Published

2 years ago

February 29, 2024

Alice Rush

Arevon Energy has secured $1.1 billion in aggregate financing commitments for its Eland 2 solar-plus-storage project in Kern County, Calif.

The 374 MW solar project coupled with 150 MW off energy storage is under early-stage construction and is anticipated to come online early next year.

“Solar-plus-storage projects, like our flagship Eland 1 and 2 facilities, play an important role in Arevon’s strategy” says Kevin Smith, CEO at Arevon. “Hybrid power plants deliver a more reliable, predictable energy yield during peak electricity demand periods, which in turn enables consistent returns across our diverse, multi-gigawatt portfolio. The Eland projects highlight our team’s financial strength, industry expertise, and thoughtful approach to fostering a sustainable energy infrastructure. We will continue to build upon this momentum, as leaders in powering the energy transition.”

Under a long-term PPA with Southern California Public Power Authority, Eland 2 will provide 200 MW of electricity to serve Southern California’s power needs. The project utilizes Tesla’s Megapack 2 XL battery system. San Diego-based SOLV Energy is the project’s EPC contractor.

Wells Fargo provided a $431 million tax equity commitment. Arevon obtained $654 million of debt financing including a construction-to-term loan, a tax equity bridge loan and letter of credit facilities. Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce served as the administrative agent, coordinating lead arranger, green loan coordinator and bookrunner. Other coordinating lead arrangers included BNP Paribas, CoBank, Commerzbank AG, Commonwealth Bank of Australia and National Bank of Canada.

J.P. Morgan served as joint lead arranger, collateral and depositary agent. Amis, Patel & Brewer represented Arevon as sponsor counsel; Milbank served as lender counsel. Sheppard Mullin served as tax equity counsel.

The post Arevon Closes on $1.1B in Financing for Eland 2 Solar-plus-Storage Project appeared first on Solar Industry.

Arevon Closes on $1.1B in Financing for Eland 2 Solar-plus-Storage Project

Renewable Energy

Renewable Energy Concepts Can’t Violate the Laws of Physics

Published

13 hours ago

February 28, 2026

Alice Rush

In the early days of 2GreenEnergy, my people and I were vigorously engaged in finding solid ideas in cleantech that needed funding in order to move forward.

I vividly remember a conversation with a guy in Maryland who was trying to explain the (ostensible) breakthrough that he and his team had made in hydrokinetics. When I was having trouble visualizing what we was talking about, he asked me to “think of it as a river in a box.”

“Oh!” I exclaimed. “You mean you take a box full of standing water, add energy to it get it moving, then extract that energy, leaving you with more energy that you added to it.”

“Exactly.”

I politely explained that the laws of physics, specifically the first and second laws of thermodynamics, make this impossible.

He wasn’t through, however, and insisted that, in his office, his people had constructed a “working model.”

Here’s where my tone descended into something less than 100% polite. I told him that he may think he has a working model, but he’s wrong; if he believes this, he’s ignorant; if he doesn’t, but is conducting this conversation anyway, he’s a fraud.

“But don’t you want to come see it?” he implored.

“No. Not only would not fly across the country to see whatever it is you claim to have built, I wouldn’t walk across the street to a “working model” of something that is theoretically impossible.”

—

I tell this story because the claim made at the upper left is essentially identical. You’re pumping water up out of a stream, and then claiming to extract more energy when the water flows back into the stream.

Of course, social media today is rife with complete crap like this. We’ve devolved to a point where defrauding money out of idiots is rapidly replacing baseball as our national pastime.