Partners Group adds third Australian wind farm to Grassroots Renewable Energy platform

Partners Group will also lead the operational roll-out of Bango, which will comprise 46 GE Cypress 5.3MW turbines, with a total nameplate capacity of 244MW. Bango will be the first wind farm globally to use this type of turbine, which is the largest onshore wind turbine currently in production. Construction of Bango will commence in August 2019, with the farm expected to be operational by mid-year 2021. Once completed, Bango is projected to generate enough clean energy to power over 100,000 households, and would save over 600,000 tonnes of carbon emissions every year. It has already secured a 15-year contract with Snowy Hydro, an investment grade off-taker, for 100MW of its capacity.

Bango is the third project under Grassroots Renewable Energy ("Grassroots"), a large-scale renewable energy platform in Australia established in May 2018 by Partners Group and CWP Renewables. On behalf of its clients, Partners Group has committed a total of AUD 700 million of equity investment into Grassroots. Bango was preceded by investments in the 270MW Sapphire Wind Farm and the 135MW Crudine Ridge Wind Farm in 2016 and 2018, respectively, both of which are also located in the state of NSW. Sapphire Wind Farm became operational in December 2018 and was recently announced as a supplier of renewable energy to the Sydney Opera House via its power purchase agreement with energy provider Flow Power.

Andrew Kwok, Managing Director and Head Private Infrastructure Asia, Partners Group, comments: "We are excited to deploy our significant industry expertise and value creation resources on behalf of our clients to build Bango Wind Farm. Bango will be Partners Group's fifth renewables project in Australia, bringing our total renewables commitment in the country to almost AUD 1.2 billion to-date."

Benjamin Haan, Operating Partner, Partners Group, and Chair of Grassroots Renewable Energy, states: "Despite ongoing market challenges related to grid congestion and uncertainty in future green energy policy, there remains a compelling market opportunity for experienced developers and investors in renewable energy in Australia, particularly in New South Wales. With a potential project pipeline of 1.3GW of wind and solar generation capacity, we are pleased to continue to work with the CWP team to develop Grassroots into a renewables platform of significant scale, offering attractive offtake solutions across a diversified portfolio, and supporting the generation of clean energy in Australia."