OSLO (Reuters) - Blackrock, the world's largest investment company, bought a 197.4 megawatt(MW) wind farm in western Norway through one of its funds and will cover its construction cost, the firm and the project's previous owner Zephyr both said on Thursday.
Zephyr, a Norwegian wind farm developer and operator, will continue to manage the farm's construction, which will cost about 200 million euros ($231.76 million) and is expected to be completed by the end of 2020.
The project will be built on the west coast of Norway, close to the city of Floroe and aluminum maker Alcoa will buy the entire electricity produced for a period of 15 years to power its Norwegian based production plants, they said.
The wind farm, called Guleslettene, will carry 47 turbines of 4.2 MW capacity from Vestas and will have an ability to produce enough electricity to power more than 40,000 houses, said Zephyr.
The construction cost will be funded by Blackrock's equity and a long-term loan from Dekabank.
After the transaction, the cost of which was not disclosed, Blackrock has $5 billion of renewable energy assets under management, with 170 projects within wind and solar, it said.
To date, BlackRock Renewable Power has a total invested portfolio of approximately 4.6 gigawatt (GW) of generating capacity across wind and solar projects located in Norway, Sweden, USA, Canada, Australia, Japan, Ireland, France and Britain.
Zephyr AS is owned by the energy companies Vardar [BUSFYV.UL], Glitre Energi [ENRBS.UL] and Oestfold Energi [OSTFO.UL].
(Reporting by Lefteris Karagiannopoulos, editing by Terje Solsvik)
