Gaelectric acquires and finances wind farm in Ireland

Gaelectric, a developer and operator of renewable energy projects in wind, bioenergy and solar across the UK, Republic of Ireland and the US, has recently financed and acquired from Enercon, the Cloghboola operational wind farm in County Kerry, Republic of Ireland.

DLA Piper has acted for Nord/LB and Hastings’ advised funds on the hybrid financing of the deal.

Cloghboola is a 16 turbine (46MW) wind farm, which became operational in 2015. 

The funding is a mixture of a 19.5 year long term note financing, by Hastings’ advised funds, with shorter-term loan and credit enhancement facilities provided by Nord/LB who acted as Structuring Bank and Mandated Lead Arranger, together with working capital facilities to a separate supply company. The transaction also notably involved an intra-group PPA.

The DLA Piper team was led by Natasha Luther-Jones (Partner, Energy), Ronan Mellon  (Partner,  Finance) and Martin Bartlam (Partner, Finance).    

Natasha, Partner of DLA, commented:

"We are delighted to have acted on the ground-breaking hybrid financing of Cloghboola Wind Farm on behalf of Nord/LB and Hastings’ advised funds. We are confident that this novel funding structure will be used on future renewables project across Europe".