GreenGo has signed a ten-year solar power purchase agreement with Sasol Italy for five plants totalling 24.5 MW. The power will supply three of Sasol's Italian industrial sites. The contract has no fixed price. Instead it has a formula with a discount, a floor and a cap, and that formula decides who carries Italy's power price risk for the next decade.
Key takeaways
- GreenGo signed a 10-year power purchase agreement with Sasol Italy for a 24.5 MW portfolio of five solar plants, announced on 26 June 2024.
- The GreenGo and Sasol agreement is pay-as-produced, priced at the Italian zonal price with a dynamic discount, and bounded by a floor price and a cap price.
- The five GreenGo solar plants are located in three Italian regions and were expected to enter commercial operation in the first half of 2025, producing about 45 GWh a year.
- The GreenGo output is expected to cover over 20 percent of the electricity used at Sasol Italy's industrial sites in Augusta, Sarroch and Terranova, with Sasol Italy managing collection and balancing.
- Enerdatics records 28 solar power purchase agreements in Italy announced in 2024, and none of them carries a disclosed tariff.
How does a zonal price with a floor and a cap actually work?
The contract starts from the market and then limits how far the market can move the result. Italy's wholesale electricity market is split into zones, each with its own clearing price. A zonal price PPA pays the generator whatever the relevant zone clears at, adjusted by the agreed terms.
Here the adjustment is a dynamic discount. The buyer pays below the zonal price, and the size of that discount can change with market conditions rather than being fixed for ten years. That gives Sasol a reason to sign: it buys power for less than the market price without locking itself into a number that could look expensive if prices fall.
The floor and the cap set the outer limits. If the zonal price collapses, the floor protects GreenGo's revenue, which matters to anyone financing the plants. If the zonal price spikes, the cap protects Sasol's costs, which is what its industrial sites care about. Between the two, both sides share the market. The structure is a collar, and it is a compromise between a fully fixed price and full merchant exposure.
Who carries the operational risk in a pay-as-produced deal?
Sasol does, more than a reader might expect. Pay-as-produced means the buyer takes whatever the plants generate, hour by hour, rather than a fixed block of power. If the sun is strong, Sasol receives more. If it is cloudy, Sasol receives less and must buy the shortfall elsewhere.
Leap records that Sasol Italy will handle the collection and balancing management of the energy produced. Balancing is the work of matching an uneven supply to a site's actual demand and settling the differences with the grid. Taking that on is a meaningful commitment for an industrial buyer. It means Sasol, not GreenGo, absorbs the cost of solar's daily and seasonal shape.
The scale of the contract makes that manageable. The expected 45 GWh a year covers over 20 percent of consumption at the three sites, which implies those sites use something below about 225 GWh a year in total. Solar supplying a fifth of the load is large enough to matter on the bill and small enough to absorb within normal procurement.
What does 45 GWh from 24.5 MW say about the plants?
It says the portfolio is expected to run at about a 21 percent capacity factor, on simple arithmetic. Capacity factor is the share of the theoretical maximum a plant actually generates over a year. A 24.5 MW plant running flat out every hour would produce about 215 GWh. Producing 45 GWh means it delivers roughly a fifth of that.
That figure matters because the contract is pay-as-produced. Sasol's savings and GreenGo's revenue both scale with output, so the generation estimate is the number both sides are really agreeing on. Spreading five plants across three Italian regions reduces the risk that one bad local weather pattern drags the whole portfolio down.
Enerdatics' data shows how opaque the Italian market is on price. Leap records 28 solar PPAs in Italy announced in 2024, covering about 788 MW of disclosed capacity. Not one carries a disclosed tariff. Ten years is the most common term, used in 13 of the 28. Ten of the agreements are with industrial buyers, totalling about 81 MW of disclosed capacity, and at 24.5 MW Sasol's is the largest of them, just ahead of Iberdrola's 23 MW, 12-year deal with Prima Sole Components and Enfinity Global's 15.5 MW contract with Feralpi Group.
What does the deal signal for Italian corporate solar PPAs?
The deal signals that Italian industrial buyers are trading price certainty for discounts and protection bands rather than signing outright fixed prices. A collar with a dynamic discount keeps the buyer's cost tied to the market while capping the downside, which suits a manufacturer that competes with peers buying at market prices.
It also confirms the pattern of mid-sized, multi-site portfolios backing industrial contracts. Encavis' agreement with Aliaxis, covered in Aliaxis' first European PPA, relied on a single Lazio plant, while Iberdrola's contract with Supermercati Tosano was defined by annual volume rather than capacity. GreenGo's five plants in three regions sit between the two approaches.
Not every Italian solar contract is long term. Renantis' 18-month agreement with REDEN shows sellers using short contracts as a bridge. Sasol's ten-year term, with a floor that lenders can underwrite, is the more financeable structure for plants still being built. That combination, a long term with a flexible price, may be the template for the next wave of Italian industrial deals.
Frequently asked questions
What did GreenGo and Sasol agree?GreenGo signed a 10-year power purchase agreement with Sasol Italy for a 24.5 MW portfolio of five solar plants in three Italian regions, announced on 26 June 2024. The plants are expected to produce about 45 GWh a year for Sasol's sites in Augusta, Sarroch and Terranova.
How is the Sasol solar PPA priced?The agreement is pay-as-produced and pays the Italian zonal price less a dynamic discount, within a floor price and a cap price. No tariff has been disclosed. Sasol Italy handles collection and balancing management of the energy produced.
What is a pay-as-produced PPA?A pay-as-produced PPA obliges the buyer to take and pay for all the energy a plant generates, whenever it generates it. The buyer, not the seller, absorbs the variability of output and must buy any shortfall elsewhere.
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