National Grid Sells US Renewables, Invenergy Enters Spanish Offshore

Invenergy enters the Spanish offshore wind market with a planned
552 MW floating wind farm. Iberdrola considers selling US renewable
assets to fund its Avangrid acquisition. Tata Power secures a major
loan to finance clean energy projects in India, while National Grid
divests US assets to focus on UK decarbonization. Sign up now for
Uptime Tech News, our weekly email update on all things wind
technology. This episode is sponsored by Weather Guard
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https://www.pardaloteconsulting.comWeather Guard Lightning Tech -
www.weatherguardwind.comIntelstor - https://www.intelstor.com Allen
Hall: I'm Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech,
and I'm here with the founder and CEO of IntelStor, Phil Totaro,
and the chief commercial officer of Weather Guard, Joel Saxum, and
this is your NewsFlash. NewsFlash is brought to you by our friends
at IntelStor. If you want market intelligence that generates
revenue, then book a demonstration of IntelStor at intelstor.com.
Invenergy has announced its entry into the spanish offshore wind
market with the proposed oh boy floating wind farm the planned
capacity 552 megawatt site Is will be the furthest site away from
the shoreline of spain if approved it will power over 600 thousand
Spanish households. Wow, Phil the construction of the offshore
floating wind farm is estimated to take between eight and ten years
with Invenergy prioritizing local hiring and procurement through
the project's development. So this is a really neat project by
Invenergy, Phil. Philip Totaro: Yeah, it's interesting too, because
the Spanish are trying to get an offshore market going. There's,
something like 40 plus gigawatts of projects that have been kind of
tentatively proposed for different tenders that they're supposed to
have in Spain, but they haven't actually gotten a framework in
place for how any kind of You know, subsidies are going to work.
And I think power offtake may also still be a bit of a challenge
there as far as the infrastructure needed to be able to support
this much capacity. But the fact that, I mean, this is, and we've
talked before about the fact that Invenergy is not exactly a U. S.
company. They're, it's Canadian majority owned company as far as
their, their parent investor, but let's say they're, the first
occasion where I can recall a North American based company anyway,
is venturing off into the European offshore wind market. So this is
pretty interesting and, and an exciting play for them. Joel Saxum:
One of the nice things here is that, that northwest corner of
Spain. Good deep water port as well. So, the area's gonna be primed
and ready for it. There's some demand locally there. They're ready
and willing to go here. 552 megawatts for a floating offshore wind
farm. That's again, I think last week we talked about the largest
one we've heard of. This is now the largest one I've heard of. And
the facilities are there, ready to go. Keyside to put these things
out. So, 8 to 10 years, I think we'll see a big floating wind farm
there. Allen Hall: Spanish utility company Iberdrola is considering
selling a 50 percent stake in a portfolio of U. S. renewable energy
assets, which includes 400 megawatts of solar plants and 300
megawatts of onshore wind. For an estimated 1. 6 to 1. 8 billion us
dollars. The company is working with the bank of America on the
potential sale and plans to formally launch the process in July
with the aim of completing the transaction by the end of the year.
This move comes as part of a broader review of Iberdrola's strategy
in the U S following its recent agreement to fully acquire its
subsidiary of on grid for 2. 5, 5 billion. So, Phil, are they
helping to fund the purchase of Avangrid with the sell off of a
portion of Avangrid's assets? Philip Totaro: It sounds like it,
yes. But keep in mind what we've also talked about is, first,
they're looking to deploy some capital in offshore, so it could be
that they're going to reuse some of this capital for that. They're
also coming up at a point in time when, like we've talked about on
the show before, they're You know, at a point where they're
contemplating the repower on some of these assets as well. So part
of this portfolio that they're offering for sale could just be
assets that are, the closest to the end of their PPA life. Because
again, as we've talked about there, Iberdrola, it hasn't been doing
kind of a 10 year PTC driven repower. Because despite how lucrative
the production tax credit is, if they repower, they might have to
renegotiate their PPA. And since they have such lucrative PPAs on a
lot of their assets, they're letting the PPAs expire. And then
they're going to look at repowering their assets. So, presumably,
this 300 megawatts of wind is what's kind of oldest in their
portfolio and probably closest to the end of the PPA life, which
means that they can sell it off to some investor who wants to be
able to repower the site and run, run it from there. Joel Saxum:
What it sounds like to me is there's a play here in the United
States with a lot of these assets coming up for sale. for a company
to come in that is good at purchasing dilapidated assets or not,
not necessarily dilapidated, but performance rundown assets and
getting them back up to running for running at a higher efficiency.
