It did not disclose the terms of the deal, although The Nikkei newspaper claimed the Tokyo-based company paid more than ¥20bn ($178.4m ), without citing its sources.

IL&FS — which has already completed 775MW of its 1GW pipeline — is now building 26 wind farms in seven states throughout India.

The partners plan to sell electricity from their wind projects to commercial-scale utility customers, as well as to state utilities under India’s feed-in tariff (FIT) system.

Orix has held an undisclosed stake in IL&FS since 1993, according to an online statement.

The partners said they also plan to jointly develop utility-scale solar project in the future.

Orix’s portfolio of solar assets in Japan currently stands at 850MW.

In February, The Nikkei reported that Orix plans to invest more than ¥100bn ($874m) in the development of 550MW of PV capacity in the country by early 2018.

In December, Orix started running a 45.6MW (DC) solar array on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido, in collaboration with Sharp.

In August, it announced plans to build 25MW of PV capacity at four locations in western Japan’s Yamaguchi prefecture.

And last May, it jumped into the wind sector for the first time, with the acquisition of a one-third stake in a 100MW project that a subsidiary of telecoms giant SoftBank is building off the Japanese port of Kashima, Ibaraki prefecture.

Wind

Orix buys 49% of 1GW Indian wind portfolio