Oil giant puts Australian solar portfolio on market as great PV flip continues

Global oil giant BP and its solar joint venture partner Lightsource have put at least some of their rapidly growing Australian solar portfolio on the market as the great solar PV asset flip continues.

Lightsource bp, according to the Street Talk column of the AFR, has hired Macquarie Group to put a for sale sign on its operating solar farms in NSW and Queensland in a potential $1 billion plus deal that could include projects still in development.

The news comes just days after a subsidiary of Malaysia oil giant Petronas confirmed its purchase of the Australian solar and battery storage portfolio of German-owned Wirsol.

Any number of solar portfolio have had a for sale sign on them in one form or another over the last year, including New Energy Solar, which liquidated its entire solar portfolio after failing to get the market recognition it craved, and FRV, which had been seeking interest in a minority share of its portfolio.

Enel Green Power is another company thought to be courting interest in its Australian portfolio, while others to have shopped around include Goldwind Australia and Elliott Green Power, which was bought by Atmos.

Iron ore billionaire Andrew Forrest’s Squadron Energy recently paid an estimated $4 billion for control of the wind, solar and storage portfolio of CWP Renewables.

The flipping of solar – and wind – assets is a natural course events for developers, who invest heavily in a new project and then can cash in by selling an asset with a long term power purchase agreement to an institutional investor happy to lock in a certain rate of return.

According to the AFR, the Lightsource bp portfolio in Australia with a for sale sign around it includes its three operating solar farms (Wellington, Woolooga and West Wyalong), with the potential to add the Wellington North and Wunghnu projects that are under construction.

Sales of minority stakes are also of interest, giving it more capital to pursue what it has declared to be a 2GW solar goal in Australia by 2025.

It has a number of other solar assets in development that have yet to begin construction, including the Goulburn River, Gundary, Mokoan, West Mokoan and Sandy Creek solar projects.