Macquarie Infrastructure Corporation (MIC) and Intersect Power have formed a joint venture (JV) to develop and own renewable power generation and storage in the US.

The new entity formed from the partnership will see an investment of $135m from MIC which will be used for financing the development and expansion pipeline of Intersect Power.

Established last year, Intersect Power has nearly 700MW capacity of early stage projects located across California and Texas. The projects in development are scheduled to become operational between 2019 and 2021.

According to MIC CEO James Hooke, the JV is anticipated to give the New York-based infrastructure group access to a stream of high quality projects from 2019 onwards.

Hooke said: “The co-founders of the firm, Sheldon Kimber and Luke Dunnington, both former senior executives of Recurrent Energy, have built a great platform in Intersect – capitalizing on their previous success having led the development of 2 gigawatts of clean power generation, we look to Intersect to provide us with attractive opportunities to grow our existing 350 megawatt portfolio.”

As far as Intersect co-founder and managing partner Sheldon Kimber is concerned, the company’s fully-staffed development team and MIC’s strong financial support would position the company to develop and purchase early to late stage projects and to convert them into power generating assets.  

Kimber added: “In the next decade, there is no surer bet than the re-invention of the energy sector and the rebuilding of our infrastructure with cleaner technologies based on renewables, electricity storage, and natural gas.”

The investment of MIC in Intersect and its project pipeline is aligned solidly with the latter’s objective of developing projects that take advantage of the inevitable change in energy markets, concluded Kimber.