8minute Solar Energy says it has closed a US$225 million letter of credit (LC/) facility from a consortium of five banks.

The consortium is led by CIT Bank as sole coordinating lead arranger with partners KeyBank, HSBC, Rabobank and Nomura Holdings.

Project pipeline

The US solar developer says it will use the L/C facility to cost effectively post securities for its power purchase agreements (PPAs) and interconnection agreements for its 18 gigawatt (18GW) pipeline of solar and storage projects throughout California, Texas and the American Southwest.

8minute says the new L/C facility also ensures that it will be able to execute its 18GW pipeline, including 3GW of projects that the company added in April 2020 alone.

Replacement L/C facility

The L/C facility replaces 8minute's existing facility with Rabobank and represents a tenfold increase in capacity, which the solar developer says underscores the strength and growth of 8minute's project pipeline over the last four years.

The California-based solar developer has one of the largest development pipelines of solar and solar-plus-storage projects in the US, including more than 50 utility-scale projects in various stages of development, with a typical project size of 400 megawatts.

This article represents the views of the author and not necessarily those of the ICC or Coastline Solutions.