Swiss investment specialist Partners Group will invest A$700 ($529m) to spur 1.3GW of wind, solar and storage in Australia in conjunction with local player CWP Renewables.

Partners Group will join CWP to build the assets – collectively known as Grassroots Renewable Energy Platform – across Australia over the next four years, said a statement.

Grassroots will be kicked off by the 270MW Sapphire wind farm project, which CWP is already developing with Partners Group’s backing in the state of New South Wales.

Vestas is building and equipping Sapphire under an EPC deal signed in December 2016, with the project due online using V126 3.6MW turbines by October this year.

The second Grassroots project will be the Crudine Ridge Wind Farm, also in NSW and due for completion in September 2019 using 37 GE 3.63MW turbines. Half of Crudine’s output has been sold to green power distributor Powershop.

Partners Group and CWP said Grassroots will then be further developed using a range of other pipeline assets.

Benjamin Haan, head of private infrastructure, Asia-Pacific, at Partners Group said: "When we invested in Sapphire Wind Farm, one of the key attractions for us was the project's potential to anchor an Australian renewable energy platform.

“Partners Group and CWP have a project pipeline of 1.3GW in generation capacity across wind and solar power, offering the scope to be selective and develop Grassroots into a quality renewables platform of significant scale."

Australia has emerged as home to some of the world’s largest renewables projects – particularly when linked with storage – as the country races to build capacity to meet its 2020 national renewable energy target (RET), and meet demand created by state-level renewables auctions.

Partners Group has been involved in developing 2GW of renewables in the Asia-Pacific region. Further afield it made a big splash in European offshore wind earlier this year when it became largest investor in the 731MW Borssele 3&4 project off The Netherlands.

Transition

Partners Group backs 1.3GW of Australian wind, PV and storage