Cypress Creek Sr Director of Development discusses new solar projects in Washington state; recent internal changes
Cypress Creek Renewables (CCR) has two 80 MW solar projects in Washington state planned to go online in 2024 that were the focus of an informational meeting hosted by the state’s Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council on June 1.
During the meeting, CCR’s Senior Director of Development Tai Wallace said that the Ostrea Solar Project is on route to achieve its Commercial Operation Date (COD) by 2Q24 and already has a secured offtake agreement with an investment-grade rated commercial counter party.
Meanwhile, the High Top Solar Project has a COD of late 2024 with the goal to secure an offtaker by the end of 2022.
Wallace told NPM that large utility-scale solar projects are still fairly new in Washington state and that CCR has a handful of projects in development in addition to High Top and Ostrea.
In total, CCR is committed to executing USD 500m in capital expenditures for clean energy in the Washington state market over the next few years, he said.
For the High Top and Ostrea projects, Wallace said CRR began pursuing them in early 2017. Now, High Top is well-positioned to support the load pocket on the core system while Ostrea “is an offtake through multiple paths because it’s on the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) wholesale system.”
Ultimately, he said these projects will help support the goals of a Washington-based organization to meet their decarbonization goals.
Additionally, CCR has taken an interconnection and transmission-oriented approach to the region where the projects are to be located, evaluating any potential issues early on.
“We were looking at interconnection and transmission potential in this valley from conceptualization and inception for these projects,” he said. “We’ve worked very closely with our transmission operating partners, BPA and PacifiCorp, and built good relationships with them. We’ve been consistently present throughout the study process so as these studies are completed, we’re moving and advancing development of these projects at the same time.”
CCR’s goal is to move the projects through the interconnection queue in a “timely fashion” so that electricity generation can be delivered to customers without delay. He recognized that there are transmission congestion concerns in the region, but that CCR’s approach to development addressed that for these projects.
Currently, CCR has developed about 11.5 GW in solar projects with an active pipeline of 13.5 GW located across the U.S. Specifically in the West, Wallace said CCR is looking to build development partnerships with utilities and offtakers and has actively engaged in a number of trade organizations to help markets meet their goals.
Wallace said that CCR has been active in the Pacific Northwest since being founded in 2014, having had distributed generation projects in Oregon. CCR has also been actively engaged in Washington state prior to the 2019 passage of the Clean Energy Transformation Act (CETA), which commits the state to 100% clean electricity generation by 2045.
“We recognize an opportunity to provide energy capacity to customers in the region,” he said. “We saw early potential in terms of market fundamentals. Here we are today with some of the most aggressive comprehensive decarbonization mandates and targets in Washington and Oregon, and we’re well positioned to participate in that transformation.”
New CCR leadership
On May 9, CCR announced its new Chief Investment Officer, Jeff Meigel, previously the senior vice president of Capital Markets with Brookfield Renewable U.S.
According to the announcement, he was hired to lead the company’s structured finance, capital markets, mergers and acquisitions, investment committee and investment analytics groups.
“We had a few folks in top positions in our finance and development organization leave,” Wallace said. “This was recent. I want to highlight that we’re not anticipating any changes to our project development or disruption.”
He added that though the recent turnover came as a surprise to some, “at the end of the day, we’re a robust organization with strong leadership at all levels of the company, so are prepared to continue moving forward.”
Additionally, EQT Infrastructure acquired CCR mid-2021, making it the company’s first renewable energy platform in the U.S. When asked about this, Wallace said that EQT Infrastructure is an excellent partner.
“I think they really believe in our vision,” he said.
*This story was originally published exclusively for NPM subscribers last month.
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