Deepwater Wind has succeeded in fully financing around $290 million for the Block Island Wind Farm, securing all debt and equity funding needed to complete the project.
The Block Island Wind Farm is a 30 MW offshore wind farm, to be located about three miles southeast of Block Island.
The project being developed by Deepwater Wind will initially consist of 5 turbines.
Deepwater Wind is the only United States offshore wind firm to achieve this milestone of fully financing and the Block Island Wind Farm is America’s first offshore wind farm.
Deepwater Wind plans to follow the Block Island Wind Farm with the Deepwater ONE project, a 150-200 turbine project also in Rhode Island Sound, capable of generating from 900 MW to 1,200 MW.
Deepwater ONE will produce enough electricity to power about 350,000 homes and eliminate more than 1.7 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually.
Construction of the Block Island Wind Farm has already begun.
Alstom has completed the fabrication of five 6MW offshore wind turbines for the project, in addition to 15 windmill blades.
Deepwater Wind plans will begin the offshore installation of the project from this summer. The wind farm will be online by the end of 2016.
Electricity from the wind farm will be supplied to the mainland electric grid through the 21-mile, bi-directional Block Island Transmission System, a submarine cable which will make landfall in Narragansett, R.I.
The financing from Societe Generale and KeyBank is in addition to more than $70 million in equity funding already provided by Deepwater Wind’s existing owners, an entity of the D.E. Shaw Group.
The financing is provided by Mandated Lead Arrangers Societe Generale of Paris, France, and KeyBank National Association of Cleveland, Ohio.
Societe Generale was the financial advisor for debt raise, bookrunner, and administrative agent and mandated lead arranger for this financial deal.
Sabeena Wahid
editor@greentechlead.com