Construction works begin at Enel's 450 MW wind project in US

Enel, through its US renewable subsidiary Enel Green Power North America, Inc., started construction of the around 450 MW High Lonesome wind farm in Upton and Crockett Counties, in Texas.

Investment in the construction of High Lonesome amounts to approximately US$600 million and is part of the investment outlined in Enel’s 2019-2021 strategic plan. The project is currently financed through the Group’s own resources and is expected to enter into operations by the end of 2019. Once fully operational, the wind farm will be able to generate around 1.7 TWh annually, while avoiding the emission of over 1.1 million tons of CO₂ per year.

Enel has entered into a Proxy Revenue Swap for a 295 MW portion of the project with insurer Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty, Inc.'s Alternative Risk Transfer unit, and Nephila Climate, a provider of weather and climate risk management products. The PRS is a financial derivative agreement designed to produce stable revenues for the project regardless of power price fluctuations and weather-driven intermittency, hedging shape risk in addition to risk associated to price and volume.

Under this agreement, High Lonesome will receive fixed payments based on the expected value of future energy production, with adjustments payed depending on how the realised proxy revenue of the project differs from the fixed payment. The PRS for High Lonesome was executed in collaboration with REsurety, Inc.