IPP Enlight Renewable Energy has closed financing for the 1.2GWh BESS portion of its Atrisco solar and storage project in New Mexico, USA.
The 364MW solar, 1.2GWh battery energy storage system (BESS) project near Albuquerque will cost US$827 million to build – US$458 million for the BESS and US$369 million for the solar.
The 1,700-acre project is already in the commissioning phase and will reach a full commercial operation later this year. It was developed by developer RES and the BESS is being provided by Tesla, and has a 20-year PPA with utility Public Service Company of New Mexico.
Enlight has secured US$290 million in term debt, US$420 million in tax equity and will invest the remaining US$117 million itself as sponsor equity for the whole project. The financing for the solar portion had already been secured in December 2023 and the storage financing has now also been completed.
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Enlight, via the subsidiary Clenera, secured the loan from eight banks led by HSBC for the storage portion while tax equity was provided by US Bancorp Impact Finance. HSBC also led the consortium for the solar financing, while Bank of America provided the tax equity there.
The firm also provided the debt, tax equity and sponsor equity breakdown for the solar and storage separately, shown below. Debt is a larger portion of the storage financing, while tax equity and sponsor equity are larger for the solar.
New Mexico has an energy storage deployment target of 7GWh by 2034. The project is Enlight’s largest so far, but it is about to being construction on several other large-scale projects.
That includes the Country Acres (392MW solar and 688 MWh of storage) in California, Roadrunner (290MW and 940MWh) in Arizona, and Quail Ranch (128MW and 400MWh), which is a brownfield extension of the Atrisco project.
