Renewable energy fund, KGAL ESPF 5, has acquired two further solar parks near Magdeburg in Germany, Calvörde West and Grauingen.
According to KGAL, the two plants complement the Calvörde Ost solar park acquired at the beginning of 2023, which will soon go into operation. The Calvörde cluster has a total capacity of 120 megawatts. KGAL has already secured attractive long-term feed-in tariffs for the majority of the capacity.
The two solar parks Calvörde West (40 MW) and Grauingen (20 MW) near Magdeburg are scheduled to go into operation in autumn 2025 and are expected to generate predictable yields. Calvörde Ost (60 MW), meanwhile, has already been completed and marks the second solar park in KGAL ESPF 5 to be connected to the grid following its successful development by KGAL.
'Thanks to its very good positioning at the upper end of the price range in the latest EEG auctions, the entire Calvörde cluster has guaranteed attractive cash flows for the next 20 years,' said Carsten Haubner, portfolio manager at KGAL.
The Calvörde Ost solar park still has free generation capacity that is not covered by the EEG auction. KGAL will shortly participate in the Federal Network Agency's innovation tender for utility-scale solar power plants with battery storage.
The firm said that the Calvörde cluster marked another important milestone for the fund. 'Shortly before the final closing of our impact fund, 93% of the €351 mln equity has been allocated. At the same time, the first distributions are already flowing back to investors, with an attractive double-digit target return (net IRR) for the portfolio,' said Jonathan May, head of institutional business international at KGAL.
To date, the fund has invested in nine solar, wind and battery storage projects and three development platforms. The investments cover six European countries and have a total capacity of 1.1 gigawatts. The development pipeline totals a further 2 gigawatts.
KGAL ESPF 5 has its final close in October 2024. The Article 9 fund invests in renewable energy generation through photovoltaics and wind power, as well as storage technologies, using a core-plus strategy that has been tried and tested over many years for European institutional investors.