The Renewables Infrastructure Group has reached an agreement with Akuo Energy Group to invest €57m in a portfolio of 15 operating solar projects in France.
The deal comprises the purchase of a 49% equity interest in a portfolio holding company together with a mezzanine-level loan.
The funding comes from TRIG’s acquisition facility with Royal Bank of Scotland and National Australia Bank.
The transaction’s completion is subject to project lender consents expected later in January.
RES, TRIG’s portfolio operations manager, will represent the company on the supervisory board managing the portfolio.
Akuo will continue to provide detailed day-to-day administration, as well as operations and maintenance for the projects.
All the projects, which were commissioned from December 2010 to May 2012, have power purchase agreements of up to 20 years with EDF, providing fixed, index linked revenues per MWh.
Three of the projects totalling 17.9MW are on mainland France; four are on the island of Corsica (14MW), six with total capacity of 12.4MW are on La Réunion and two totalling 4.5MW on Guadeloupe.
Nine of the projects are ground-mounted with the other six roof-mounted.
The projects are being purchased each with long-term amortising project financing in place representing on average approximately 65% of the projects’ enterprise value.
Image: nine of the projects are ground-mounted
