Scout Clean Energy has secured construction financing and tax equity commitments for the 180MW Heart of Texas wind farm in the US state.
Construction financing of $255m was provided by KeyBank as administrative agent, Rabobank and CoBank.
GE Energy Financial Services underwrote and committed a portion of the tax equity financing.
The project will comprise 64 GE turbines from the company’s 2MW platform, with three different capacities and rotor sizes.
It was acquired by Scout from the project’s developer RES and is expected to be operational by April 2020.
RES Americas Construction is building the project for Scout, with asset management and post-construction operations to be undertaken by the latter.
Electricity generated by Heart of Texas will be supplied through an offtake contract with Allianz Global & Specialty’s alternative risk transfer unit in partnership with Nephila Climate.
REsurety provided the risk analytics supporting the offtake transaction.
The project has tax incentive agreements in place with McCulloch County, McCulloch County Hospital District and Lohn Independent School District.
The county will receive approximately $36m in tax revenue over the life of the project.
Scout is a portfolio company of Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners.
Scout chief executive Michael Rucker said: “Heart of Texas will provide zero emissions renewable power for both Texas industry and thousands of homes, as well as supporting up to two hundred jobs during construction and up to seven permanent jobs during operations.
“Heart of Texas is our third successive wind farm closing as an owner-operator and brings Scout’s owned portfolio of wind generation to 700MW.
“We are proud of the great work our Scout team has done with our project financing, construction and supply partners as well as important stakeholders in the local community to achieve another successful financial closing.
“The support of the teams at Quinbrook and GE Financial has also been instrumental in overcoming many of the development and financing challenges we faced along the way.”
RES Americas chief executive Graham Reid said: “The Heart of Texas wind project is our 32nd renewable energy project in Texas, and we take great pride in bringing over 4000MW of clean energy to the state.
“We are delighted to support Scout Clean Energy’s mission to deliver reliable and low-cost renewable power to its customers.”