The portfolio comprises six contracted wind power assets located across the states of California, West Virginia and Pennsylvania.
These wind farms in the 9-66MW capacity range have been in operation for more than 10 years. They are backed with power purchasing agreements with various investment-grade utilities, said Quinbrook.
According to the investment manager, the acquired wind assets are focused in markets that do not have abundant volumes of installed wind capacity.
Their acquisition was done by Glidepath Power Solutions, a portfolio company of Quinbrook.
Quinbrook managing partner David Scaysbrook said: “This latest acquisition lays the foundation for our US distributed power platform to be spearheaded by the Glidepath team.
“The wind assets in the NextEra portfolio are distributed scale and offer, not only immediate cash returns, but the potential for future upside benefits from repowering existing wind sites with the latest wind turbine technology and extending their operating lives for another 25 years or more.”
Glidepath develops distributed power solutions in the US, spanning solar, wind, battery storage and distributed gas. It was acquired last year by the Quinbrook Low Carbon Power Fund.
Quinbrook senior managing director Jeff Hunter said: “GlidePath is an ideal home for these assets, given the Quinbrook and Glidepath teams’ combined experience in distributed scale power solutions and development of battery storage infrastructure.
“Importantly, this portfolio is unencumbered in all key respects and has no current debt, no tax equity liabilities and offers the potential for material value upside from smart retooling.”
A NextEra affiliate will remain as the operator of the assets even after closing of the transaction.
Recently, Quinbrook said that it had closed $268m tax equity and construction financing for a 200MW wind project in Oklahoma, which will be the first stage of the 365MW Persimmon wind farm project.
