant or nothing.

Read how much of a buyer’s hours solar, wind and hybrid can cover, and what happens in hours with a negative price.

What to agree first

• Is each share a percentage of the output, or a fixed volume?
• The price and the term, the same for everyone.
• What happens if a buyer leaves, merges or goes bankrupt, and who finds a new buyer for its share.
• Who handles balancing, and who pays for it.
• Negative prices and curtailment.
• That each buyer’s GOs are cancelled in its own name.

The ten terms every Nordic PPA has to settle lists the usual options for each.

Is a pool right for you?

A pool suits a company that wants a fixed price and a named plant, uses less than a whole park, and can accept standard terms. It suits a company less well if it needs terms of its own, because in a pool the price and the security are the same for everyone.

Where Symbolon fits

Symbolon is a PPA broker in Denmark. Several buyers can show interest in the same project on the marketplace. We check each buyer’s hours against the plant, put the pool together and take it through to signing. Company names stay hidden until we make the introduction, and it is free for buyers. See how Symbolon works for buyers.