Global private equity firm Partners Group has acquired the 226MW first stage of Murra Warra Wind Farm (Murra Warra I) project in Victoria for $200 million from RES and Macquarie Capital, who jointly developed the project.
Under the acquisition, Partners Group is leading the delivery of Murra Warra I, while RES will work alongside Partners Group to provide certain ongoing services to support the project.
The wind farm will consist if 61 Senvion 3.7M144 turbines and is expected to be fully operational by mid-2019. Once completed, Murra Warra I will generate enough clean energy to power 220,000 Australian households and offset over 900,000 tonnes of carbon emissions every year.
Senvion, alongside Australian civil and electrical contractor Downer, started building the project in western Victoria in March 2018. The project already has long-term power purchase agreements for a substantial part of its output with customers, including Telstra, Coca-Cola Amatil, ANZ, as well as both Melbourne and Monash Universities.
Benjamin Haan, partner and co-head private infrastructure Asia-Pacific at Partners Group, said the project is the Group’s fourth major wind farm investment in Australia since 2015.
“We continue to believe the Australian renewable energy sector is benefiting from a transformative trend, with a significant amount of coal-fired generation retirements expected in the coming decade,” Haan continued.
“Investing into a project such as Murra Warra I, where we can enter during the construction phase and successfully deliver the project through to its operation phase, is consistent with our building core strategy in infrastructure.
“The project brings additional scale and diversification to our portfolio and is one of the highest-quality wind resource sites in Australia’s National Electrical Market.”
The Murra Warra I investment follows Partner Group’s recent $700 million commitment to develop Grassroots Renewable Energy Platform, a large-scale platform that aims to construct over 1.3GW of new wind power, solar power and battery storage assets across Australia within the next four years.
RES and Macquarie Capital will continue to develop the 55-turbine 203MW Murra Warra Stage II project, as well as a solar farm and energy storage project at Murra Warra.