Enel stated that this transaction is part of its non-core assets disposal programme under the group’s active portfolio management plan. This strategy is claimed to be allowing the company to reallocate its resources in areas with greater growth margin and potential.
Enel Green Power Uruguay owns the wind farm through its project company Estrellada. The wind farm is located in Cerro Largo, about 320km from Montevideo. The Italian company had sold this project company to Atlantica Yield.
The wind farm has been in operation since 2015 and the 100% electricity generated from the wind farm is sold under a 20-year power purchase agreement (PPA), to the state-owned power company UTE (Administración Nacional de Usinas y Trasmisiones Eléctricas).
The acquisition was partially financed with the the proceeds of a project financing from Santander. With this acquisition, Atlantica increased its share in Uruguay’s wind market in, where it now owns 150MW.
Atlantica Yield CEO Santiago Seage said: “Melowind fits our strategy, brings a long contract with an off-taker with whom we already work and is a very complementary asset that we expect will have clear synergies with our existing wind portfolio.”
Recently, Atlantica had also signed an agreement with Canadian company Algonquin Power and Utilities to co-invest in Sugar Creek, a 200MW wind farm in Illinois, US. Construction of this wind farm will begin in the first half of next year and will end in 2020.
On 12 December, Enel announced that its 185MW HillTopper wind farm in Illinois, had started operations. Enel has invested $325m on the HillTopper wind farm and it can generate nearly 570GWh of clean energy per year.
Power generated from this wind farm will be sold under long-term PPAs to Bloomberg, General Motors as well as Constellation, an Exelon company.
