Six banks have joined a consortium for a US$620 million construction loan for phase two of the Huemul wind and solar mega project in Chile. The six are SMBC, MUFG, Inter-American Development Bank unit IDB Invest, KfW IPEX-Bank, DNB of Norway, and CaixaBank of Spain. A seventh bank, Santander, provided a VAT facility.

The Andes Renovables project is one of the largest renewables projects in Latin America, with a total cost of US$1.8 billion. The project sponsor is the Irish wind and solar developer Mainstream Renewable Power Ltd. KfW IPEX-Bank was involved in the financing of the first phase, named Condor, last year, and is now providing a US$79 million portion of the loan for the second phase of Huemul.

The three wind farms will be constructed by the Spanish companies Sacyr Industrial, SEMI and Elecnor, and the wind turbines are to be supplied by the European companies Vestas, Nordex Group and Siemens Gamesa. The two solar PV assets will be built by Sterling & Wilson and Metka-Egn.

All five main power transformers for the projects will be supplied by Hitachi ABB Power Grids. Grid connection works will be carried out by Transelec, Inprolec and Isotron-Siemens consortium. The five assets of the 630MW Huemul portfolio are in pre-construction, and will reach commercial operation between 2021 and 2022. They will generate enough sustainable electricity to power 781,000 Chilean homes.

The next and final phase, Copihue, involves one more wind asset with a 100MW capacity, and will increase the overall capacity of Andes Renovables to 1.3 GW.