Wind Power Project Finance – The What, the How, and the Where

To continue with this series of Green Power Project Financing, we’re talking today about wind energy.

Wind energy has really become integrated into our culture, worldwide in fact, over the last couple of decades.  We developed wind mills that harnessed energy, started popping them up a little bit everywhere, then the technology developed even more, methods of storing energy, and then there are offshore wind farms that developed, and today you can buy your own wind mill and power your house yourself!

Wind energy is part of this growing green energy trend that’s becoming part of the social consciousness and wind farm financing demand is growing by the day.  We get clients coming from the four corners of the globe telling us about new wind energy projects they want to develop.  What’s great about wind energy projects (what’s indeed great about most green energy projects) is that you can sell that energy to the grid, and governments and power companies are very eager for that extra energy that they can distribute due to the exponential increase in energy demand every year.

What can be tricky is positioning, so you need to have your homework done and your surveys on hand and have that proof of constant and high amounts of wind to power your wind mills.  For example, offshore wind power can harness the better wind speeds that are available offshore compared to land, so offshore wind power’s contribution (in terms of electricity supplied) is higher.

So you’ve done your homework, you’ve got your survey and your data, and you have a great location for a (small or large) wind farm. Now what? Well you need an off-take agreement. What’s an off-take agreement, you ask? It’s an agreement where a third party (government/ private power and utility company) will guarantee by signature that they will buy your output for a certain amount of time in the future.

Why is that such a good thing? Because for the investor(s) it’s a guarantee of return on their investment. It’s also a guaranteed steady payment on your loan debt because the energy the solar farm produces is sold over the long term. Guaranteed income is a nice magic word that investors like to hear.

So now that you’ve got all this, the rest is really not that hard. You need to put together a good Business Plan, a Feasibility Plan, and find a good manufacturer.  Don’t go for what’s cheapest here; you need this to be solid and last a long time without requiring maintenance every other day.  We’ll be telling you our recommendations for wind mill manufacturers later on in another blog.

So now what? Go and get funded!  But as always…

Always make sure that you make an informed decision in all cases,

All the Best,

The Capital Corp Team