Konkoonsies Solar PV

active

N.B. These projects have been separated in the database as they have unique SPVs. The 27MW Dassiesklip Wind, 10MW Aires Solar & 10MW Konkoonsies Solar projects were under development by BioThermEnergy (Pty) Limited (BTE), a South African renewable energy developed backed by South African private equity firm Denham Capital. Both solar projects were expected to hold 45,000 PV panels each. The wind farm was to comprise 9 turbines of 3.0MW initially, but capacity was reported to be up to 54.4MW by the developer. The projects were awarded in a tender administered by the Department of Energy where a critical factor in the decision was the projected price of power. Contractual negotiations on the PPAs and financing were to be completed by June 2012, but it was predicted that there would be a 20 year PPA with the state owned utility, Eskom. The EPC contractor for the solar plants was to be Juwi Solar (Germany), on turn-key basis. The wind farm was to constructed by a consortium of Sinovel, Group Five and Iberdrola. The projects were to be financed together by Denham (equity) and Standard Bank, the Industrial Development Corporation (IDC) and Nedbank (debt), with a projected total investment of ZAR 1 billion (USD 128 million, with expected commissioning for the projects in 2014. Update: In 2012 the solar portion of the project closed a local currency financing for a total project cost of USD 35 million. Debt was provided by Nedbank and the Industrial Development Corporation for a tenor of 15 years with interest priced at between 400-500 bps over JIBAR. 10 million of equity was put into the project by Biotherm. http://www.engineeringnews.co.za/article/company-announcement-biotherm-ceo-lauds-does-renewable-energy-bid-process-2012-01-23 http://www.biothermenergy.com/uploads/articles/0017%20BTE%20Wind%20Projects%20Brochure%20web.pdf