Canada's Invenergy Wind Secures $168 Million Financing from Manulife Financial for Raleigh Wind Energy Center

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Researched by Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas)--Invenergy Wind North America, a subsidiary of the privately owned Invenergy LLC (Chicago, Illinois), has obtained financing from a syndicate formed by Manulife Financial Corporation (NYSE:MFC) (Toronto, Canada) for the construction of a 78-megawatt (MW) windfarm near Windsor, Ontario.

Manulife, which has invested $82 million in the project, is the leader of the syndicate that will supply $164 million for construction and term loans. An additional $4 million will be used for contract support, taking the total value of funds sanctioned to $168 million.

The project, known as the Raleigh Wind Energy Center, is about 64 kilometers northeast of Windsor and 13 kilometers south of Chatham, and is the fourth such project involving Invenergy to receive finance from Manulife, which helped to finance three other projects of Invenergy in Montana, Colorado and Idaho.

The Raleigh project will consist of 52 wind turbines, supplied by GE Energy (Atlanta, Georgia), a division of General Electric Company (NYSE:GE) (Fairfield, Connecticut), standing in an area covering 9,300 acres. The turbines, GE model 1.5xle generators, have 82.5-meter-diameter rotors installed on towers standing 80 meters tall. The project is expected to be brought online during the third quarter of 2010.

Power from the project will be transmitted via a collection of underground and aerial cables at 34.5 kilovolts (kV) to a substation, where it will be stepped up to 230 kV before being sold to the Ontario wholesale electricity market under the administration of the Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) (Toronto, Ontario). Electricity will be sold at a price fixed under a 20-year contract with Ontario Power Authority (OPA) (Toronto).

Canada has windfarms across the country, covering most provinces. Of the total installed capacity of 3,319 MW, the largest share is in Ontario, which has a total of 1,168 MW of installed wind-power generating capacity. Canada produces enough electricity from wind sources to power about 1 million households, or approximately 1.1% of the total domestic demand.

According to the Canadian Wind Energy Association (CWEA) (Ottawa, Ontario), as of December last year there were 56 new wind energy projects, totaling more than 4,400 MW of new capacity, already under construction or with signed power purchase agreements in place.

These projects range in size from a 1.5-MW project in Grouse Mountain, British Columbia, scheduled for completion this year, up to a 350-MW windfarm at Rivière du Moulin in Quebec, scheduled for completion in 2014 or 2015. The latter is part of a group of five windfarms totaling 954 MW, planned by the St. Laurent Energies consortium, which involves, among others, EDF Energies Nouvelles S.A. (EPA:EEN) (Paris, France) and REpower Systems AG (ETR:RPW) (Hamburg, Germany).

The consortium will use REpower's 2-MW turbines for the five windfarms. It secured the contracts, totaling almost $1.87 billion in value, from Hydro-Quebec Distribution (Montreal, Quebec).

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