The two companies UK Climate Investments and Lightsource will jointly target the greenfield areas in Utility scale Solar Projects. The purpose would be the acquisition of utility scale solar assets to create a platform that can offer high quality de-risked investment opportunities in India’s rapidly developing Solar Market.
The seed assets for the partnership are Lightsources’s 60 MW project in the Indian state of Maharashtra. Lightsource had participated in the competitive tender process in 2016 and secured a 450 MW project managed by SECI. For the project over 200,000 modules will be ground mounted to generate enough electricity to power around 20,000 homes.
UK Climate Investments will provide 49% of the equity for the construction of the first project. It will partner with Lightsource to develop and construct up to 300 MW of PV projects. Third party funding and commercial project finance debt are options to support initial and later projects.
This equity investment will use official development assistance from the International Climate fund for leveraging private investment.
Lightsource as a part of the agreement will provide operations and asset management service for the platform in long term.
Nick Boyle, CEO for Lightsource said "The UK Climate Investments partnership, and our first Indian project reaching financial close, are significant milestones in the growth of Lightsource.”
Expressing that being a leading solar developer they will look to stimulate positive transformational impact by bringing best practices of risk mitigation to local market; Martin Stanley, Global head, Macquarie Infrastructure and Real assets, also said "This first investment for UK Climate Investments will provide the necessary sponsor support for the first project in a very promising series of potential solar investments in India, in line with UKCI’s investment mandate.”
(pv-magazine)
