Georgetown, Texas To Be 100% Renewable Energy Powered

SunEdison - Georgetown

SunEdison, Inc. (NYSE: SUNE), has announced it will build new solar power generation facilities in West Texas to enable the City of Georgetown to go 100% renewable.

Georgetown, located 42 km north of Austin’s Central Business District, is a city with a population of approximately 47,400 and home to Southwestern University, the oldest university in Texas.

The 150MW of SunEdison solar plants will generate more than 9,500 gigawatt-hours of clean electricity to Georgetown through 2041, enough to power more than 24,000 households.

The projects  will create close to 800 jobs during construction and will be interconnected in 2016. Upon completion, SunEdison says it expects to offer the Georgetown project for investment to TerraForm Power, Inc. (NASDAQ: TERP), SunEdison’s yieldco.

“Georgetown is an exceptional city, and by going 100% renewable they will cut down on pollution, save water, and enjoy stable energy prices,” said Paul Gaynor, Executive Vice President of North America Utility and Global Wind at SunEdison.

” They’re able to accomplish all of this without spending a penny up front with SunEdison’s power purchase agreement. Georgetown is a model for other cities that hope to become powered by clean renewable energy.”

SunEdison was the first solar energy provider in the world to offer a solar Power Purchase Agreement, also known as a solar PPA. The Georgetown project represents the largest utility scale solar agreement in Texas for the company to date.

According to Jim Briggs, interim city manager for Georgetown and general manager for utilities, the solar PPA along with a 144 megawatt wind power agreement finalized in 2014 will make Georgetown Utility Systems one of the largest municipal utilities in the USA to be 100% renewable powered.

In other recent SunEdison news,  two projects developed and financed by the company and owned by TerraForm Power have been recognised by IJGlobal (Infrastructure Journal and Project Finance Magazine) at their Americas Awards ceremony.

The 81.6 MW Regulus solar facility in Kern County, California, was named “North American Renewables Deal of the Year”.  Ryan Bennett, Vice President of project finance, North America at SunEdison, says Regulus was an extremely complex project; one that was successfully executed due to the collective creativity of SunEdison’s capital partners.

The 69.5 MW Javiera Solar project, located in the Atacama region of Chile, was named “Latin American Solar Deal of the Year”.

“This award recognizes our ability to innovate in project finance and to attract commercial banks to finance high value projects such as Javiera in Chile,” said Jose Perez, President of SunEdison EMEA and Latin America.

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