Developer Secures Financing to Complete Wind Farm

BANGOR, Maine — KeyBank and Norddeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale, Germany’s tenth-largest financial institution, announced the securing of $98 million in financing to facilitate the completion of First Wind’s $130 million, 60-megawatt Rollins Mountain industrial wind site in Lincoln.

 

Key Bank National Association and Norddeutsche Landesbank Girozentrale are jointly acting as lead arrangers for the financing. JPM Capital Corp. has executed a tax equity financing agreement with a subsidiary of First Wind. JPM Capital will provide long-term capital to secure a construction loan once the site begins to operate.

 

Local group Friends of Lincoln Lakes challenged First Wind’s financial capacity in the Maine Supreme Court just a few days before First Wind’s announcement. Despite the announcement, Friends of Lincoln Lake’s challenge will likely proceed, according to the group’s president Brad Blake.

 

With regard to the group’s challenge, First Wind said it had closed an $81 million nonrecourse construction loan and secured a letter of credit worth $17 million for the project.

 

The Friends group has made a dozen attempts to halt the Rollins Mountain project, with its latest appeal seeking a judicial review of the conditions approved by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, which it granted First Wind last year in its permit.

 

Under the conditions, First Wind must prove its financial ability to complete the project.

 

Construction on the project began in September and is estimated to be complete by early April. Concrete bases for the turbines will be poured in Burlington, Lincoln, Lee and Winn. Each turbine will generate 1.5 megawatts of electricity.

 

The company has raised more than $357 million in financing and repaid $118 million in short-term turbine supply loans. The financing went towards its Rollins project, the expansion of its Milford, Utah, project, and its Steel Winds facility in Lackawanna, N.Y.