Energy technology company AES Corporation has signed 1.6GW of renewables power purchase agreements (PPAs) during the third quarter of 2022, bringing the total to 3.2GW this year.
With those long-term contracts, the company brings its backlog of renewable projects under PPA to 11.2GW – with solar accounting for 42% of total capacity – which is expected to be operational through 2025, for the vast majority of projects, according to Andrés Gluski, AES President and CEO.
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From the 11.2GW backlog, the company has 5.1GW of projects under construction, leading the company to double its renewables workforce in the US, according to Gluski.
“I think we’ve done a very good job of managing the solar panel supply, which has been very turbulent. We’ve had no delays this year due to solar panels. We have already most of the solar panels that we need for 2023,” said Gluski during a conference call.
So far this year the US-headquartered firm signed 3.2GW of renewables and energy storage PPAs, of which nearly half (1.6GW) of solar, wind and energy storage is located in the US. The company has set a target of 4.5-5.5GW of long-term contract PPAs of renewables for 2022.
Stephen Coughlin, AES executive vice president and CFO, said: “Our proven business model of signing long-term contracts with investment grade commercial and industrial customers continues to deliver strong and resilient financial results even while volatile macroeconomic conditions persist globally.”
Moreover, during Q3 2022 the company started construction on 1.9GW of new projects, while 500MW of renewable plants were completed.
The company has increased the pipeline of potential future renewable projects to 64GW, 80% of which (51GW) will be located in the US in order to address the impact of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) that will be a “source of substantial future market growth”.
As the company expects the IRA to accelerate the demand for renewables and standalone storage, AES was among the US companies to form a consortium committed to spend US$6 billion on purchasing 6-7GW of solar modules to encourage domestic manufacturing in the country.
The company expects to receive its first supplies from the consortium in 2024, according to Coughlin during the company’s Q3 2022 earnings conference call.
Speaking to PV Tech Premium at the RE+ trade show last September, AES said it had gotten a “head start” in the race to deploy renewables in the US but more was needed to unlock US deployment.
Furthermore, the energy company posted revenues of US$3,627 million during Q3 2022, up from US$3,036 million in Q3 2021.
During the first nine-months of the year the company’s revenue ended at US$9,557 million, increasing from US$8,371 in the corresponding period last year.
Due to the strong results recorded in Q3 2022, the company expects its full year 2022 adjusted EPS to be near the high end of its guidance range of US$1.55-1.65.
Conference call transcript from Seeking Alpha.