Oct 8 2010
Starwood Energy Group Global LLC, a privately held investing company engaged in energy construction projects, declared that its associate Starwood SSM2 Canada Incorporated has made a financial close for a 30 MW solar PV power project.
The AC type solar PV project is to be located in the City of Sault Ste.Marie, in Ontario State. The current project trails its earlier 20 MW SSM1 solar plant for which a financial close was signed during December 2009 and the project is nearing its completion.
The Starwood SSM2 deal to be formulated and supervised by the Ontario Power Authority (OPA) comprises three 10 MW AC type PV solar projects. The SSM2 project signed under the Renewable Energy Standard Offer Program (RESOP) will be rated as one among the other bigger projects in North America when it completes its construction and linked to PUC Distribution Inc, a local power distribution utility company. The KfW IPEX-Bank (KfW) and Norddeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale (Nord/LB) have agreed to extend finance for the project. Q-Cell North America is contracted to build the project on a turnkey basis and will provide all the required maintenance services till the project is completed.
The project was originally handled by the Pod Generating Group (Pod), a large scale solar projects building company and the associate company of Starwood Energy took over the project during June 2010. The equity funding for the current project will be extended by Starwood Energy Infrastructure fund L.P. and its partnering companies. Nautilus Solar Energy which holds a majority stake in the fund and its affiliate companies will perform the role of an asset manager for the project.
The project is scheduled to complete its construction and will become fully operational during the third quarter of the year 2011. The power produced from the project will supply electricity to nearly 12,000 homes in Ontario and meet their highest day time power demand. The project will offset the carbon dioxide emissions generated by 5,700 cars or light trucks that can run over 12,000 miles in a year or the construction of the project can be equated to the role of planting 24 million new trees in the forests of Ontario. The proposed solar project will create a number of job openings in construction, engineering, production, maintenance and operation services in the state.