Constellation Acquires Calpine, Waaree Acquires Enel India

Waaree Energies will acquire 100% of Enel Green Power India for $95
million. BHE US Transmission will acquire 10% of the North Plains
Connector Transmission Project from Grid United. And Constellation
has announced it will acquire Calpine in a cash and stock
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Welcome to Uptime News Flash. Industry news lightning fast. Your
hosts, Allen Hall, Joel Saxum, and Phil Totaro discuss the latest
deals, mergers, and alliances that will shape the future of wind
power. News Flash is brought to you by Intel Store. For market
intelligence that generates revenue, visit www. intelstore. com.
Allen Hall: Waaree Energies has signed a share purchase agreement
to acquire 100 percent of Enel Green Power India for 95 million.
The acquisition includes their portfolio of approximately 640
megawatts AC and 760 megawatts of DC operational solar and wind
energy projects across India with additional projects under
development. The transaction will help Waaree diversify revenue
streams and enhance wind project execution capabilities. Phil, my
first question about this is why is Enel Green Power leaving India?
Phil Totaro: Well, it's actually a really fascinating question that
I've been getting over the past week or so since the announcement
came out and it, it, basically has to do with Enel wanting to
consolidate more operations in Europe effectively, as well as
reinvest in other emerging markets that they find more promising.
Now, we've talked before on the show about how India's growth
market but it's also still a challenging market if you're not a,
you know, kind of Indian based company or, you know, have a strong
presence in that market. Enel had, you know, a reasonably sized
portfolio for the size of the market overall. And divesting it is
really just about that cash and being able to redeploy it in
markets like Chile or you know, even in Spain or Italy on on
projects that are either, you know, repowering or, or new
greenfield development. So You know, what's happening in India
effectively is that a lot of Western companies that were pioneers
in project development or manufacturing in the market are pulling
back a little bit and selling off their asset portfolio to Indian
concerns. So the Indian market's becoming firmly much more Indian.
Joel Saxum: Yeah, and that fits with that rhetoric there. If you've
dealt with Enel, they like to do their operations out of Italy. So
they want things a little bit closer to home. And that's been a
ongoing trend with them. The interesting thing about Wari Energies
here as well, as Phil said, they are very much an Indian company.
They're a Fortune 500 company in India. And they're India's
largest, a subsidiary of the Watery Group and Watery Energies is
the largest photovoltaic panel producer in India. So they're
building a lot of solar as an OEM, and also now bolstering their
portfolio of Solar projects and getting more into the wind side of
things. So bigger play from Wari Energies over in India. Allen
Hall: And in the states here, BHE US Transmission has signed a
memorandum of understanding with Grid United to acquire 10 percent
of the 3, 000 megawatt North Plains Connector Transmission Project.
Now that project involves building a 420 mile high voltage DC
transmission line connecting the U. S. eastern and western
electrical grids in North Dakota and Montana. It's a 3. 2 billion
dollar project and it's entering the permitting phase with approval
is expected in 2026 and operation planned in 2032. Phil, as the U.
S. grid starts to connect itself a little more this BHE U. S.
transmission agreement is one of several, I think, that are going
to happen in the next couple of years. Phil Totaro: Yes, and it's
indicative of the fact that, you know, some of the companies that
were developing these high voltage DC transmission projects that
are crossing multiple states. You know, first of all, they had,
they were much smaller concerns. They had trouble getting access to
capital and they had trouble getting right of way permits and other
things to be able to actually build these projects. Once Grid
United actually got this project mature enough. It certainly
attracted the interest, obviously, of BHE. But this is no different
than, you know, some of the other projects that have seen interest
from Invenergy, who bought into an HVDC line a couple years ago.
And it's, it's, Part of the, the necessity of renewable energy to
have this kind of transmission capacity so that we can move the
power from, you know, where we've got the, the wind and solar
resource over to load centers, which are typically, you know,
taking power from the middle of the country and moving it out
towards the coasts. Joel Saxum: This. This article really excites
me. I'm super, I'm super excited for this project to go because,
and this is, HVDC is something that we talk about on the show, Alan
and I talk about it off the show quite often. Why don't we build
more HVDC? Why don't we build more HVDC? And now we have some big
players. BHE, so you know, BHE U. S. Transmission, Berkshire
Hathaway Energy. So that is a Warren Buffett backed entity as are,
you know, some other huge companies and portfolio companies within
their group. So you have big players putting real money into
projects like this. And sometimes when you have a project that's,
you know, HVDC is not groundbreaking, but it's still kind of new in
the space to be putting on land specifically in the United States.
This project builds to the fleet of these projects are being done.
However, this one is North Dakota and Montana. If you know anything
about North Dakota and Montana, it's pretty easy to build big
infrastructure projects across the plains up there. So you kind of
have a softball across the plate. Large. HVDC 420 miles across
what's basically a lot of farmland and rangeland. This project
should go off without a hitch or with minimal hitches. I'm not
going to say without a hitch, with minimal hitches in construction.
And it will be, it has the possibility of really sparking some more
of these HVDC developments here in the United States. So like I
said, I'm excited for this one. Allen Hall: And big news in
renewable energy solutions. Constellation has announced it will
acquire Calpine in a cash and stock transaction valued at 16. 4
billion, consisting of 50 million shares of Constellation stock and
4. 5 billion in cash, plus assuming 12. 7 billion in Calpine debt.
Now, this merger creates America's largest clean energy provider,
combining Constellation's nuclear fleet with Calpine's natural gas
and geothermal operations. Phil, when we talk about size of energy
companies in the United States, this is actually not that big when
you compare it to an Exxon Mobil or a ConocoPhillips, right? Phil
Totaro: Correct. And it's an interesting thing because, you know,
between Constellation and Calpine, their wind and solar portfolio
isn't huge, but they're lumping things like nuclear and other
technologies into this clean energy definition that they have. So
we can have a debate about that later, but the, the reality of it
is it's a, it's a big merger and it's an important one because it
also, you know, Constellation Was very excited about renewables
there for a while, then backed off and now it feels like they're
getting excited about, you know, renewables again with with this
kind of a deal. So, like I said, I mean, the, the portfolio that
they have of wind and solar projects is an enormous combined. It's,
you know, about I want to say a little under 2 gigawatts of wind
and, and just over 1 gigawatt worth of solar. But they're, they're
able to take the enormous balance sheet that, that Constellation
has and that Calpine combined with it provides and leverage that
into being able to get a lot more projects in the development
pipeline. Joel Saxum: Yeah. Any pairing of engineering permitting
expertise, it makes me happy. Right. Especially in the energy
space. So bringing the constellation team that knows that has a
widely varied a skill set and also bringing Calpine into that, the
exact same thing. Putting this conglomerate together I would expect
to see some pretty big moves after this thing closes within the
next 12 months and in the next 12 months after that. So be prepared
to watch Constellation make some moves in the renewable energy
space and, and the energy space in general. The interesting thing
here, if you've been following it, Constellation stock jumped 35
percent or over 35 percent since this Merger. So good on him.