ALLETE to Acquire 100.5-Megawatt Wind Power Facility in Pennsylvania

Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--ALLETE Clean Energy (ACE), a wholly owned subsidiary of ALLETE Incorporated (NYSE:ALE) (Duluth, Minnesota), agreed to acquire AES Armenia Mountain Wind LLC, a 100.5-megawatt (MW) wind power facility near Troy, Pennsylvania, from AES Corporation (NYSE:AES) (Arlington, Virginia), and a non-controlling interest from a minority shareholder. The price tag was $108 million, plus the assumption of existing debt.

ALLETE Clean Energy exercised an option to purchase the facility on April 1. A purchase agreement with AES was signed April 30. Closing is expected in July.

Located in the PJM electricity market near the New York-Pennsylvania border, Armenia Mountain's 67 General Electric (NYSE:GE) (Fairfield, Connecticut) wind turbines, each with a capacity of 1.5 MW, were installed in 2009. All the facility's energy output is sold through existing power purchase agreements that extend through 2025.

This is the fourth wind facility ACE has acquired from AES. In January 2014, ACE finalized the acquisition of wind energy projects with a total capacity of 231 MW in Lake Benton, Minnesota; Storm Lake, Iowa; and Condon, Oregon, from AES. Armenia Mountain is the largest and newest of the wind installations acquired by ACE.

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