Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners (“Quinbrook”), a global investment manager specializing in lower carbon and renewable energy infrastructure assets, has announced the successful completion of construction and the commencement of commercial operations at the 200 megawatt (MW) Persimmon Creek wind farm in Oklahoma (“Persimmon”).
Persimmon’s construction was completed in under nine months by Wanzek Construction and utilizes 73 GE 2.5 MW turbines located across 17,000 acres in Dewey, Ellis and Woodward counties, Oklahoma. The Persimmon wind project is a joint venture between Quinbrook and Elawan Wind, USA and will be initially operated under a GE Full Service O&M Agreement.
Persimmon was financed with equity investments from both Quinbrook and Elawan along with tax equity investments from a consortium comprising of GE Energy Financial Services and J.P. Morgan. Construction lending was provided by ABN Amro, GE Energy Financial Services, MUFG and Rabobank. Persimmon will sell power into the Southern Power Pool (SPP) market under a long-dated energy hedge provided by an affiliate of Citi.
“We are delighted to have Scout’s first wind farm project up and running and to have completed construction on time and on budget. We believe that Persimmon is an outstanding wind project located in a very robust wind regime,” said Jeff Hunter, Senior Managing Director of Quinbrook. “The significant amount of tax equity financing we have secured from both GE and J.P. Morgan is testament to the quality and differentiation of the project and complements the development work undertaken by Scout’s team together with operations affiliate Harvest Energy Services and, of course, our partner Elawan. This is an important milestone for Scout, which will now assist acceleration of the remaining projects in its diverse and growing wind power portfolio which Quinbrook and the Scout team have together expanded to over 2.3GW spanning 13 projects in 10 states.”
“Persimmon’s successful completion is an important catalyst for Scout and paves the way for several additional Scout wind projects that are nearing completion of development and which are scheduled to commence construction over coming months. The Scout and Quinbrook teams worked closely with GE in late 2017 following the US tax reforms to ensure Persimmon would proceed when many other projects stalled. We acknowledge their efforts and those of our partner Elawan in successfully navigating many obstacles to get Persimmon built on time and on budget,” said Michael Rucker, Chief Executive Officer at Scout Clean Energy.
Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners (www.quinbrook.com) is a specialist investment manager focused exclusively on lower carbon and renewable energy infrastructure investment and operational asset management in the US, UK and Australia. Quinbrook is led and managed by a senior team of power industry professionals who have collectively invested over $17 billion in energy infrastructure assets since the early 1990’s, representing over 30GW of supply capacity. Quinbrook’s investment and asset management team has offices in Houston, London, Jersey, and the Gold Coast of Australia. Quinbrook currently manages Cape Byron Power (www.capebyronpower.com), one of Australia’s largest base-load 100% renewable power generators. Quinbrook also manages the Quinbrook Low Carbon Power Fund which has invested in over 3,000 MW of operational and development stage wind, solar, gas and battery storage projects and businesses in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia.
Scout Clean Energy is a North American wind energy developer and owner-operator. Scout is developing over 2.3 GW of PTC qualified wind projects across 10 US states covering most of the continent’s power markets. Scout’s operations affiliate Harvest Energy Services, Inc. provides independent O&M and construction management services to the wind industry. Scout and Harvest together have over 125 employees and are based in Boulder, Colorado.
