Partners Group and CWP Renewables have teamed up to deliver 1.3GW of renewable energy projects in Australia within the next four years.
Partners has agreed to invest $700 million in the development of a large-scale renewable energy platform – the Grassroots Renewable Energy Platform – in Australia.
The platform will be seeded with the 270MW Sapphire Wind Farm project and will see an additional 1.3GW of new wind power, solar power and battery storage assets across Australia.
Partners Group first joined forces with CWP in 2016 when it announced a $250 million investment in the Sapphire Wind Farm in NSW.
The wind farm is due to be completed by October and will generate enough energy to power 110,000 Australian households.
There are also plans to launch a community co-investment project at Sapphire Wind Farm in late 2018, which will enable members of the neighboring community to participate in the financial benefits from the sale of renewable electricity.
The second project under the Grassroots platform will be Crudine Ridge Wind Farm, a 135MW construction-ready wind farm near Mudgee in NSW.
Construction will begin this month and will be completed by September 2019.
Crudine Ridge Wind Farm will consist of 37 GE 3.63MW turbines and, once operational, will provide a further 400GWh of annual power output to the grid, enough to serve 55,000 homes.
Half of this energy has been sold to Powershop, an Australian electricity provider that provides 100 per cent green energy to its retail customers.
“When we invested in Sapphire Wind Farm, one of the key attractions for us was the project’s potential to anchor an Australian renewable energy platform,” Partners Group’s Benjamin Haan said.
“Partners Group and CWP have a project pipeline of 1.3GW in generation capacity across wind and solar power, offering the scope to be selective and develop Grassroots into a quality renewables platform of significant scale.
“We look forward to working with the CWP team to further support the generation of clean energy in Australia.”
To-date, Partners Group has developed around 2GW of solar and wind energy capacity on behalf of its clients across the Asia-Pacific region, including Australia.
Previous investments include a 550MW Taiwanese solar power development platform and the 240MW Ararat Wind Farm development in Australia, which Partners Group invested into in August 2016 and June 2015, respectively.
Most recently, Partners Group announced the sale of its stake in Japan Solar, a 610MW platform of Japanese Solar power assets, which the firm had invested into in 2013.
