Sonnedix has signed a power purchase agreement with Equinix for its 149 MW Douro solar project in northern Portugal. Seven months earlier the same two companies signed a contract for a 150 MWp solar portfolio in Spain. Same supplier, same buyer, same term, almost the same size. The second contract only makes sense once you see what the first one taught both sides.
Key takeaways
- Sonnedix signed a 10-year pay-as-produced power purchase agreement with Equinix in December 2023 for the 149 MW Sonnedix Douro solar PV project in Tarouca, in the Viseu district of northern Portugal.
- The Equinix PPA for Sonnedix Douro starts in July 2025, and the project is expected to produce 234.5 GWh of electricity a year, enough for about 78,000 Portuguese homes.
- The Douro contract is the second PPA between Sonnedix and Equinix, following a 10-year pay-as-produced PPA signed in May 2023 for three solar plants totalling 150 MWp in Cuenca, Spain.
- Sonnedix Douro is Sonnedix's largest solar PV project in Europe, and Equinix was advised on the PPA by Schneider Electric and Holland & Knight.
- Enerdatics records 12 PPAs announced in Portugal in 2023 and 2024; none discloses a tariff, and Equinix is the only technology or telecom offtaker among them.
What does a pay-as-produced contract ask of Equinix?
It asks Equinix to take the solar profile as it comes. A pay-as-produced PPA is a contract in which the buyer pays for whatever the plant generates, at the moment it generates it, rather than for a fixed block of power delivered around the clock. If the sun shines at noon, Equinix receives a large volume. At night it receives nothing and must buy power elsewhere.
That structure moves volume risk to the buyer. The seller gets paid for every megawatt hour it produces, which makes the revenue easier to finance. The buyer gets a price for that output but has to manage the gap between a solar shape and a data centre load that runs flat all day and all night.
For a data centre operator this is a known trade. The contract delivers renewable volume at scale without the buyer having to build or own a plant.
Why sign the same contract twice in seven months?
Because the first one worked as a template. The Spanish PPA, signed in May 2023, covered three solar plants in Cuenca with a total of 150 MWp, expected to operate by the end of 2024 and to generate 240 GWh a year with Guarantees of Origin. It was a 10-year pay-as-produced contract. Sonnedix called it its largest transaction signed in Europe to that date and its first long-term relationship with a global digital infrastructure company.
The Portuguese contract copies almost every term. Ten years, pay-as-produced, a single counterparty, and a project of 149 MW against 150 MWp. Annual output is 234.5 GWh against 240 GWh. Divide each by the hours in a year and both sets of plants are expected to run at roughly 18 percent of their rated capacity, which is what a solar plant on the Iberian peninsula should do.
Repeating a template cuts negotiation time and legal cost for both sides. Equinix knows how Sonnedix delivers and reports. Sonnedix knows Equinix's credit and contract language. Across the two agreements, Sonnedix now supplies Equinix from 299 MW of solar capacity producing about 474.5 GWh a year. Equinix also signed a separate 225 MW solar PPA in Spain earlier in 2023, according to Leap's record of the Cuenca deal.
What makes Douro different from Cuenca?
Two things: the grid it sits on and the date it starts. Douro is in Portugal, not Spain. The two countries share the Iberian wholesale market, but a separate national grid and a separate route to market sit underneath. Spreading the supply across both gives Equinix exposure to two sets of sites and two sets of weather.
The start date also matters. The Douro PPA begins in July 2025, roughly half a year after the Spanish plants were due online. Staggering two contracts this way means the second project's construction risk is separated from the first. If one site runs late, the other is not tied to it.
Douro is also the bigger single project. At 149 MW it is Sonnedix's largest solar PV plant in Europe, while the Spanish volume is split across three plants.
The record names the buyer's advisers. Schneider Electric and Holland & Knight supported Equinix on the Portuguese transaction. On the Spanish deal, Watson Farley Williams acted as legal adviser to Sonnedix. The close match between the two contracts is consistent with a buyer reusing a structure it has already tested.
For Sonnedix the contract fits a pattern of building scale through a small number of large transactions. Earlier in 2023 the company agreed one of its biggest, when Sonnedix bought Enel's operating solar plants in northern Chile.
Enerdatics records 12 power purchase agreements announced in Portugal across 2023 and 2024. Nine are for solar. Seven disclose the capacity contracted, and only one, a 199 MW agreement between NextEnergy Capital and Statkraft for three solar projects, is larger than Equinix's 149 MW. None of the 12 discloses a tariff. Seven state a duration, and four of those seven run for 10 years. Equinix is the only offtaker in the set classed as technology or telecom; the others are utilities, industrial buyers, retailers and a public body.
What does the deal signal for Portuguese solar offtake?
It signals that large corporate buyers reach Portugal by extending relationships they already have in Spain. Equinix did not tender for a new supplier. It took a counterparty it had just signed with in Spain and asked for more of the same across the border.
The Enerdatics set shows how unusual a contract of this size is in Portugal. Most Portuguese PPAs in the period are either utility offtakes, such as Statkraft taking output from third-party solar plants, or small onsite deals for industrial and commercial sites of a few megawatts. A 149 MW offsite contract with a single corporate buyer sits near the top of the market by volume.
The opacity on price is also a finding. With no tariff disclosed across any of the 12 records, a buyer or seller benchmarking a Portuguese solar PPA has to rely on private data. The terms that are disclosed, such as duration and structure, cluster tightly around 10 years, which suggests the market has settled on a standard tenor even where price stays private.
For developers, the lesson is that a first contract with a hyperscale or colocation buyer is worth more than its own volume. It creates the template for the next one. Sonnedix has since widened the assets it can offer beyond solar, including its later 260 MW Tuscania battery acquisition in Italy.
Frequently asked questions
What did Sonnedix and Equinix sign in Portugal?Sonnedix signed a 10-year pay-as-produced power purchase agreement with Equinix for renewable electricity from its 149 MW Sonnedix Douro solar PV project in Tarouca, northern Portugal. The contract starts in July 2025.
How much electricity will Sonnedix Douro produce?The project is expected to produce 234.5 GWh a year, enough to power about 78,000 Portuguese homes and avoid more than 33,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions annually.
Is this the first PPA between Sonnedix and Equinix?No. It is the second. The first was a 10-year pay-as-produced PPA signed in May 2023 for three solar plants totalling 150 MWp in Cuenca, Spain, expected to generate 240 GWh a year.
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