On March 7th, 2011 Shams Power Company, a joint venture between Masdar (Abu Dhabi, U.A.E.), Total SA (Courbevoie, France) and Abengoa SA (Seville, Spain), announced the financial close of the 100MW Shams 1 concentrating solar power (CSP) plant in the United Arab Emirates.

The USD 600 million closing combines financing from 10 regional and international lenders including BNP Paribas (Paris, France), the National Bank of Abu Dhabi (Abu Dhabi, U.A.E.) and Société Générale (Paris, France), with BNP Paribas acting as the financial advisor.

“The dynamic deal team was able to leverage knowledge across the sponsor group resulting in an innovative structuring and a ground-breaking financing for a landmark deal,” said Derek Rozycki, executive director, Structured Finance and Capital Markets at Mubadala (Abu Dhabi, U.A.E.), the parent company of Masdar. “Going forward, we will continue to leverage our extensive expertise in international capital markets and our knowledge of the region to support these types of leading edge financing deals.”

22-year amortizing structure

Masdar describes the financing as a non-recourse 22-year door-to-door fully amortizing structure. The company states that the financing was oversubscribed with commitments totaling more than USD 900 million.

In addition to the above named financial institutions, other lenders included KfW Bankengruppe (Frankfurt, Germany), Natixis (Paris, France), Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (Tokyo, Japan), the Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi (Tokyo, Japan), Union National Bank (Abu Dhabi, U.A.E.) and WestLB AG (Düsseldorf, Germany).

Plant to occupy 2.5 square kilometers

The Shams Power Company will develop, build, operate and maintain the plant, which is located in Madinat Zayed in the United Arab Emirates. Construction on the plant began during the third quarter of 2010 and Masdar expects the plant to be completed in approximately two years.

When complete, the Shams 1 plant will utilize 768 parabolic trough collectors, covering an area of 2.5 square kilometers. It is expected to be the largest solar plant in the Middle East and one of the largest in the world.

2011-03-10| Courtesy: Masdar | solarserver.com © Heindl Server GmbH

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