Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners, a specialist investor in low carbon energy infrastructure, announced that its portfolio company, Scout Clean Energy LLC has closed construction financing and tax equity commitments on the 300MW Ranchero Wind Farm located in Crockett County, Texas.
The Ranchero project is expected to be operational by year-end 2019 and has been developed from inception by the Scout team. Ranchero will utilize 120 of the latest generation GE 2.5MW wind turbines with 127m rotors and has secured a 10-year Proxy Revenue Swap with Allianz Global & Specialty Inc.'s Alternative Risk Transfer unit, in partnership with Nephila Climate. REsurety provided the risk analytics supporting the PRS transaction and will serve as the calculation agent on an ongoing basis. Construction financing, including letters of credit, is being provided by KeyBank. GE Energy Financial Services (‘GE EFS') underwrote and committed a portion of the tax equity.
Scout has entered into a fixed price balance of plant construction agreement with RES Americas, with construction management to be undertaken by Harvest Energy Services, a Scout affiliate.
"It is especially pleasing to have closed a major new financing and commenced construction of the first project to be developed from scratch by the Scout team," said David Scaysbrook, co-founder and managing partner of Quinbrook. "Ranchero has the potential to be a significant new wind project for the Texas power market and enjoys a strong wind resource. Securing Allianz as Ranchero's offtake partner supports our view of the quality of the project and its compelling wind resource fundamentals. Including the 200MW Persimmon Creek wind farm recently completed and already operational, Scout's operating portfolio is targeted to exceed 1GW within the next 18 months and is well on the way to exceeding our 2GW growth target by 2021."
"Quinbrook and the Scout team are pleased to have closed and launched construction of another utility scale wind project with distinguished partners and the opportunity to employ new financing and off-take structures in the Ranchero transaction. We believe Ranchero is an exceptional wind project and the transaction has attracted several high-quality partners in GE Renewable Energy, GE EFS and KeyBank," said Jeff Hunter, senior managing director of Quinbrook. "This year we expect to close and commence construction on several additional wind projects in the Scout portfolio which are located across a diverse spectrum of United States power markets."
Together, Quinbrook and Scout have rapidly expanded their utility scale United States wind project portfolio to over 2.3GW of potential renewable power capacity, spanning 13 projects in 10 states.
Quinbrook and Scout were advised by Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP and Paragon Energy Advisors.
For more information, visit scoutcleanenergy.com and quinbrook.com.
