Macquarie Infrastructure Company has paid $11.5 million for a stake in a US wind farm developer with 183MW of wind power generating facilities near Twin Falls, Idaho.
MIC – a New York-based subsidiary of Macquarie Group – bought a non-controlling interest in Idaho Wind Partners 1 using available cash, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal – a transaction that increases the aggregate power generating capacity of its Contracted Power and Energy (CP&E) segment to around 96MW.
Macquarie CP&E’s total renewables investments include five solar PV facilities and two wind power generating projects, including the Idaho facilities.
“We continue to find good, accretive opportunities to deploy capital in our CP&E segment,” says MIC chief executive James Hooke. “We’re pleased to have acquired this stake in Idaho Wind Partners 1 and with it the opportunity to explore increasing our investment in the project over time.”
First commissioned in late 2010, Idaho Wind Partners 1 uses 122 General Electric 1.5MW wind turbines and supplies the electricity it generate to a local utility, through a 20-year power off-take agreement.
In addition to MIC, the wind farm’s owners include GE Energy Financial Services, Atlantic Power and Ruby Renewable Resources.