Pioneers in Irish solar energy
Back in the early 2000s, when solar was first taking off in Europe, Irishman Justin Brown and his business partners began investing in small-scale facilities in Germany. Brown said they took a few years there to learn all facets of the market and how solar might benefit Ireland in time to come.
By the time solar eventually made its way into the national renewable energy transition conversation, Brown and co. were ready to seize their opportunity. They founded PCRE in Dublin, Ireland, in 2011.
“We’ve been developing projects in Ireland since 2015 with the backdrop of expecting to have some routes to market,” said Brown, adding that the company has been successful in all four of the auction rounds held under Ireland’s Renewable Electricity Support Scheme (RESS).
Fast-forward to 2024 and PCRE has more than 3.9 GW of solar and battery energy storage systems (BESS) in Ireland, with a view to expanding further into Europe and the United States. The company has a small satellite office in the United States, although Brown said the main business focus remains in Ireland, where PCRE directly employs more than 40 people.
Across all regions, the company is targeting 5.6 GW of operational assets by 2030, a figure not too far off Ireland’s domestic solar 2030 target of 8 GW.
Becoming an IPPPCRE is involved in the entire lifecycle of its projects, from tendering to asset ownership, and that is very much a conscious business decision, said Brown.
“The approach that we’ve taken as a business is to pivot a little bit away from just being a pure developer, where we would develop and sell an asset potentially in ready-to-build [form],” said the joint CEO. “We have transitioned into an independent power producer so we’re in the market trading energy and we’re selling our energy to corporates.
“We do everything from greenfield site origination and development, through our planning process, through procurement finance all the way through to delivery and on into asset management.”
That approach has benefited the company during difficult times. The first of Ireland’s energy auctions, RESS 1, was delayed because of the Covid-19 pandemic, which meant PCRE was in the precarious position of searching for an alternative route to market for its planned projects at the time. RESS 2 was also delayed and its long-stop date was ultimately extended by the government, a decision Brown supported.
“RESS 1 happened a few months before the world changed quite substantially, in terms of interest rate dynamics; we saw huge inflation, especially in the construction sector; supply chain issues in terms of shipping costs … there was a little bit of a perfect storm for what we were trying to do,” said the company’s joint founder.
Regarding that first auction round, he said, “Unfortunately, we were one of those companies that took a hit. We were competitive and cleared above average price but even at that we still couldn’t make our projects commercially viable.”
Like most of their peers, PCRE had to switch up their usual approach. Without a route to market for its RESS 1 projects, and with the second auction, RESS 2, facing a delay, the company decided to scout around for other opportunities. It found solace in Silicon Valley.
“We ended up finding some opportunities to work with Google and Microsoft,” said Brown. “We managed to structure two corporate private power purchase agreement (PPA) transactions and that allowed us to kick off with several hundred megawatts worth of projects in Louth, Meath, Cork, and Wexford, [in Ireland].”
The strategy worked, he said. “Thankfully, those projects are all in operation and they’re injecting into the grid.”
Auction successWhen pv magazine spoke to Brown in October 2024, it was just a few weeks after the latest energy auctions in Ireland. PCRE secured the highest volume of project capacity awarded in the solar category of RESS 4.
Those megawatts will be split between the two projects PCRE secured from the auction, which will have an installed cumulative capacity of 280 MW. Brown said the company is gearing up for financial close on the two projects, which will be in County Tipperary and County Wexford, Ireland, in early 2025.
Construction has also just begun on Power Capital’s RESS 2 projects.
“We had nine projects in RESS 2 and they’ve all commenced construction, ranging in size from – one project is about 130 MW and we’ve got a couple that are around 7 MW or 8 MW – altogether totaling 230 MW,” said Brown.
The next step is never far away and Brown said the company is preparing projects for RESS 5 and future auctions. “We have been successful in all four auctions,” he said. “We’ve over a gigawatt between all of our projects from the RESS auctions – when you take the ones in construction, and at ready-to-build stage – in total.”
Main barriersIreland’s solar market, however, is not exactly the most lucrative, or the most obvious location to pursue PV. Brown agrees there are lots of challenges and he is not slow to identify them.
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