Tokyo Century has agreed to buy half of a 212 MW solar and wind portfolio in the UK from Liberty Global. Three projects sit inside it, and two are still being built. The capacity figure is the easy part. What the Japanese lessor is really buying is three different answers to who pays for the power.
Key takeaways
- Tokyo Century Corp, through Tokyo Century UK Ltd, agreed on 19 October 2026 to acquire a 50 percent stake in Egg Power Finance Limited, which owns a 212 MW solar and onshore wind portfolio across England and Scotland, from Liberty Global. Neither side disclosed the consideration.
- The portfolio holds three projects: the 52 MW Rag Lane solar farm in Gloucestershire, which began operating in 2026, the 70 MW Grange solar farm in Suffolk, expected to operate in 2027, and the 90 MW Chirmorie wind farm in South Ayrshire, expected in 2028. That leaves 52 of 212 MW generating at signing.
- Rag Lane holds a Contract for Difference from the UK's fourth allocation round covering 42 MW at a strike price of £45.99 per MWh, equivalent to $61.27 per MWh, and produces 51 GWh a year, enough for about 15,000 homes.
- Grange holds a Contract for Difference from allocation round 7a covering 12 MW of its 70 MW at a 2024 strike price of £65.23 per MWh, or $86.90 per MWh, alongside a 10-year power purchase agreement with Virgin Media O2 announced in April 2026.
- Enerdatics records 99 UK solar M&A transactions since the start of January 2024, of which 20 yield a usable price per MW. Only seven involved assets under construction, and the four of those carrying a disclosed value priced at a median of $0.87 million per MW.
What does a 212 MW portfolio generate when 52 MW of it is built?
About 51 GWh a year, from one solar farm in Gloucestershire. Everything else is a construction programme. Grange is due to generate in 2027 and Chirmorie in 2028, so the revenue reaching a buyer in the first year after signing comes from roughly a quarter of the capacity.
That is the ordinary shape of a construction-stage deal, and why the stake is worth taking now. A buyer who waits until a project generates pays an operational price for it. Enerdatics records a median of $1.36 million per MW across 10 priced UK operational solar deals since the start of 2024, against $0.87 million per MW for the four priced in-construction ones. The most recent of the four is Octopus Renewables Infrastructure Trust's purchase of the Barnsdale solar project in West Yorkshire, at $0.83 million per MW on its panel rating. The gap between those two medians is what construction risk costs.
Why do two Contracts for Difference on the same portfolio look so far apart?
Because they are quoted in different money. A Contract for Difference is a government-backed contract that tops a generator's revenue up to an agreed strike price when wholesale prices sit below it, and claws the difference back when they sit above. Every strike price in the scheme is published in the money of a base year and uprated annually with inflation, so the figure in an award notice is a reference point rather than a cash price.
The two awards in this portfolio do not share a base year. Leap records the Grange award at 2024 prices. The Rag Lane award comes from allocation round 4, when the scheme still published strike prices on a 2012 basis. Read at face value, Grange looks far better paid. Carried forward to the same year, much of that gap is indexation rather than a premium. The same base-year arithmetic sets the clock on Enviromena's Parkgate purchase in Essex, signed three days later.
The second difference is coverage, and it is the larger one. Rag Lane's contract covers 42 MW of 52 MW, four fifths of the farm. Grange's covers 12 MW of 70 MW, about 17 percent. Both are accurately described as CfD-backed, and the protection behind that phrase differs by a factor of five.
Who buys the power the contracts do not cover?
Corporate offtakers, and at Grange one of them is connected to the seller. Virgin Media O2 is a Liberty Global joint venture, and the 10-year agreement it signed in April 2026 takes power from a project Liberty Global has now sold half of. Leap records that contract as announced without a price.
Chirmorie is contracted differently again, through a long-term power purchase agreement with Amazon announced in June 2026 covering its full 90 MW. So across 212 MW there is one partly subsidised operating asset, one project split between a small subsidy slice and a telecoms buyer, and one wind farm sold whole to a technology company.
That pattern is the strategy rather than an accident. egg Power describes itself as building a renewable energy and storage platform for telecoms operators, digital infrastructure providers and other energy-intensive industries. Liberty Global built generation for demand it already owns, contracted it, and has now sold half the equity while the demand contract stays. The debt stayed too: a £400 million non-recourse facility from NatWest in January 2026, about $536 million.
Enerdatics records $3.96 billion of disclosed consideration across those 99 UK solar transactions, and it is concentrated. Thirteen of the 99 are corporate acquisitions of companies or platforms, and those 13 account for $1.90 billion, close to half the total. Asset deals supply the rest. Applied to 212 MW, the in-construction median implies roughly $184 million for the whole portfolio and about half of that for a 50 percent stake. That is arithmetic on a four-deal sample rather than a figure either party has confirmed, and the closest thing this market offers.
What does the deal signal for the UK renewables market?
It says the scarce item in UK solar and wind is not capital but contracted demand. Two of these three projects were sold with a named corporate buyer already attached to their output, and the third carries a subsidy over four fifths of its capacity. Where the state covers little, as at Grange, a telecoms group covers the rest. Capacity on its own is not what trades here.
It also says something about who is buying. Tokyo Century is a leasing and finance company rather than a developer, and its Medium-Term Management Plan 2030 names overseas renewable energy as a growth area. It has signalled further joint investment with egg Power in ready-to-build UK assets. What those deals will not produce is price visibility. The two other UK solar transactions Enerdatics recorded that week, both with Enviromena as buyer, closed without a disclosed price, as did Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners' purchase of a quarter of Five Estuaries days earlier. Partial stakes in UK renewables are changing hands steadily and almost silently.
Frequently asked questions
What is Tokyo Century buying?A 50 percent stake in Egg Power Finance Limited, which owns a 212 MW UK solar and onshore wind portfolio, from Liberty Global. The consideration was not disclosed.
How much of the portfolio is generating today?52 MW of 212 MW. Rag Lane in Gloucestershire began operating in 2026. The 70 MW Grange solar farm is due in 2027 and the 90 MW Chirmorie wind farm in 2028.
Is the portfolio fully contracted?No. Contracts for Difference cover 42 MW at Rag Lane and 12 MW at Grange. The rest relies on power purchase agreements: a 10-year contract with Virgin Media O2 at Grange and a long-term agreement with Amazon covering 90 MW at Chirmorie.
Enerdatics tracks every UK renewable energy transaction, including the ones that close without a price, alongside the subsidy awards and offtake contracts behind them. Explore Enerdatics to see where a deal sits against its comparables.
