Canada’s Public Sector Pension Investment Board (PSP Investments) has been involved in two recent hydro plant transactions. First, PSP Investments and ENGIE Group and have entered into an agreement to acquire a 1.4 GW portfolio of hydro plants in the New England region of the U.S. This transaction was closed on June 1, 2016.
The US$1.2 billion acquisition will be managed by PSP Investments’ existing hydropower platform, H2O Power LP. Included in PSP Investments’ latest deal is the 1,168-MW Northfield Mountain pumped-storage plant in Massachusetts, along with 12 conventional projects primarily located on the Connecticut River in Massachusetts and the Housatonic River in Connecticut. Combined, the conventional assets have a capacity of 134 MW.
“The purchased assets are an excellent fit with PSP Investments’ long-term investment horizon and its strategy to leverage industry-specialized platforms, such as H2O Power,” said Guthrie Stewart, PSP Investments Senior Vice President.
Second, H2O Power have acquired the 13.6-MW Allegheny 8 and the 17.9-MW Allegheny 9 hydro plants. The run-of-river facilities are on the Allegheny River in Armstrong and Indian counties in Pennsylvania. They are interconnected into the New York Independent System Operator, and electricity is sold to New York State Electric & Gas Corp. under a long-term power purchase agreement. Together the two plants annually generate about 200 GWh. PSP Investments acquired the projects in May 2015 and transferred them under H2O Power’s ownership structure at the beginning of this year.
H2O owns 8 hydroelectric stations in Ontario totaling 138 MW. H2O’s majority owner is PSP Investments while the minority owner is BluEarth Renewables Inc., a Canadian independent renewable power producer that operates projects across North America.