Mercom Capital Group has released its report on funding and merger and acquisition (M&A) activity for the wind sector during the first quarter of 2013. Wind venture capital funding rebounded in the first quarter of 2013, raising US$ 16 million in three deals after the previous quarter saw just one US$ 500,000 VC deal.
VC deals included Export Development Canada’s US$ 7 million financing of Endurance, a Vancouver-based manufacturer of wind turbines designed for power grid applications. Also receiving financing was Pentalum, a developer of a wind LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) system for remote sensing of wind, which raised US$ 5.5 million from Bright Capital, Cedar Fund, Evergreen Venture Partners, ABB and Draper Fisher Jurvetson. Finally, Heartland Energy Solutions, a manufacturer of 100 kW wind turbines and blades, raised US$ 3.9 million. Most of the funding activity this quarter went towards project funding. Announced project funding in Q1 2013 came to US$ 6.2 billion in 29 deals with some extremely large transactions recorded this quarter. Large-scale onshore wind projects received over US$ 3.42 billion in 26 deals while offshore wind projects received over US$ 2.74 billion in three deals. In the United States, wind became the most installed energy generation source in 2012 and has continued that momentum in the first quarter of 2013. There were four M&A transactions in Q1 2013, amounting to US$ 543 million, out of which three were disclosed. The top M&A transaction this quarter was the acquisition of the Polish onshore wind business of Dong Energy by two Polish power utilities Polska Grupa Energetyczna (PGE) and Energa, for US$ 314 million. There was strong project acquisition activity this quarter with 17 transactions amounting to US$ 1.4 billion. The largest project M&A transaction by amount was UK-based renewable energy investor and developer Blue Energy’s acquisition of the 177MW RidgeWind portfolio from HgCapital for US$ 392 million. The largest project acquisition byMW was Geronimo Energy’s acquisition of Midwest Wind Energy’s 1,000MW Wind Park Burg II Project.
