Innergex Renewable Energy has secured $534m in construction financing from BNP Paribas, Credit-Agricole CIB and Export Development Canada for the development of the 329.8MW Boswell Springs wind farm in Albany County, Wyoming, US.
The loan includes $203m in a ten-year non-recourse term loan.
To be situated on 21,500 acres of private land, the wind farm will be powered by 100 GE Vernova wind turbines.
It will generate 1.16 gigawatt-hours of clean electricity annually, sufficient to power 113,000 homes in Wyoming.
The power generated from the wind farm will be fed into PacifiCorp’s grid at the Freezeout Substation in Carbon County, a distance of 34.5 miles, through the Last Mile Transmission project.
Mortenson, a Minnesota-based construction company, has been hired as the wind farm’s engineering, procurement and construction contractor while AEI is the contractor for the transmission line.
Construction activities have already commenced at the site. Between 150 and 200 jobs will be created during its 17-month construction phase.
The Boswell Springs wind farm will be operational by the end of 2024.
The project is eligible for up to 120% of production tax credits (PTCs), including a 10% energy community PTC bonus and a 10% domestic content PTC bonus.
Its location in an ‘energy community’ also enables it to benefit from the energy community tax credit PTC bonus.
Innergex president and CEO Michel Letellier stated: “We are very pleased with the terms of this financing as it demonstrates the strong market confidence in Innergex’s technical and financial abilities to develop high-quality and well-structured assets that generate attractive cash flows.
“In addition, the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act brings more competitiveness to the renewable energy sector than ever before by providing bonus credits for certain clean energy projects.
“In the case of Boswell Springs, we were pleased to learn that the project is eligible for the energy community PTC bonus, and we decided to seize the opportunity to finance the bonus credits to substantially improve the investment economics, over and above associated cost increases.”
