NextEnergy Capital has inaugurated two solar PV plants with a combined 260MW generation capacity in Portugal and Spain. The projects fall under the funding of NextEnergy’s NextPower III ESG (NPIII ESG) fund.
The projects themselves are a 210MW site in Santarém, Portugal, known as the Santarém project, and the 50MW Agenor site in Cadiz, Spain. Both are contracted under power purchase agreements (PPA) with European energy company Statkraft.
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NextEnergy said that the Santarém PPA – which was signed in April 2023 – is the largest offtake deal signed in Portugal to date. The combined projects are projected to produce an estimated 445GWh of power annually.
The NPIII ESG fund closed in January 2022 with US$896 million, significantly in excess of its US$750 million target. The fund – which is the third such vehicle organised by NextEnergy Capital and was its ‘largest’ to date when it closed – sought 2.5GW of renewable energy capacity in select Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, including Portugal, the US, Spain, Chile and Poland.
As of this week, NextEnergy said that the NPIII ESG fund has 173 solar and storage assets, totalling 1.8GW.
“I continue to be delighted by the progress of the NextPower III ESG portfolio, having fully committed the entirety of its capital ahead of its investment period expiry in late 2023,” said Michael Bonte-Friedheim, CEO and Founding Partner of the London-based NextEnergy Group. “We look forward to continuing this momentum with future capacity coming online across all of NextEnergy’s funds.”
In January 2023, the asset manager launched NPIII ESG’s successor, NextPower V ESG (NPV ESG), seeking a target of US$1.5 billion and 3.5GW of deployed capacity. In July, NPV ESG closed its first round of funding with US$480 million – it said that US$330 million were direct commitments and US$150 million were co-investment allocations.