US solar company Sol Systems has secured US$250 million towards the construction of its 189MW Eldorado solar PV project in the state of Illinois.
Financing for the project was issued by financing partners Monarch Private Capital, the National Bank of Canada, ING Bank, National Australia Bank, Comerica Bank and Silicon Valley Bank. First Citizens Bank – another US institution – acquired Silicon Valley Bank in March 2023 after the latter collapsed and triggered concerns over the US community solar assets it had played a large part in financing.
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Located in Saline County, the Eldorado project will deploy “US-made solar panels and racking” – the modules are likely those that Sol Systems signed for earlier this month with major Chinese silicon-based solar manufacturer Canadian Solar, which recently began operations at a 5GW tunnel oxide pssivated contact (TOPCon) module production facility in Texas. The modules will be produced at Canadian Solar’s Texas factory and support Sol Systems’ 2024-25 project pipeline.
The Eldorado project is developed in partnership with energy Tenaska and expected to come online at some point in 2024.
In February 2022, Sol Systems bought a 540MW portfolio of Illinois PV projects from fellow solar developer Arevon Energy. The portfolio consisted of three projects, each reportedly representing 180MW of capacity, and was due to be developed with Tenaska. The transaction did not name the projects, so it is inconclusive whether the Eldorado site was one of them.
Sol Systems said that the site will incorporate pollinator habitat and biodiversity measures, like planting wildflowers and grasslands, to support the surrounding ecosystem.
Earlier this month the company inked a deal with technology giant Google to procure and invest in solar and energy storage projects across the US to support Google’s operations.