GE’s big SunZia turbine order, Eversource exits offshore wind, BlackRock buys G.I.P.

Allen, Joel and Phil discuss Eversource's offshore wind exit, BlackRock's blockbuster G.I.P. buyout, and how GE's massive SunZia turbine order is powering the Western Hemisphere's largest wind farm in this episode.



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Allen Hall: I'm Allen Hall, president of Weather Guard Lightning Tech, and I'm here with the founder and CEO of IntelStor, Phil Totaro, and the chief commercial officer of Weather Guard, Joel Saxum, and this is your News Flash. News Flash is brought to you by our friends at IntelStor. If you need actionable information about renewable projects or technologies, check out IntelStor at intelstor.com.



Eversource Energy is continuing efforts to exit investments in emerging U. S. offshore wind projects, negotiating the sale of Interest in three wind farms, South Fork Wind, Revolution Wind, and Sunrise Wind. Eversource sold some assets last year to partner Ørsted. The sale requires regulatory approval and agreements with Ørsted.



Scope depends on Sunrise Wind rebid outcome. Eversource is going to take an impairment charge of roughly 1. billion dollars due to the changing market value of those assets and the construction costs. Phil, this is a problem, right? If offshore wind isn't at least profitable, marginally profitable.



You're going to see a continual outflux of companies leaving offshore wind in the U. S. And Eversource, again, is another one that's doing it, and that's a big problem for New York in my opinion. What do you think?



Philip Totaro: Yeah, and obviously we all know that PSEG left the projects in New Jersey before the plug ultimately got pulled.



But, we've talked, I don't know how many times on the show about the fact that U. S. companies don't seem to yet really be bought into the idea of offshore wind. Pretty much all the projects even being built are being built by foreign owned entities at this point. So it's obviously, Eversource doesn't want to stay locked into unprofitable projects and agreements.



So the divestiture makes sense for them. The question is, how does anybody follow this up? the interest rates look like they're going to come down. In 2024, there's already predictions that there's going to be up to five rate cuts this year to, readjust the, the fed, interest rate.



At the end of the day, I think that's going to help tremendously getting projects back on track and may end up encouraging new investors, to, to plow some money into it. including some of these big infrastructure funds that are, they've got plenty of assets under management now and plenty of cash at their disposal.



And they're, looking around.



Joel Saxum: To note here too, guys, this isn't an odd concept of 50 percent ownership, 50 percent ownership, we're selling our ownership over here, we're selling our ownership over here, because this happens in offshore wind in the European market all the time. You hear, ah, Kodawind here was bought by this, and this guy's divested here.



These are all, those are financial plays. So at some point in time, I would be willing to almost bet that the Eversource game plan wasn't to buy a wind farm, operate it, and decommission it. It was going to be to get in, get it built, get it running, and enhance the value of it, and dump it for a profit. It just is at the stage where, hey, that profit just doesn't look like it may come to be right now, or it's too far off for our investing risk appetite,