Sunday, January 06, 2008

SSE buys Airtricity, sets a benchmark?

Just announced, SSE has won the auction for Airtricity for around £1.1 billion (according to the Herald. The deal involves a purchase price of some £800 million and the adoption of around £300 million of Airtricity debt (which you'd expect SSE to be able to refinance cheaply).

The Airtricity website claims that the company has 455 MW in operation, with 636 MW under development and up to 9,000 MW of longer term projects in planning and pre-planning. The majority of these last projects appear to be offshore and aren't specifically identified.

The Herald article quotes from SSE's own press release and says "...Among the Airtricity assets to be acquired by SSE are a 308-megawatt portfolio of operating onshore windfarms in Scotland and Ireland, plus a further 187 megawatts of windfarms that have been given consent and are under construction. There is also a proposed 483-megawatt windfarm between Biggar and Moffat in the Borders, which is "in an advanced stage in the consent process"."

Over the next few days, I'll be undertaking an economic assessment of the deal...

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