Danish power company Ørsted will build a 16MW windfarm in Co Antrim that will supply all its energy production to Amazon.

The Ballykeel onshore windfarm was acquired by Ørsted last June following a long-term fixed-price corporate power purchase agreement (PPA) with Amazon. A corporate PPA is when a business agrees to purchase electricity directly from an energy generator.

Under the agreement, Amazon will offtake all power produced by the Ørsted windfarm in Ballykeel, in a first of its kind agreement in Northern Ireland.

Kieran White, vice-president and managing director of Ørsted Ireland and UK, said that he was delighted to continue bringing renewable energy projects in Northern Ireland and that he looked forward to working closely with Amazon to complete the Ballykeel construction.

“This project is the first project in Northern Ireland to reach FID (final investment decision) under a corporate PPA, which shows that it’s possible to add green power to the Northern Ireland grid in the absence of government subsidies for renewable projects,” he said.

Expected to be in operation in 2023, the Ballykeel windfarm will bring Ørsted’s onshore capacity in Ireland to 372MW in operation and under construction.

Ørsted is Denmark’s largest energy company which entered the European market in April last year after acquiring Brookfield Renewable Ireland in a €571m deal. At the time, Brookfield had 389MW of onshore windfarms under construction or in operation in Ireland and the UK, with another 149MW in advanced development and more than 1GW in the development pipeline.

In October last year, it was announced that Ørsted would supply Johnson & Johnson Ireland with more than 1TWh of renewable energy during the US company’s transition to 100pc renewable electricity across its Irish operations.

Outside Ireland, Ørsted has another partnership with Amazon in Germany that will see the company offtake the output of 100MW from Ørsted’s 900MW Borkum Riffgrund 3 offshore windfarm as it plans to move its German operation to 100pc renewable energy by 2025.

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