Greenbacker Buys Two Florida Solar Projects for $4.15 Million

(Bloomberg) — Greenbacker Renewable Energy Co., a New
York-based investor in renewable-energy assets, purchased two
Florida solar farms for about $4.15 million.

With the acquisition, Greenbacker now owns about 13
megawatts of solar capacity in the U.S. and Canada, David Sher,
the company’s director, said Friday. The Florida power plants
generate about 2 megawatts of electricity that’s sold to
Gainesville Regional Utilities.

“Longterm, contracted deals, that’s our focus,” Sher said
in a telephone interview.

Greenbacker, which may raise as much as $1.5 billion, is
organized as a so-called yieldco, a structure that allows it to
generate lower-cost capital to fund projects. The market for
yieldcos, which didn’t exist three years ago, is on pace to
reach $100 billion, more than quadrupling.

Greenbacker has so far invested only in photovoltaics
because “there’s a scalability factor,” Sher said. “Solar
deals can be much smaller and still be high quality. With wind,
you need larger assets. As we raise capital, we’ll do more wind
and other kinds of stuff.”

To contact the reporter on this story:
Justin Doom in New York at
jdoom1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Reed Landberg at
landberg@bloomberg.net
Jim Efstathiou Jr., Will Wade

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