Scout Closes $210 mn Financing for 130 MW Indiana Wind Farm

Scout Clean Energy has announced the closing of construction financing and tax equity commitments for the 130 MW Bitter Ridge Wind Farm in Indiana.

Scout Clean Energy, a Colorado-based renewable energy developer, owner and operator, today announced the closing of construction financing and tax equity commitments for the 130 MW Bitter Ridge Wind Farm (Bitter Ridge) in Jay County, Indiana.

Bitter Ridge has been developed by Scout and will be owned and operated long-term by the firms’ dedicated asset management team. Scout is a portfolio company of Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners (Quinbrook), a specialist investment manager focused exclusively on lower carbon and renewable energy infrastructure investment and operational asset management in the US, UK and Australia.

Michael Rucker, CEO and founder of Scout said that the Bitter Ridge is Scout’s second project to close construction financing this year and follows the recent successful closing of the firms’ Heart of Texas project and the commencement of operations at Ranchero.

“We anticipate that Bitter Ridge will be fully operational by September of next year. Bitter Ridge is also the second greenfield project that the Scout team has developed from inception and it will support up to two hundred jobs during construction and as many as five permanent jobs once operational. Bitter Ridge brings Scout’s operational and construction wind portfolio to over 900 MW. This is quite an achievement by the combined Quinbrook and Scout teams considering that we kicked off the program together less than three years ago,” he said.

Construction on the project, which is located on approximately 10,000 acres in Jay County is well advanced with all turbine foundations already complete ahead of the winter season. The project will utilize fifty-two (52) of the latest generation GE 2-MW platform wind turbines. Scout has signed firm purchase orders for the supply of the wind turbines with General Electric and has entered into a balance of plant construction services agreement with Mortenson.

The firm has also secured a 15-year Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with Constellation, an Exelon company for the long-term purchase of approximately 80 percent of the renewable energy and capacity generated by Bitter Ridge.

According to the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas Equivalency Calculator, Bitter Ridge is predicted to offset over two-hundred ninety-two thousand (292,000) metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually and over 10 million metric tons during its operating life.