London-quoted investment trust Downing Renewables Infrastructure DORE has paid £6 million to complete the purchase of five hydropower plants in Sweden.
The dams, including one on the Säveån river in the country’s south-west, add another 9 GWh in output capacity to Downing’s hydro portfolio, previously at 206 GWh. All 34 assets are located across the UK, northern Europe, Iceland and Scandinavia.
All the plants benefit from what DORE told investors this morning is ‘meaningful’ reservoir capacity enabling better water storage and management to optimise production.
With a core objective of accelerating the world’s transition to Net Zero, DORE is part of Downing LLP. Its staff of 60 professionals are concentrated in London. Since 2010, the group has built a portfolio of 180 renewables projects, amounting to more than £850 in assets under management.
The group said its Hydro AB operational unit has continued the roll-out of software and hardware upgrades across its portfolio to allow the relevant hydropower plants to participate in the frequency containment markets, in addition to their electricity generation activities.
The deals were finalised last month. At that time, improved operating hardware had been installed at 20 plants and the first submission to the Swedish Transmission Operator (SvK) for pre-qualification had been made. The residual sites are expected to be submitted for pre-qualification during the first quarter of 2024. The Company expects that the pre-qualification approval process will be finalised and nearly all relevant facilities will be phased into the Frequency Containment Reserves (FCR) markets during the first and second quarters of 2024.
Group head of energy & infrastructure Tom Williams commented: “Following our recent Icelandic hydropower acquisition, we are pleased to add another five hydro plants to the DORE portfolio. We are also delighted with the progress of the software and hardware upgrades to the hydropower fleet and hope to see the first facilities participating in the Swedish frequency markets this quarter.”
