Vector Green In The Big League With Rattan India’s Renewables Acquisition

Vector Green Completes Rattan India Renewables Acquitition.

Mumbai-based Vector Green Energy Private Limited, now owned by the US based Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP), a global infrastructure investor with over $60 billion in assets worldwide, has formally entered the big league with the completion of its latest acquisition of about 275 MW pf solar assets belonging to Rattan India.. The firm, a wholly owned subsidiary of India Infrastructure Fund II of IDFC alternatives , which in turn was acquired by GIP,  has not made a formal announcement yet.

GIP of course also operates Vena Energy in the renewables space , which has a portfolio of over 11 GW in the Asia Pacific region. Vector Green seems to have emerged as the preferred vehicle to build a portfolio in India.

Vector Green’s Indian assets are spread across Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Punjab, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh. A portfolio built up from March 2018 onwards, when it launched formally with the acquisition of 150 MW of solar assets from First Solar.

Since then, the acquisition driven firm has built up its portfolio from multiple developers besides First Solar (AP and Telangana) , from Jindal Steel and Power (Maharashtra),  Punj Lloyd (40 MW in Punjab), ILFS (Madhya Pradesh) adding upto over 225 MW.

The Rattan India deal is for their complete portfolio of  solar assets, which includes rooftop (100 sites  of close to 9 MW) and  utility scale  projects that are actually between 20 MW  to  60 MW range. After going through Rattan India’s past announcements,  a strong positive in the deal possibly could be the fact that over 95% of the  PPA’s for projects in this deal are with central entities (SECI and NTPC), while one or two smaller projects are for captive consumption clients. These new projects are across Uttar Pradesh,  Maharashtra, Rajasthan (NTPC’s Pavagadh assets) and more. The utility projects in particular, being located in solar parks like Bhadla to Pavagadh or long term leased land, are also considered better for thus. Our sources tell us that  the ‘seasoning’ for most of these projects is quite recent, with most set up around 2015 or later, leaving a significant residuallife in the PPA’s of close to 23 years.  With the approximately 275 MW acquisition, the firm has expanded its portfolio size to over 0.5 GW or well over 500 MW, helping it enter the big league in the renewables space.

For Rattan India, the deal marks a complete exit from the renewables space, leaving the firm to focus on its 5400 MW thermal projects in Amravati and Nasik in Maharashtra.  The firm had raised $90 million in funding from GE Energy Financial Services, back in July 2017 for its renewables push. So it seems safe to assume that the deal has been helped along by the financial owner(GIP) and investor (GE) respectively in this case. Either way, the deal marks yet another instance of fresh FDI in the sector.  However, we are yet to be able to confirm the final deal value here.

GIP India’s partner incharge for Renewables is Aditya Agarwal, while Vector Green has a professional management team in place.