Canadian Solar has raised $53.3 million toward project financing four solar power plants in England with combined capacity of 40.2 megawatts.
The projects, which became operational in March, were constructed under the renewables obligation support mechanism of UK.
According to a statement issued by Canadian Solar, Investec Bank helped the company close the round of financing on May 7. Investec acted as sole mandated lead arranger on the deal. The bank has a growing presence in the UK solar market and has funded projects to the tune of more than 350MWp till date.
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This was the first return on capital based project financing of Canadian Solar, Olivier Fricot, the head of Investec’s power and infrastructure lending, said.
Canadian Solar chairman and chief executive Shawn Qu has stated that the move was part of the company’s efforts to consolidate position in the UK market. “The UK market is an important component of our strategy to build and own solar power plants that we plan to drop into a YieldCo in the months ahead,” he said.
Recently, Canadian Solar acquired Recurrent Energy and now has a project pipeline of 8.5 gigawatts.
Ajith Kumar S
editor@greentechlead.com