Owner and operator Sunraycer Renewables has closed a US$475 million project financing facility for two solar-plus-storage projects located in Texas, US.
Financing was closed with MUFG Bank, Nomura Securities International and Norddeutsche Landesbank Girzonentrale (Nord/LB).
The US$475 million facility is divided between a construction-to-term loan and a tax credit bridge loan. It also includes a letter of credit.
Sunraycer’s two solar-plus-storage projects include the 143MW PV and 75MW battery storage Gaia project in Navarro County, Texas and the 97.5MW PV and 50MW battery storage Midpoint project located in Hill County, Texas.
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The projects have a total capacity of 241MW solar PV and 125MW battery energy storage.
Sunraycer says that the projects are expected to reach commercial operations later this year.
The company highlights the need for the projects amidst the increased manufacturing and data centre activity within the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) market.
Annapolis, Maryland-based Sunraycer is owned by private asset management firm Crayhill Capital Management. The company claims to have a development and construction pipeline of approximately 2GW of solar and 2GW of battery energy storage system (BESS) projects.
The company also has what it calls its ‘Accelerant Program’, which sees Sunraycer working with smaller developers and providing an alternative to working with traditional utilities.
As reported by Energy-Storage.news at the beginning of the year, Solar PV and BESS firm Canadian Solar announced it would deliver 315MWh of BESS and up to 2GWp of solar modules to Sunraycer for its Texas projects.
Canadian Solar’s energy storage subsidiary, e-Storage, provided 188MWh of BESS to the Gaia project and 127MWh of BESS to the Midpoint project.
Both Gaia and Midpoint are using over 60 of e-Storage’s SolBank 3.0 battery containers, which contain lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery cells.
German-based Nord/LB is active in financing energy storage projects. Energy and infrastructure sectors are one of its primary business segments.
Recently, Nord/LB was involved in a US$773 million debt financing for IPP Enlight Renewable Energy’s Country Acres solar-plus-storage project in Sacramento, California.
Prior to that, the bank led a US$183 million financing for developer Recurrent Energy’s 200MWh Fort Duncan Storage project in Maverick County, Texas.
