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Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners announced the acquisition of a 1.3 gigawatt onshore wind portfolio in New York called Liberty Renewables. Spanish renewable energy firm Acciona Energia decided to restructure its business in Brazil after reviewing their portfolio, citing challenges with project profitability. Wind turbine manufacturer Nordex is reducing its production in Brazil in response to low demand for contracts in the Brazilian marketplace.
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Allen Hall: I’m Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech. And I’m here with the founder and CEO of InstelStor, Phil Totaro, and the chief commecrcial officer of Weather Guard, Joel Saxum. And this is your News Flash. News Flash is brought to you by our friends at InstelStor. If you want market intelligence that generates revenue, then book a demonstration of InstelStor at InstelStor. com.
Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners has announced the acquisition of a 1. 3 gigawatt portfolio of onshore wind projects in New York called Liberty Renewables. CFP has made this acquisition through its CIV fund, where it is targeting a final close of 12 billion euros. Liberty has recently submitted its application to New York’s Office of Renewable Energy, citing for its first project, Hoffman Falls Wynn, where construction is due to start there in 2026.
The building work on other projects in the 1. 3 gigawatt portfolio are due to start somewhere between 2027 and 2020. 30. Phil, why is Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners going for onshore wind in the United States?
Philip Totaro: It’s a great question. And in particular, this Liberty Renewables portfolio it’s interesting because the New York Independent System Operator, certainly within the state of New York, they need, additional power.
Anybody that’s got a pipeline of projects in New York is probably in good stead. But their power prices in NISO have actually been fairly robust. And so I think, when Usually projects in New York don’t have a fixed price power offtake contract, except for the offshore, obviously.
And even then there’s an escalator in there. But yeah, most of the projects in the NYSO market are, on a pretty healthy merchant power offtake. So it’s actually a great deal. And they’re looking at potentially with this their fifth fund here, they’re looking at a total potential of, I think they said something around 22 billion euros.
So on top of what they’ve already got committed, this is, something that can help them extend more investments into some markets where there are small portfolios, a development assets like this, that they can start grabbing.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. And just so everybody knows, this is not a bunch of in the ground projects operating these. This is a development pipeline. So these are, permitted and or not permitted, but, active projects that are in the development phase where C. I. P. will come in, finish the development and of course, a secure financing to make these things happen.
So right now, Nothing in the ground, but soon to come.
Allen Hall: Spanish renewable energy firm, Acciona Energia has decided to restructure its business in Brazil. After they have reviewed their portfolio, the company has decided that the Latin Americans largest economy was adapting to current conditions in the domestic market, and this has implications worldwide, Phil.
Brazil is going to be a renewable energy powerhouse. Why is Acciona pulling out of Brazil now?
Philip Totaro: Yeah, this is a really great question because even for wind they’ve got Brazil has something like 6. 1 gigawatts that’s gonna be built this year. I forget it precisely off the top of my head how much solar But they’ve had an explosion lately and just on the wind side in Brazil They’ve got another 81 gigawatts of projects that have been proposed To the national regulator down there.
All of those would either have to go get a a C& I power offtake or go through the auctions to be able to get some type of utility or other offtake agreement in place. So not all of that 81 gigawatts is going to be built, but that’s what’s in the pipeline at this point.
And that stretches them out through the next, five, six years. So that’s a massive amount of potential capacity. What’s interesting though, and I think one of the reasons for Acciona pulling back from Brazil is because of the currency exchange rate down there a lot of the companies that got some of the tariffs that they received from previous auctions are seeing their PPAs basically down at about, megawatt hour now based on the current currency exchange.
And so that’s leading them to struggle when it comes to profitability, despite the fact that they have exceptionally high capacity factors down there that tends to make up a little bit for a low PPA price. But Acciona is just in that kind of weird space where a lot of their projects, you know, part of it’s because they took the the Acciona three megawatt kind of legacy platform down there, the one 16, the one 25 meter rotor that Product family has not been performing as well.
So that’s been denting Acciona Energia’s financial performance a little bit. And also Acciona didn’t have as much in the development pipeline down there. A lot of other companies, including Statcraft and others came in from Europe and started gobbling up a lot of the lucrative project sites leaving Acciona to wonder where the opportunity is for them in that market.
So, from from the standpoint of a lot of independent power producers this kind of reflection on, can we make money in this market?
Joel Saxum: Yeah, just for everybody listening as well, for clarification, this is Acciona Energia. So this is the development and operating arm of wind farms, or of assets, not the Nordex Acciona OEM side of things.
That’s regularly confused. So I want to make sure that nobody’s on that page.
Allen Hall: Turbine manufacturer of wind turbines, Nordex is reducing its production in Brazil in response to low demand for contracts in the Brazilian marketplace. Phil, what, okay. So Acciona Energia is backing out of Brazil.
Now, Norex, like an OEM, a really good OEM, is deciding to back out of Brazil. Why is Nordex slowing down in Brazil?
Philip Totaro: This also gets into some of the economic and financial scenarios around. They You know, they got clobbered a bit because of the performance of those, legacy Acciona three megawatt turbines that we just talked about, but they’ve got some sales of the N one 63 platform.
They just don’t have enough sales to warrant a, a full fledged thrust into the market. You’ve got Vestas very strong. In Brazil with tons of orders more order book than I think, even the subcomponent suppliers can handle at this point for the V one 50. And they’re just not, the Nordex with the N163 and also Siemens Gamesa with their six megawatt 170 platform, they have both pulled back from the Brazilian market because they’re just not seeing enough order book to justify being down there.
So it’s a bit disappointing and it’s basically leaving the Brazilian market for only really a handful of players. So you’ve got Vestas. That’s obviously the strongest in the market. GE’s kind of pulled back. So that’s leaving Goldwind who is taking over supposedly GE’s manufacturing facilities there.
And to the extent that Nordex can get some additional orders, then they’ll definitely maintain their presence in that market. Yeah, you see this happening in a number of major markets around the world where there’s a bit of consolidation happening in terms of the number of OEMs that are offering products there.
The Brazilian market is quickly turning into a majority Vestas market.
