Under the agreement, AES will acquire BG Group subsidiary Premier Power (PPL), which is the owner of the Ballylumford facility. The transaction is subject to license consents from the Northern Ireland Authority for Utility Regulation and the Northern Ireland Department of Enterprise, Trade and Industry, and is expected to close in the second half of 2010.
The majority of the power station’s output is contracted to Northern Ireland Electricity and the affiliated agreements allow for a pass-through of fuel costs, AES said.
Paul Hanrahan, president and CEO of AES, said: “Ballylumford Power Station will increase AES capacity while providing important fuel diversification and will complement our nearly two decades of operations experience serving the Northern Ireland market.”
AES said that Northern Ireland was its first international investment opportunity with its acquisition of the Kilroot facility in 1992, which now utilizes coal and oil and has an operational capacity of 622MW. The acquisition builds on AES’ recent investment in Northern Ireland’s generation capacity.
In 2009, AES completed a platform expansion of Kilroot through the addition of 84MW of peaking capacity. Upon closing of the PPL transaction, the company will have a total capacity of 1,868MW in Northern Ireland.
