Oklahoma is getting yet another big wind farm. Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners based in New York announced this week plans for nearly quarter of a billion dollar Persimmon Project in northwest Oklahoma
Capable of producing an estimated 900,000 megawatt hours of renewable power every year, the nearly $268 million project will go up in Woodward, Dewey and Ellis counties. Woodward has been the home of other wind farms for several years.
Quinbrook said it is building the 80-turbine wind farm in a joint venture with Elawan Wind. The company explained it recently acquired a 75 percent controlling equity stake in Persimmon and formed the join venture with Elawan, a company formerly known as Gestamp Wind.
Power from the Persimmon Project will be connected to the Southwest Power Pool network in the state. The first phase will be 200 MW with completion and first generation set for the middle of this year.
GE Renewable Energy will provide the wind turbines. GE Energy Financial Services, the energy investing unit of GE has committed to provide more than $190 million of tax equity financing of the project. It also served as the administrative agent and lender for $252 million of credit facilities.
“The Persimmon wind project is the perfect addition to Quinbrook’s growing wind portfolio which now exceeds two gigawatts,” said Shawn Cumberland, Senior Managing DIrector at Quinbrook. “We have also found an ideal partner in Elawan, who have successfully developed the project over several years in one of the US’ strong wind regimes, Oklahoma.”
“In Quinbrook, we found a real partner that added tremendous value and high levels of cooperation to this project,” said Javier Mateache, CEO of Elawan Wind, North America.
Who is Quinbrook? It is considered to be a specialist investment manager that focuses exclusively on lower carbon and renewable energy infrastructure investment as well as operational asset management in the U.S., the United Kingdom and Australia. It has offices in Houston, London, Jersey and Brisbane, Australia. It also is the current manager of Cape Byron Power, considered to be one of Australia’s largest base-load renewable power generators.