In this episode of NewsFlash, we discuss FairWind’s acquisition of Wind 1000 to expand its wind installation business internationally. Acciona Energía is selling wind and solar assets to raise capital for future projects, Repsol ordered turbines from Vestas for a new wind farm in Spain. And Ambuja Cement, owned by the Adani Group, announced plans to invest over $700 million in renewable energy to decarbonize its operations. These deals highlight continued consolidation and growth in the global renewable energy industry.

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Allen Hall: I’m Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech, and I’m here with the founder and CEO of IntelStor, Phil Totaro, and the chief commercial officer of Weather Guard, Joel Saxum, and this is your News Flash. News Flash is brought to you by our friends at IntelStor. If you need actionable information about renewable projects or technologies, check out Intelstor at intelstor.com.

FairWind, a global provider of wind turbine installation and service solutions, is going to acquire Wind 1000. Wind 1000 is a Spain based regional leader in onshore wind installations in southern Europe and South America. The acquisition aligned with FairWind’s global expansion strategy into wind 1000s regions.

The combined company expects to grow to a workforce of over 2000 people globally and approaching 1. 5 billion in combined revenue. Phil, this is a big merger of service providers over in Europe.

Philip Totaro: Yeah. And it’s interesting because while we’ve seen a lot of like supply chain and independent service provider consolidation, the EPC companies haven’t necessarily been gobbling each other up or merging all that much. But the fact that FairWind wanted to be able to entertain international expansion, this is a fairly good fit, I think, for them in that strategy.

Joel Saxum: Yeah. And so doing any kind of international business, you understand that, some cultures just like to work together.

The Spanish culture, Latin American culture, South American culture is one of them, right? Like the, it’s hard to make inroads into those countries if you don’t have, if you don’t speak language, if you don’t understand the culture, if you’re not a part of it. So tying that up at the top level is going to enable FairWind’s expansion into those countries that are strategically hard to get a foothold in if you’re an outsider. Great job by FairWind, enabling that expansion.

Allen Hall: Acciona Energía, a major Spanish renewable power company, has hired BNP Paribas to sell its assets. Acciona is planning to sell 308 megawatts of wind capacity and 370 megawatts of solar project potential at roughly 500 million euros.

It comes as Acciona looks to raise cash from asset sales in 2024 to reduce debt. Phil, this is becoming more and more common as some of these energy providers have older assets and they’re trying to bolster their books and maybe look towards projects in the future. They need cash, so you need to get rid of those older facilities.

You need to find somebody to help you sell them, usually.

Philip Totaro: Yeah, and keep in mind too, this is an asset portfolio in Spain that is, you know, basically has seen full net positive return on capital during its lifetime already. It’s getting close to the age where they’re going to repower it. And so they want to be able to move that merchandise.

So the BNP Paribas hiring is good fit for them.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, you’ll see this across the, if you’re not used to the mergers and acquisitions environment, a lot of time when you get to a transaction of this size, there’s always going to be an expert brought in, right? You’re going to have a KPMG, you’re going to have a Boston Consulting Group, you’re going to have someone come in, guide the process.

And a lot of times that comes with a lot of connections in the industry, connections to money, capital, understanding. If you’ve not, if you’re not familiar with the process, that’s usually always what happens, to transactions like this.

Allen Hall: Repsol is going to place 31 megawatts of turbine orders with Vestas for a project in Spain.

It includes supply and installation of five V162 6. 2 megawatt Inventus turbines, Vestas’ most powerful onshore turbine. It’s the first order in Spain for Vestas Inventus platform with the modular full converter technology. The turbines meet the Spanish grid code and the delivery is expected in Q2 of 2024 and commissioning in Q4.

Phil, there seems to be a little bit of activity in Spain in terms of new installations. Vestas seems to be a part of that. You see some more press releases about GE doing something similar. The one that doesn’t seem to be making any progress in Spain at the moment is Siemens Gamesa.

Philip Totaro: That’s correct, Allen and keep in mind that this Repsol order actually was originally intended to be a Siemens Gamesa order.

They wanted to use the 5 megawatt 145 platform, but they switched over to Vestas and Ventas platform, due to the product Siemens Gamesa was having. They wanted turbines in a particular time frame, and so Repsol switched up the order. Obviously Vestas has had a footprint in Spain for a while, but this is important because this gives them an opportunity to get their five and six megawatt platform, with 162 meter rotor, deployed there.

They’ve already got orders for that in other markets, throughout Europe, certainly Germany. I think there’s one onshore, one in Denmark. Certainly the other Scandinavian countries have had some orders and even, the U. S. and certainly Australia. Spain is yet another market for Vestas to get a foothold with this, this new onshore platform, and it’s unfortunately coming at the expense of Siemens Gamesa in this case.

Joel Saxum: Yeah, I think this one’s really impressive. When you start to look at the numbers as the wind industry changes, we’re looking at five turbines here. So five turbines, 31 megawatts, five turbines powering 29, 000 households annually. That’s just impressive, right? And I know these V162, six, six megawatt, machines from Vestas.

Allen and I did see a few of them in Oklahoma while we were driving through just the other week, and they are impressive machines. They’re big. They’re really big.

Allen Hall: Ambuja Cement, Indian cement maker owned by the Adani Group, it plans to invest 723 million into one gigawatts of renewable energy. It’s seeking to install 850 megawatts in solar parks and 150 megawatts in wind farms.

The goal is to decarbonize production and to cut power costs by 20 percent amid zero emissions push. Obviously cement is a big CO2 contributor, Phil. So it looks like Adani is going to take some real steps here to cut out the CO2 used to power this cement factory.

Philip Totaro: Indeed. And keep in mind, the other aspect of this is the fact that it’s all happening under the umbrella of Adani Group means that they’re going to have the opportunity to get another gigawatt worth of orders for this 5. 2uh, megawatt, 160 meter, onshore wind platform that they’ve developed. That they’re hoping to be able to prove out in the Indian and Sri Lankan markets, and then sell internationally. So this is them leveraging another business unit of Adani Group in addition to their project development and, real estate investment trust, corporations, that do a lot of the project development investment.

This is also another business unit of Adani Group that is also investing a rather substantial amount of money to get another gigawatt of order book,and get this product platform proven out.