133.6-MW Fern Solar project

Project description

Fern is the largest project developed and built by BayWa r.e. in the U.S. and the first large solar asset the company will own and operate. Fern asset will comprise 353,276 solar panels and 42 inverters and will produce enough electricity to power nearly 20,000 homes.

Scope of work

Norton Rose Fulbright represented BayWa r.e. Solar on the US$189 million debt and tax equity financing of the project.  

What makes the project unique

The Fern project benefits from pioneering virtual power purchase agreements (VPPAs), including a first-of-its-kind agreement that includes five companies separately contracting similar portions of the plant’s power generation. The VPPA, facilitated by LevelTen Energy, brought together Bloomberg, Cox Enterprises, Gap Inc, Salesforce and Workday, creating the Corporate Renewable Energy Aggregation Group and contracted a total of 42.5MW from Fern’s output. This was supplemented later in 2019 with the announcement that Starbucks had entered into a vPPA with BayWa r.e. for 46 MW.

Meet the Team

The project was led by our Washington DC and Los Angeles offices.