EDF Renewable Energy and BlackRock complete sale of 50% interest in a 200 MW wind project
EDF Renewable Energy has closed on the transaction to sell a 50 percent interest in the 200 MW Longhorn Wind Project to a fund managed by BlackRock’s Infrastructure Investment Group.
Longhorn Wind follows the closing of Hereford Wind Project (200 MW) in February, marking the second of five projects that BlackRock and EDF Renewable Energy signed agreements on earlier this year. The remaining three projects, Spinning Spur 3 (194 MW), Roosevelt (250 MW) and Milo (49.65 MW) wind projects, will close upon completion of construction and tax-equity financing.
The Longhorn project, located in Floyd and Briscoe counties, is comprised of 100 Vestas V-100 wind turbine generators each with a rated capacity of 2 MW. The project will interconnect to the recently completed Competitive Renewable Energy Zone (CREZ) transmission infrastructure which enables delivery of long-term, clean, competitively priced power from the strong renewable resource regions of West Texas to the rest of Texas.
EDF RE remains closely involved in Longhorn Wind maintaining 50 percent ownership stake. EDF Renewable Services will provide balance-of-plant operations and maintenance for the facility including 24/7 remote monitoring from its NERC compliant Operations Control Center (OCC).
Raphael Declercq, Vice President Portfolio Strategy at EDF Renewable Energy stated,
“With the recent signing of two additional 50 percent sales regarding the New Mexico projects of Roosevelt and Milo, EDF RE has committed 50 percent stakes in 894 MW of US wind energy projects to BlackRock since the start of 2015. Those partial sell-downs are an integral part of our divestiture business line. During the past 3 years, we have placed into service 3.1 GW and over the same period of time we sold stakes equivalent to approximately 1.3 GW of net capacity.”
David Giordano, head of the North American Renewable Infrastructure team at BlackRock Infrastructure, stated:
“The North American renewable infrastructure market presents tremendous opportunity for our clients and we look forward to growing our relationship with EDF Renewable Energy. This project is a great example of the growing set of investment opportunities in US infrastructure.”
