SunEdison and TerraForm Power have secured financing to build five large-scale solar farms in the UK, totaling 85.2MW. The electricity generated by these projects will be enough to power more than 26,000 homes. The projects were previously added to the call right list of TerraForm Power and are expected to be acquired by the company in early 2015.
Financing for the solar farms has been provided by Santander Global Banking and Markets (Santander) and Bayerische Landesbank, who acted as arrangers and Santander UK who acted as agent. Santander and Bayerische Landesbank each provided a £35 million non-recourse bridge loan with a tenor of two years, bringing the total amount financed to £70 million. SunEdison has begun construction on all five sites, and will complete them in the first quarter of 2015.
Jose Perez, President of SunEdison EMEA and Latin America stated: "We are pleased to partner with Santander and Bayerische Landesbank in this portfolio of projects that will supply the UK market with more renewable energy generation from a competitive and low carbon source."
"As today's announcement demonstrates, TerraForm Power and SunEdison continue to work in tandem to expand our clean energy businesses and bring value to our customers and shareholders," said Carlos Domenech, President and Chief Executive Officer of TerraForm Power.
"We are pleased to have been involved in this successful closing of the large scale UK portfolio of 85.2 MW for SunEdison," stated Alexander von Dobschutz, Bayerische Landesbank's Managing Director, Global Head Financial Institutions & Structured Finance. "The UK renewables market continues to be an important strategic market for our international project finance business."