Under a long-term contract deal, the independent renewable energy producer Kallista Energy will sell wind-generated electricity to Lhyfe, one of the world’s pioneers in the production of green and renewable hydrogen. For the first time, the emerging green hydrogen market, supported by the French Government and the European Union, has provided sufficient visibility for a corporate power purchase agreement (CPPA) to be signed and for Kallista Energy to secure bank financing for the repowering of a wind park. For Lhyfe, this CPPA secures the power supply for its future green hydrogen production sites, thus consolidating its sustained growth.

The wind park in Brachy, in Seine-Maritime (France), has five wind turbines and is nearly 17 years old.

Kallista Energy, the farm’s owner and operator, plans to repower it with the latest-generation turbines. The repowered wind park will be able to generate 70% more electricity with the same number of wind turbines.

The bank financing for the repowering of Brachy wind park was secured thanks to the CPPA concluded between Kallista Energy and Lhyfe for a term of 15 years.

The repowered Brachy wind park, which is due to come online in summer 2024, will have five Vestas V126 wind turbines providing total power of 15 MW. It will produce 46 GWh of renewable electricity each year. The wind park’s entire output will be used to power Lhyfe’s green and renewable hydrogen production sites, contributing to the decarbonisation of mobility and industry which currently use fossil fuels or carbon-derived hydrogen.

Kallista Energy’s Brachy wind park. Credit: P.Lissillour

This new contract is part of Lhyfe’s renewable power supply strategy. Lhyfe has had a production site in Pays de la Loire since 2021 and will commission two new units in Brittany and Occitanie by the end of the year, for a maximum total production capacity of 4 tonnes of green and renewable hydrogen per day. Further projects have also already been announced in new regions, such as the Central Loire Valley and eastern France. This CPPA allows Lhyfe to further reinforce its network of renewable electricity supplier partners, while securing a long-term supply of green electricity for the development of its next sites and guaranteeing competitive sales conditions for renewable hydrogen in the long term.

“The complementarity of renewable energy and green hydrogen is doubly virtuous: wind energy, transformed into hydrogen, makes it possible to quickly decarbonise industries that cannot use electricity directly and hydrogen makes it possible to eliminate wind energy variability thanks to the flexibility of electrolysers. We are all the more proud to conclude this CPPA with Lhyfe as part of the repowering of one of our wind portfolio that it will significantly increase power production at our site without increasing the number of turbines”, explained Frédéric Roche, CEO of Kallista Energy.

“This agreement with Kallista Energy strengthens our network of green energy supplier partners and, in practical terms, allows us to have an additional 46 GWh per year to power our future production sites. It is thanks to the trust of players such as Kallista Energy that the green and renewable hydrogen sector is ramping up, to rapidly and massively decarbonise industry and mobility”, said Matthieu Guesné, CEO and Founder of Lhyfe.

Kallista Energy worked with the following partners for the realisation of this PPA:

- Legal advisers: Clifford Chance, Lawyer Gauthier Martin (PPA)

- Bank financing: SaarLB and BNP Paribas

- Manufacturing and maintenance of wind turbines: Vestas