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UK wind power investor Greencoat UK Wind has reported net cash generation of £48.3 million, which is "in line with budget", despite lower-than-forecast power prices in 2015.
In its annual report for the year ended 31 December 2015, Greencoat said its wind power investments had generated 799.3GWh of electricity, 8 per cent above budget, because of “high wind resource”.
However, the average power price during the year was below budget and, with 40 per cent of the group’s revenues subject to floating power prices, net cash generated was £48.3 million (compared with £32.4 million in 2014).
In 2015, the UK generated 11 per cent of its electricity from wind, up from 9.5 per cent in 2014. Meanwhile, power prices were lower than forecast in 2015 owing to lower gas prices.
Greencoat partner Stephen Lilley told Utility Week: “The year has been more challenging… in the summer we had some issues with the early removal of the levy exemption certificate for renewables, mitigated largely by the change of corporate tax rates, so it would have been better if that hadn’t happened.
“We’ve seen some effect from power prices, volume up price down, that is not a bad place to be in a slightly more challenging environment.”
He said the most satisfying thing about the report was that Greencoat has produced “exactly what we said we would”.
The volatility of the current stock market hasn’t had a huge effect on the number of wind assets coming to the market according to the investor who added that there are “a lot to buy from” as an operator rather than a developer.
Greencoat chair Tim Ingram said: “During the year we analysed many further investment opportunities, but have been very selective, only buying one new wind farm, increasing our portfolio to 17 investments with just over 300MW of net generating capacity.”
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