Financial close for US$200 million wind farm in Tasmania

Palisade Investment Partners has announced that the 112 MW Granville Harbour wind farm, with an estimated total investment of AUD280 million (US$209.0 million), has reached financial close.

The wind farm will consist of 31 Vestas V126-3.6MW wind turbines to be installed on a 1,200 hectare cattle farm on the west coast of Tasmania at Granville Harbour. Commercial operations are scheduled to commence in Q4 2019, after which the wind farm will increase Tasmania’s wind capacity by one-third.

The project was initially developed by Westcoast Wind who undertook long term wind monitoring at the Granville Harbour site and secured necessary local, state and federal planning approvals for the project. Palisade and Westcoast Wind negotiated a long-term power-purchase agreement (PPA) for the project with Hydro Tasmania in September 2017 before Palisade acquired 100% of Westcoast Wind in February 2018.

Palisade then completed project development including finalising the agreements with TasNetworks for the project’s connection to the electricity grid as well as raising senior debt from Australia and New Zealand Banking Group, MUFG Bank and Westpac Banking Corporation.

In addition, the Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) has committed AUD59 million (US$44.0 million) to the project. This finance includes AUD25 million (US$18.7 million) in direct equity, alongside AUD34 million (US$25.4 million) in additional equity via the Palisade Renewable Energy Fund (PREF).

The CEFC has allocated AUD100 million (US$74.6 million) to the Palisade renewable investment strategy, in addition to its AUD75 million (US$56.0 million) cornerstone commitment to PREF. The target generation capacity of the PREF portfolio is 1 GW, which is now 50% achieved thanks to the Granville Harbour wind farm.