TerraForm Power, Inc., New York, entered into a definitive agreement to acquire a high-quality, unlevered distributed generation platform with up to 320 megawatt of capacity in the United States from subsidiaries of AltaGas Ltd., Canada, for $720 million.

“Following the close of this transaction, TerraForm Power is expected to own one of the largest portfolios of distributed generation in the United States. The acquisition will increase TerraForm Power’s average contract duration to 14 years and enhance its resource diversity,” says John Stinebaugh, chief executive officer of TerraForm Power. “Furthermore, this demonstrates our strategy of recycling capital from stabilized assets with limited opportunities for further value creation into newly acquired assets that meet our return targets and have commercial and operational upside that we can extract through our integrated operating platform.”

Transaction highlights include:

• High-quality asset base in attractive markets. The portfolio represents one of the largest distributed generation platforms in the United States, comprised of 291 megawatts of commercial and industrial solar assets, 21 megawatts of residential solar assets and 10 megawatts of fuel cells. Diversified across 20 states and in the District of Columbia and with over 100 commercial and industrial customers, the portfolio is comprised of assets with an average age of 3.5 years that have power purchase agreements with an average investment grade credit rating of A+/A2 and an average remaining term of over 17 years.
   
• Attractive upside potential. TerraForm Power’s business plan is to extract incremental value by cross-selling additional products such as storage and backup generation to its commercial and industrial customers and leveraging the scale of what will be a combined 750 megawatts distributed generation portfolio.