NextEra Energy Partners and Desert Sunlight Investment Holdings reach agreement

NextEra Energy Partners, along with a subsidiary of its sponsor NextEra Energy Resources, has reached an agreement to acquire an indirect 24 percent interest in Desert Sunlight Investment Holdings. 

The agreement expands NextEra Energy Partners’ portfolio to 2,788 megawatts of contracted renewable energy projects.

"This acquisition further demonstrates our ability to acquire assets at attractive yields that will be accretive for our investors, as well as the continued strength of the pipeline of growth opportunities that our sponsor, NextEra Energy Resources, provides," Jim Robo, chairman and CEO of NextEnergy Partners, said. "In addition, NextEra Energy Partners' continued ability to access the equity markets aligns with our previously communicated flexible and opportunistic approach to advance our growth strategy and deliver unitholder distributions consistent with the expectations we've outlined. NextEra Energy Partners, in our view, remains the premier YieldCo in the space."

The acquisition expects to be completed in the fourth quarter of 2016 for $218 million, which takes into account approximately $258 million of the existing non-recourse project debt.

The Desert Sunlight Solar Energy Center in Riverside County, California, is a 550-megawatt solar generation plant which includes Desert Sunlight Investment Holdings’ two project entities. The Center has 8 million solar energy panels that could generate power for up to 160,000 homes.