Florida-headquartered Spearmint Energy said it has closed a financing package of $450 million to support a standalone battery energy storage system (BESS) installation in Texas. The company earlier in May said the funding supports Red Egret, a 300-MW/600-MWh BESS in Texas City, located southeast of Houston.
The company on May 21 said the financing package includes a construction facility, an Investment Tax Credit (ITC) transfer, and preferred equity. The Red Egret installation is already under construction.
Spearmint Energy, which also has an office in Minnesota, is focused on developing, owning, operating, and optimizing BESS to reduce grid volatility and increase power system resiliency. The company at present operates 350 MW/700 MWh of BESS in the ERCOT territory across Texas, with other projects under development in the U.S.
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“As aging grid infrastructure meets unprecedented growth in electricity demand, this financing supports Spearmint’s ability to increase energy resilience in ERCOT through battery energy storage systems,” said Andrew Waranch, founder, president, and CEO of Miami-based Spearmint. “Through our development of Red Egret, we are working to strengthen reliability and deliver safe, cost-effective power to homes and businesses in Texas City and throughout the Texas Gulf Coast.”
The company said the construction facility for the project includes financing totaling $225 million, and is provided by a consortium of banks led by First Citizens Bank and Investec as coordinating lead arrangers and joint bookrunners, Nord/LB as joint lead arranger, and East West Bank as mandated lead arranger. The construction facility will be repaid when commercial operations commence with $96 million of preferred equity investment secured from Nuveen Energy Infrastructure Credit, the infrastructure credit investment platform of Nuveen, backed by TIAA. The project also will receive about $126 million of proceeds from an ITC transfer commitment.
Red Egret is the fourth project built for Spearmint by Minnesota-based M.A. Mortenson Co., and is the fourth Spearmint project to use the PowerTitan platform supplied by Sungrow USA. The project is expected to be completed next year. It will bring Spearmint’s overall operating portfolio to more than 1.5 GWh of total battery capacity across four projects. Those include the Tierra Seca and Seven Flags installations, which are each 100-MW/200-MWh BESS located in Del Rio and Laredo, Texas. The projects entered service in December of last year.
—Darrell Proctor is a senior editor for POWER.
