The utility-scale solar project will supply power to the PJM regional transmission operator.
Doral Renewables announced it has secured financing for the Great Bend Solar project, a 48 MW facility to be located in Meigs County, Ohio. The solar project marks Doral’s first in Ohio.
HBSC acted as sole lender, providing $114 million financing, which consisted of a $36 million construction-to-loan facility, $57 million tax equity bridge loan, and a $21 million letter of credit facility.
Once in operation, the project will supply power to the PJM regional transmission operator via a power purchase agreement (PPA), generating enough electricity roughly equivalent to the demand of 9,000 homes. The Great Bend Solar project is located on 370 acres about 100 miles against southeast of Columbus. The single-axis tracker project is expected to provide over $400,000 per year of new annual tax revenues for the county.
“We are thrilled to have collaborated with HSBC to raise this innovative project debt which will enable us to bring Great Bend Solar, our first project in the Buckeye State, to commercial operation around the end of 2025,” said Evan Speece, chief financial officer at Doral Renewables.
PJM
A report from LevelTen Energy said permitting challenges, a lack of construction companies available in the region, and a projected increase to PJM electricity prices over the next 10 to 15 years are driving higher prices. A lack of transmission to deliver clean energy to areas with high demand is also driving congestion and basis risks, thereby driving up prices.
LevelTen said In PJM, solar PPA prices increased 12% in-quarter. PJM’s solar P25 prices have now risen 31% year-over-year.
Analysis by nonprofit Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) found that PJM grid operator could enable interconnection of 4.8 GW of solar and 0.7 GW of wind capacity by 2027 through 95 deployments of grid-enhancing technologies (GETs). GETs would also enable 1.1 GW of stand-alone storage plus additional storage co-located with new solar.
The GETs would cost $100 million and yield production cost savings of $7 billion over six years, mostly due to the lower cost of operating renewable energy generators enabled by GETs, the report says. That translates to a 70-to-1 benefit-cost ratio.
PJM is the world’s largest wholesale electricity market, the report says, serving 65 million people; its service area is shown on map above. Wind and solar combined provided less than 5% of generation in the PJM region last year. PJM has instituted a pause on new interconnection applications until 2026.
HBSC (Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation) is a bank that originated in Hong Kong and now headquartered in London with offices, branches and subsidiaries in 62 countries and territories across Africa, Asia, Oceania, Europe, North America, and South America.
