Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners, a global investment manager specializing in lower-carbon and renewable energy infrastructure, has acquired a 223 MW operational wind portfolio from subsidiaries of NextEra Energy Resources LLC.
The U.S. wind portfolio has more than 10 years of operating history and contracted power sales to multiple investment-grade utilities. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
The acquisition was made by GlidePath Power Solutions LLC, a Quinbrook portfolio company acquired by the Quinbrook Low Carbon Power Fund in 2017. GlidePath is a developer of distributed power solutions across the U.S., spanning wind, solar, distributed gas and battery storage. Quinbrook’s latest wind acquisition adds contracted, cash-yielding assets to GlidePath’s existing project development pipeline, which exceeds 600 MW of planned distributed power and battery storage projects in the U.S.
The acquired portfolio consists of six operating wind farms, varying in size from 9 MW to 66 MW. The projects are located in Pennsylvania, West Virginia and California and are focused in markets with only modest volumes of installed wind capacity, says Quinbrook. Each asset has been owned and operated by subsidiaries of NextEra Energy Resources for well over 10 years, and a NextEra affiliate will continue to operate the facilities after closing.
“This latest acquisition lays the foundation for our U.S. distributed power platform to be spearheaded by the GlidePath team,” states David Scaysbrook, managing partner of Quinbrook. “The wind assets in the NextEra portfolio are distributed-scale and offer not only immediate cash returns but the potential for future upside benefits from repowering existing wind sites with the latest wind turbine technology and extending their operating lives for another 25 years or more.”
Earlier this week, Quinbrook closed construction and tax equity financing of the first stage of the GE-powered Persimmon wind farm in Oklahoma.
