NTR acquires a 64 MW of onshore wind

NTR has added a further 64 MW to its onshore wind portfolio, with the acquisition of three projects, two in Scotland (UK) and one in Ireland, bringing the total amount of assets under management for its NTR Wind 1 Fund up to 142MW.

Capital costs for the three projects are over €150 million (US$165.5 million).

The assets acquired include two projects under construction in each of County Kerry, Ireland (17.5MW) and in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland (39.9 MW) (Airies), together with an 11.5 MW operational project (Ardoch and Over Enoch), in East Renfrewshire, Scotland.  

The vendor of the two Scottish projects is Velocita Energy Developments, who, through 2020 Renewables, will manage the construction of Airies on NTR’s behalf.  

Element Power, the vendor of the Kerry project, will manage the construction and long-term asset management of the project on NTR’s behalf.

The Airies project, which comprises fourteen GE 2.85MW 103 turbines, is expected to be commissioned at the end of this year; while the project in Kerry, comprising seven Nordex N90 2.5MW turbines, is expected to be operational in Q4 2017.  The Ardoch and Over Enoch project, comprising five Siemens 2.3MW turbines, has been in operation since 2014.

NTR Wind 1 Fund was launched by NTR plc to invest in onshore wind projects in Ireland and the UK. The funds expected total equity and project finance capital requirement amounts to approximately €670 million (US$739 million). The fund is well underway in deploying into ready-to-build onshore wind assets with an active pipeline of further investments across the UK and Irish markets.

NTR Chief Executive Officer, Rosheen McGuckian, said:

“We are making excellent progress in identifying and acquiring assets for this fund.  The fund is ahead of target and currently owns 70MW in Great Britain and 72MW in the Irish single electricity market putting us in a strong position to assess opportunities for our second sustainable infrastructure fund for next year.”

NTR’s Chief Investment Officer, Manus O’Donnell said:

“We remain positive about the fundamentals for the UK and Irish renewables markets for the investment period of this fund, despite recent regulatory changes for onshore wind in the UK.  Our approach is to acquire mid-size projects typically between 10MW and 40MW in size and we continue to see a sufficient pipeline of quality assets to complete our target of €250 million of equity investments between now and 2017.”