National Australia Bank (NAB) has raised AUD 205 million from a private funding round in US for developing a 71.4 MW wind project.
The proceeds mainly gathered from US investors will be used for the construction of the Hallett Hill (HH2) wind park in South Australia.
The HH2 wind farm will be powered by 34 turbines, which are expected to produce 262 GWh of electricity per year, once operational.
The project is owned by Australia’s Energy Infrastructure Trust (EIT) and will be managed by Infrastructure Capital Group.
The private placement consists of two 12-year tranches of notes worth USD 99 million (EUR 92.7m) and AUD 76 million, respectively.
The deal represents the first transaction for financing a renewable energy project in Australia through a US private placement.
Its output is anticipated to meet the consumption of about 43,000 local homes and offset 190,000 tons of carbon emissions annually.
South Australia has close to half of the nation’s wind power capacity, accounting for almost twenty percent of that state’s electricity needs of as October 2010.
By the end of 2011 wind power in South Australia, championed by Premier Mike Rann, reached 26 percent of the State’s electricity generation, edging out coal fired power for the first time.
In 2013, Australia’s wind farms produced over a quarter of the country’s clean energy, enough to power the equivalent of more than 1.3 million homes.
Wind power supplied 4 per cent of Australia’s overall electricity during the year.
Australia had 1639 wind turbines spread across 68 wind farms at the end of 2013, as well as one small wind farm located in the Australian Antarctic Territory.
Six new projects came online during 2013, including the Southern Hemisphere’s largest operational wind farm, at Macarthur in western Victoria.
The $1.5 billion of new investment in wind power was almost double that of the year before.
Australia has some of the world’s best wind resources along its south-western, southern and south eastern margins. More isolated areas of the eastern margin also have better wind resources.
Wind energy is the fastest growing renewable energy source for electricity generation in Australia, and its current share of total Australian primary energy consumption is currently almost 4 percent.
Sabeena Wahid
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