With this investment, Engie North America plans to deploy up to 75MW in distributed solar and distributed solar plus battery systems across multiple states in the U.S., including California, Nevada, Minnesota, Illinois, Texas, New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts.
The partnership between Engie North America Goldman Sachs is expected to offer scale and benefits of what is typically provided by separate investments from tax equity, debt, and sponsor equity investors.
It also simplifies the company’s approach to raising long-term capital for the development and growth of its US distributed solar platform. Engie said that it will retain ownership interest in the portfolio and will construct, manage, and operate the assets.
Engie North America distributed solar finance head Daniela Shapiro said: “We are delighted to have finalized this structure with Goldman Sachs’ Alternative Energy Investing Group to bring increasing amounts of renewable, reliable, and cost-effective energy to business and communities across the United States.
“Our collaboration brings together two leading players in the energy (ENGIE) and financing (Goldman Sachs) space to really help accelerate access to renewable energy and battery storage at the distributed scale. By working with such a financing partner, we were able to package and simplify the process which brings benefits to everyone involved.”
The portfolio includes behind-the-meter installations that can offer power to commercial and municipal customers, and small-scale front-of-the-meter projects with rural electric cooperatives under previously signed long-term power purchase agreements (PPAs).
The investment will be deployed in twelve months of time and some projects will start providing solar power to the customers under the PPAs immediately. These projects were developed and completed by Engie North America and US-based Services teams to meet the growing demand by customers for solar and storage solutions.
Goldman Sachs alternative energy investing head Pooja Goyal said: “This partnership with ENGIE demonstrates the opportunities that can be created by taking an integrated approach to financing high-quality distributed solar projects at scale.
“This investment is consistent with our strategy of providing comprehensive and flexible financing solutions to best-in-class sponsors in order to grow our portfolio of alternative energy assets.”
