A product that does one thing: it takes imbalance off the producer’s account and puts it on ours. No system services, no sharing of market revenue, no contractual complexity.
The producer is not paid for the energy injected. It is paid for the energy the asset would have delivered, calculated from a sensor installed at the plant: a pyranometer on solar, an anemometer on wind.
The function converting measurement into output is fitted to the plant’s own history. It is not a catalogue curve nor a project P50 — P50 enters only as a fallback, for a limited period, in case of failure, drift or doubt about the sensor.
It depends only on the resource. That change of reference is what makes everything else possible.
Which is why larger plants get a redundant sensor network, and why cleaning and calibration are contractual matters.
Imbalance settles after a week. The monthly report closes the account and shows the coefficient in force.
A billing reference controlled by the payer only works if the payee can reconstruct it. Four requirements, all contractual.
Typically at negative prices, when injecting costs money. It is our management call, and it is covered: energy is measured at the sensor and is still paid.
A restriction from the grid operator, external to this contract. The guarantee covers what we decide, not what the operator imposes: without the ability to steer the plant remotely, that risk stays with the producer.
They are issued on real energy. For the stops we decide, we restore them in certificates or in their value, whether or not you gave us the sale of the rest.
Three conditions. The ability to steer the plant remotely — without it we cannot stop when the price is negative, and the imbalance returns to the producer. Enough production history to fit the conversion function. And site access to install and maintain the weather station.
A physical pay-as-produced PPA gives the buyer a right to the energy physically produced. If we reduce injection, the producer is in breach, and the effect is aggressive — compensation, or replacement energy bought in the expensive hours.
There are two ways out, and both work. Extend to market-driven reduction the deemed generation clauses the PPA already has for grid curtailment — the buyer loses no expected value. Or work only on the uncontracted share, which most PPAs leave. Financial PPAs involve no physical delivery; it is enough to check the volume they settle on.
“Do you have a PPA? What type? Over what share?” is a first-meeting question, not a due-diligence one.
The reference is the sensor, the function is fitted to the plant’s history, and the imbalance is ours — on both sides of the border. What changes is the settlement system the asset is registered in, which is why the perimeter is national: there is no netting of imbalances between Portugal and Spain.
wattimize is in the process of obtaining its licence in both markets. Until that is complete, access is provided by Grupo Gesto Energia, which has operated in Portugal since 2008 and is one of the few independent BSPs registered with REN.
Tell us the capacity, the technology and the contractual arrangement. We analyse the history separating the weather effect from the dispatch effect, and put a number on it — before there is a proposal.