Private equity fund manager Platina Partners LLP (Platina) and Swedish onshore wind developer Arise Windpower AB, have completed Sweden’s largest ever wind project financing, the EUR336 million, Jädraås windfarm.
At 200MW, the project – to be built in two phases – will be one of the largest onshore wind farms in Europe. Construction of the first 130MW will begin in the next few weeks with completion expected in the first quarter of 2013.
The investment in Jädraås will be made by Platina Energy III Limited Partners in conjunction with Arise Windpower AB. Debt financing was led by DNBNor, with additional funding from Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken and the Danish Government backed EKF. The development will utilise 66 of Vestas’ V112-3.0MW machines, Vestas’ largest onshore machine.
The project will benefit from Sweden’s green certificate programme through which the Swedish Government aims to generate 49% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2020, up from 39% in 2005.
Commenting on the announcement Emma Collins, a partner in Platina’s Renewable Energy team, says: “We are delighted to announce that we have completed the financing of our Jädraås windfarm. As our first development in Scandinavia this is a landmark project for Platina and as one of the largest onshore wind farms in the country, it will also be of great importance to Sweden.
“Having focused previous clean-energy efforts on hydro, the Swedish Government is now placing increasing emphasis on onshore wind and has targeted to have an installed capacity of over 4.5GW by 2020. Jädraås will be an important step on that road and will demonstrate that major onshore wind projects are viable for Sweden.”
Mikael Schoultz, also a partner in the Platina Renewable Energy team, says: “The fact that we have been able to successfully finance this scheme, despite the ongoing economic turbulence, is testimony to the quality of the project and our development partners Arise Windpower. We now look forward to starting work on progressing Jädraås through to operations in Q1 2013.”
Peter Nygren CEO, Arise Windpower AB, says: “Platina is a valuable and knowledgeable partner, and we hope to develop this relationship on other projects. The partnership during the period to close on the Jädraås project has proven to contribute large synergies to both our organisations. When the Jädraås wind farm is fully operational in spring 2013 Arise will have a total annual production of about 650 GWh of renewable electricity,”
Platina’s portfolio includes 244MW of renewable energy projects in operation and over 500MW of projects in development. Since Platina was established in 2002, it has invested in 1,700MW of renewable energy projects.
