Germany’s Solar Millennium A.G. and OHL Industrial sold 49 percent of a planned 50-megawatt solar thermal plant to a fund managed by RREEF Infrastructure, one of Deutsche Banks business units, for an undisclosed amount.
The Arenales parabolic trough solar power plant will be built near the city of Morón de la Frontera in Seville province in Andalusia, south of Spain. It will supply enough electricity for 150,000 people and is expected to be operational in 2013.
Arenales is one of five solar thermal plants developed by Solar Millennium in Spain after the Andasol and Ibersol projects each with 50 MW of generating capacity. The project is pre-registered with the Spanish government to receive above-market rates of 0.475 euros ($0.674) per kilowatt-hour through a feed-in tariff scheme.
RREEF Pan-European Infrastructure Fund, L.P. made the purchase through its Fronterasol B.V. unit in Spain. Solar Millennium and Obrascon Huarte Lain, S.A., the parent company of OHL Industrial, now hold 26 and 25 percent in the project, respectively, pending European Union antitrust approval expected this month. RREEF Infrastructure is a business unit of Deutsche Bank’s Asset Management division.
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Obrascon Huarte Lain and Solar Millennium had just taken over Arenales from Fotowatio Renewable Ventures in April this year, each acquiring 50 percent of the project.
“Because of the considerable debt ratio, we’re able to finance our equity ratio without the emission of funds from our own resources,” Christoph Wolff, chief executive of Solar Millennium, said in the statement. “We’re also not ruling out the possibility of a sale of additional project shares.”
Along with the announcement, Solar Millennium said the project also got loans from Spanish and French banks to fund about 75 percent of the construction and investment costs, with the rest to be funded by shareholders.
Ecolaire Espana S.A., a company of the O.H.L., will construct the power plant while its development and management will be carried out by Milenio Solar Desarrollo de Proyectos, a Spanish subsidiary of Solar Millennium. Flagsol G.m.b.H. will construct the thermal storage unit and the heat transfer fluid system on behalf of Ecolaire.
Solar Millennium’s solar-thermal power plants generate electricity by using long curved mirrors to direct sunlight to a receiver pipe running at the focus of the reflector. The pipe contains a heat transfer liquid used to generate steam which powers a turbine that drives an electric generator. Storing heat in thermal storage, usually composed of tanks filled with special salts, can extended the operating hours of the plant long after sunshine.