And I've heard of a few companies doing that, but I think there's
openings for more. Allen Hall: Indian conglomerate Tata Power is in
talks with several lenders to secure a loan of up to 1 billion U.
S. dollars. The funds will be used to finance Tata Power's clean
energy projects, including a 1. 6 billion investment in pumped
hydro storage. The loan, which could be the largest local currency
loan in India this year, is expected to be finalized within the
next three to six months. Tata Power aims to expand its renewable
generation capacity by nearly four times by 2027. Phil, there's so
much activity in India at the moment, and Tata is not going to be
left out of that activity, and it's taking a huge loan out to be
part of it. Philip Totaro: Yeah, and well, so India's the market
where they've gigawatts and gigawatts worth of capacity. In, in
wind and solar and we're gonna, decarbonize and, build out
transmission and, and all this stuff. And for so many years, I
mean, I've been in the industry 17 years. And I've heard this since
almost day one the good news is it sounds like it's finally
happening because companies aren't out there, taking out billion
dollar loans unless they're actually serious about spending the
capital. So India still struggles a little bit with kind of
discrepancies between the Independent power producers and what are
called the discoms or the power distribution companies over there.
So that still caused a bit of consternation. I mean, bottom line,
like whenever these guys strike a, a PPA agreement almost
immediately, they, one side or the other wants to try renegotiating
it because of inflation or other, operational concerns that have
driven up costs and whatnot. But. The good news is on the whole the
Indian market looks like it's getting its act together. They do
besides a market like Brazil, which is doing like one auction this
year, India does an auction almost once every six weeks for, for
power capacity. So, they've got a regular routine now where, a
significant amount of power blocks are, are available and whether
it's existing capacity that can be bid into these auctions or new
capacity, like what taught a power wants to be able to get this
this loan to, to produce they're out there right now with reliant
with a Donnie group with continuum and, and a lot of other big
companies, renew power a lot of companies in India that are,
starting to open the purse strings, so to speak, and, and start
deploying the capital that's needed to be able to get this
infrastructure built, both on the generation side and transmission.
Joel Saxum: Like you were saying at the beginning of the section
there a lot of power, a lot of power generation, a lot of movement
here in India. We're seeing even possible OEMs pop up down there,
big moves by Siemens to some, someone might grab that thing and run
with it. What they sell off some Siemens assets. But we are
talking, I mean, on the weather guard side, we talk with a lot of
people that are working in India. So, there's a, there's rumors of,
and they have started construction on a site that at the end of the
day is supposed to be 30 gigawatts up in the Northwest corner of
the country. One site of solar, it's going to be like a hybrid
energy production area. Okay. But that's, I mean, unprecedented
globally. So, kudos to the, to India for putting their money where
the mouth is. Allen Hall: National grid has announced plans to sell
its grain LNG terminal in the UK and it's us onshore renewables
business, national grid renewables. The decision comes as the
company outlines a 60 billion pound investment plan to accelerate.
The decarbonization of the energy system and become a pure play
networks business. Now, Phil, there seems to be a lot of companies
exiting the United States. National grid is not a huge presence in
the States, but it is another indicator that maybe the busy
activity is not in the United States at the moment at. Philip
Totaro: Well, it's, it's fascinating because like we've talked
about on Newsflash before, there are any number of companies that
have a small to medium sized portfolio that are probably looking at
selling products. Predominantly, if their primary focus of their
business, like National Grid, in their case, it's, operating as a
utility and,