Sep 27, 2019   SOURCE: BusinessWire

Quinbrook Closes Financing on Scout’s Heart of Texas Wind Farm

Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners (‘Quinbrook’), a specialist investor in low carbon energy infrastructure, today announced that its portfolio company, Scout Clean Energy LLC (‘Scout’), closed construction financing and tax equity commitments on the 180-megawatt (MW) Heart of Texas Wind Farm located in McCulloch County, Texas (‘Heart of Texas’).

The Heart of Texas wind project, expected to be operational by April 2020, has been developed through the final stages of permitting, equipment procurement, offtake negotiation and both debt and tax equity financing by the Scout and Quinbrook teams. Heart of Texas will utilize 64 of the latest-generation GE 2MW wind turbines and has secured a Proxy Generation Swap with Allianz Global & Specialty, Inc.’s Alternative Risk Transfer unit (‘Allianz’), in partnership with Nephila Climate. REsurety provided the risk analytics supporting the PGS transaction. Construction financing of $255 million, including letters of credit, is being provided by a lender consortium that includes KeyBank, Rabo Bank and Co-Bank. GE Energy Financial Services (‘GE EFS’) led the underwriting of tax equity financing.

David Scaysbrook, co-founder and Managing Partner of Quinbrook, said: “Heart of Texas is Scout’s third successful wind project closing in under two years, which is quite an achievement. Our respective teams overcame many obstacles and development challenges along the journey to get this project into construction. As ever, our lead project partners GE, BHE, KeyBank and Allianz, who also supported Scout’s successful closing of the 300MW Ranchero wind project, have delivered yet again for us, which is greatly appreciated.”

“Scout’s growth to date has been impressive. We expect Scout to pass through the 1-gigawatt threshold of operational wind MWs by the end of next year, which will be a critical scale milestone. With so much still to come in the Scout development pipeline across wind, solar and battery storage, this is an exciting phase for our respective teams and of course, Quinbrook’s investment partners,” said Rory Quinlan, co-founder and Managing Partner of Quinbrook.

Scout has entered into a fixed price balance of plant construction agreement with RES Americas. Scout will undertake construction management and certain operational services post-completion.

Together, Quinbrook and Scout have rapidly expanded their US utility scale wind power project portfolio to over 2.4GW of potential renewable power capacity, spanning 13 projects in 10 states.

Quinbrook and Scout were advised by McDermott Williams and Emory LLP, Holland and Hart and Paragon Energy Advisors.

About Scout Clean Energy

Scout Clean Energy (www.scoutcleanenergy.com) is a North American wind energy developer and owner-operator. Scout is developing over 2.4 GW of PTC qualified wind projects across 10 US states covering most of the continent’s power markets. Scout’s operations affiliate Harvest Energy Services, Inc. provides independent O&M and construction management services to the wind industry. Scout and Harvest together have over 125 employees and are based in Boulder, Colorado.

About Quinbrook

Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners (www.quinbrook.com) is a specialist investment manager focused exclusively on lower carbon and renewable energy infrastructure investment and operational asset management in the US, UK and Australia. Quinbrook is led and managed by a senior team of power industry professionals who have collectively invested over US$ 17 billion in energy infrastructure assets since the early 1990's, representing over 30GW of power supply capacity. Quinbrook's investment and asset management team has offices in Houston, London, Jersey, and the Gold Coast of Australia. Quinbrook has completed multiple investments in both utility and distributed scale wind power, gas fired power reserve and ‘smart grid’ projects in the US, UK and Australia and currently manages Cape Byron Power (www.capebyronpower.com), one of Australia's largest base-load 100% renewable power generators.