The US industry’s prolific recent run of developers raising significant financing continues with announcements from Aypa Power and Hunt Energy Network.
Aypa Power in Idaho
Aypa Power, in the portfolio of alternative investment company Blackstone, announced on Tuesday (6 August) that it has secured financing commitments worth US$323 million for a battery energy storage system (BESS) project in Idaho.
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The developer said the combination of debt and tax equity financing will go towards its Kuna project near Idaho’s capital city, Boise.
The 150MW/600MWh asset is scheduled to go into commercial operation in mid-2025 and is expected to be the northwestern state’s largest BESS project to date when it does.
The new financing package comprises US$90 million in tax equity funding, alongside a US$233 million green loan including construction and term loans, a tax equity bridge and a letter of credit facility.
As with other recent financings, the investment has been participated in by a raft of major global finance institutions. ING Capital, Société Générale and the New York branch of the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China led debt financing.
Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas and US Bank were also involved, as coordinating lead arranger and lender, and depositary and collateral agent, respectively.
Meanwhile, the tax equity investment was led by UK Bank subsidiary US Bancorp Impact Finance, which the bank launched in 2023 to make tax credit investments and other financial solutions to impact-focused customers.
Aypa has secured a long-term offtake agreement for the Kuna BESS project with utility Idaho Power. Idaho Power, the state’s monopoly electricity supplier, modelled 1,373MW of energy storage in its preferred resource portfolio from its most recent integrated resource plan (IRP) in 2023, including resources already contracted for to come online this year and next, like Kuna.
Its first two build-own-operate BESS facilities were constructed in 2023 by BESS system integrator and manufacturer Powin Energy.
For developer Aypa Power, the finance raise follows recent progress on its 400MW/1,600MWh San Gabriel standalone BESS project in California and 100MW/200MWh Stargazer solar co-located BESS in Texas, as reported in depth by Energy-Storage.news Premium in late June.
The company claims to have more than 22GW of energy storage projects in development including standalone and hybrid facilities across the US.
Manulife invests in dispatchable storage and peakers
Hunt Energy Network, a developer of dispatchable energy resources including energy storage and fossil fuel peaker plants, has secured a US$250 million funding commitment from Manulife Investment Management.
The investment arm of global insurance company Manulife is contributing to financing a network of resources which Hunt Energy Network will develop and operate across the ERCOT Texas market.
While details of specific projects were not given, the developer said the portfolio will include energy storage and thermal peaking capacity.
There would also be ‘significant’ onsite fuel storage at the peakers, which Hunt claimed would be able to run on a variety of fuel types and therefore would not be dependent on natural gas supply chains.
The new projects could also be leveraged as customer-sited backup power when not participating in ERCOT markets.
The new commitment follows a previous, separate one, made by Manulife three years ago, as it committed US$225 million to create a joint venture (JV) with the developer.
That JV, HEN Infrastructure, develops and operates distribution-level energy storage resources in ERCOT. To date, 270MW of storage has gone into operation through it, with a further 80MW in development pencilled in for completion early next year.
Over US$3 billion financings announced since mid-July
The announcements follow other financings for energy storage and solar-plus-storage in the multiple hundreds of millions of dollars reported by Energy-Storage.news and our colleagues at PV Tech over the last few weeks alone.
RPlus Energies, a developer of renewables and storage including both batteries and pumped hydro energy storage (PHES), raised more than US$1 billion for a solar-plus-storage in Utah, and Intersect Power closed two financing deals worth US$837 million for three ERCOT projects. Both items were reported on the same day (18 July) by Energy-Storage.news.
Then, Clearway Energy Group closed a US$700 million construction financing transaction on a portfolio of California solar-plus-storage plants (reported 24 July), before just under a week later, independent power producer (IPP) Enlight Renewables said it had secured US$400 million towards a solar-plus-storage project in New Mexico which will feature 1.2GWh of BESS capacity.
At the beginning of this month, we reported that a trio of IPPs and developers, Eolian, BrightNight and esVolta, raised over a billion dollars between them for hybrid and standalone projects around the US.
