OPIC approves $123 million for pair of 20MW PV power plants to be built by T-Solar in Peru

Jul 20, 2011 - Tom Cheyney - pv-tech.org

The board of the Overseas Private Investment Corp. (OPIC) has approved $123 million in financing for the construction of two 20MW solar power plants in Peru, said to be the first large-scale solar power project in the Latin American country. Along with the involvement of Peru's ProInversion investment promotion agency, the ground-mount-based projects will be developed by T-Solar and use silicon thin-film panels made by the Spanish company with Applied Materials SunFab technology.

The project, located on two separate sites in the rural Arequipa region in southwestern Peru, will sell all the electricity it produces to the national grid and thereby support the country’s effort to diversify its sources of electricity generation. The project companies were awarded 20-year power purchase agreements by Peru’s Ministry of Energy and Mines.
 
“We are delighted to take part in a landmark development for Peru’s renewable energy sector – its first major solar energy project,” said OPIC President/CEO Elizabeth Littlefield. “The project will help Peru diversify its source of electricity, and will do so using solar technology developed by an American company. This is precisely the type of catalytic impact OPIC seeks to generate in the renewable energy sector globally.”

The U.S. sponsor of the project is Assured Guaranty Municipal Corp., a New York-based public finance and global infrastructure subsidiary of Assured Guaranty Ltd. The project is Assured Guaranty’s first transaction in the solar sector, and materialized due to OPIC’s participation. Assured Guaranty Municipal is expected, subject to closing conditions including internal credit approval, to provide a partial risk guaranty for the project.

The timeline for development, construction, and completion of the project has not been disclosed.