AES Corporation has reportedly announced plans to merge its U.S.-facing renewable energy development business with sPower, an independent power producer. The deal announced by this electric power distribution company will help create a platform with a 12-GW project pipeline in the region.
As per the statement made by AIMCo (Alberta Investment Management Corporation) and AES, the merger is expected to bring new capabilities in wind, solar, and storage to boost the transition to cleaner energy solutions in the U.S. These two companies formed a partnership in 2017 to acquire sPower.
Any project developed from this combined 12-GW development pipeline in the future will be owned 75% and 25% by AES and AIMCo respectively. Despite no change in the ownership of backlog and operating assets, the new platform will manage the existing 2.6-GW contracted backlog and 2.5-GW of operating assets. The wholly-owned renewable energy development business of AES includes a wind development team, which was a part of Advance Energy, and AES Distributed Energy.
According to the CEO of AES Corporation, Andrés Gluski, the merger of AES's clean energy business and sPower will serve customers by offering them access to a wide product portfolio as well as a highly-skilled & experienced team to rapidly scale innovation.
Headquartered in Utah, sPower operates and owns above 150 renewable generation systems in the United States. Recently in 2020, the company concluded financing its largest PV project available to date, the 620-MWdc Spotsylvania Solar Energy Center located in Virginia. Additionally, in April, Fargo agreed to make a $350 million tax equity investment in the facility. Following this, sPower also secured a $700 million construction or term loan from 9 other banks.
sPower has appointed Michael Belikoff, a former executive of Cypress Creek Renewables & First Solar, as its Chief Operating Officer.
Source credit:
https://www.pv-tech.org/news/aes-merges-us-clean-energy-development-business-with-spower
