Investment firm Partners Group has agreed to acquire a controlling stake in Dimension Renewable Energy, a US-based distributed energy platform focused on community solar and battery storage.
The deal comes three years after Dimension was founded and will see Switzerland-headquartered Partners Group support the company in growing its portfolio and entering new markets, as it aims to become a more than US$1 billion platform.
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With a focus on developing, financing and operating community solar and battery storage facilities across the US, Dimension has grown a pipeline of more than 180 projects in eight states with a combined solar capacity of over 800MW as well as 800MWh of battery storage.
Early last year, Dimension secured a deal to develop a 300MW / 1,200 MWh portfolio of utility-scale battery energy storage projects in New York State alongside Ares Infrastructure and Power.
Partners Group said that community solar benefits from several trends driving the low-carbon transition, including the increasing environmental consciousness of consumers as well as a regulatory landscape facilitating the decentralisation of the power sector to improve reliability.
“The highly fragmented nature of the community solar market in the US, as well as Partners Group’s extensive experience building platform assets, allows for significant potential to add to Dimension’s organic pipeline through project-level M&A,” said Todd Bright, partner, head of private infrastructure Americas, Partners Group.
Recent developments in the US distributed solar space have seen EDP Renewables purchase a majority stake in C2 Omega, the distributed solar platform of renewables investor C2 Energy Capital, and utility Xcel Energy reveal an ambition to develop 1.3GW of distributed PV in Colorado by 2030.
As of Q1 2021, the US had 3.1GW of installed community solar and is expected to deploy a further 4GW of capacity in the next five years, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association, which says more than 40 states now have at least one community PV project online.
Earlier this year, US community solar provider Nexamp closed a credit facility for a 380MW portfolio of PV and energy storage assets, while utility AES Corporation secured a facility to finance the development of a community solar project portfolio totalling 215MWdc of capacity across Illinois, New York and Massachusetts.