The Board of The Renewables Infrastructure Group has announced it will buy a portfolio of French solar assets. An agreement has been reached between Renewables Infrastructure and Akuo Energy Group for an investment in a portfolio of 15 operating (brownfield) French solar photovoltaic (PV) projects. Akuo is one of France’s leading independent renewable energy producers.
The deal comprises the purchase of a 49% equity interest in a portfolio holding company together with a mezzanine-level loan. The total cost is EUR57m (about £42m). They are funding this from their acquisition facility with Royal Bank of Scotland and National Australia Bank.
Completion of the deal depends on project lender consents expected in January 2016. Akuo will continue to provide detailed day-to-day administration as well as operations and maintenance through its directly employed teams across the projects.
The solar projects were commissioned between December 2010 to May 2012. They all benefit from power purchase agreements of up to 20 years with EDF, providing fixed, index linked revenues per MWh. They also benefit from broad geographical diversification between mainland France (3 projects, 17.9 MW gross capacity), Corsica (4 projects, 14.0 MW), La Réunion (6 projects, 12.4 MW) and Guadeloupe (2 projects, 4.5 MW) hosting 36%, 32%, 25% and 7% of net capacity respectively (pro rata to TRIG’s equity interests).
The portfolio holding company has controlling equity interests in the underlying projects of between 51% and 100%, investing alongside local parties in 10 of the projects. The projects have aggregate gross generating capacity of approximately 49MW and net generating capacity (pro rata to TRIG’s equity interest) of 21.7MW. Nine of the projects are ground-mounted and six are roof-mounted.
The projects are being purchased each with long-term amortising project financing in place representing on average approximately 65% of enterprise value reflecting the predictability of the revenue streams available under French feed-in tariffs.
Following completion, Renewable Infrastructure’s portfolio will comprise 51 projects with approximately 70% by value being onshore wind and 30% being solar PV.
TRIG : Renewables Infrastructure buys French solar portfolio