Saudi-backed renewables company’s $15m stake in Aussie tech
Summary
The Aussie company was featured as part of the BBC series Humanising Energy, and this caught the attention of FRV, which made an inquiry through its website.If I use the metaphor of a child, Evergen is like an angry 12- or 13-year-old, and we needed a strong-handed parent to keep us studying hard to get ready for our graduation, Mr Hutt said.We spoke to utilities companies, venture capital funds, institutional investors, etc ... and it was around Christmas when we met FRV ... we felt our goals aligned, and theyre a fabulous business that takes a long-term view, he said.Our expectation is well be able to partner with them and develop Evergen products that meet market needs.FRV has been investing in Australian since 2012. It and its affiliated companies have installed 2 gigawatts of renewable energy generation, and there is another 560 megawatts under construction. It has nine solar farms in Australian producing 781MW that is sold into the grid.It sold a 49 per cent position in its Aussie solar farms and some of its development assets to Canadas Omers Infrastructure last year for hundreds of millions of dollars.The $15 million investment in Evergen buys FRV a significant minority stake in the business.They are exceptional operators and have built software products that provide significant opportunities to enhance the way renewable generation and storage assets perform at scale in a variety of contexts internationally, FRV-X managing director Felipe Hernandez said.The investment will also help Evergen build the capability to service more large-scale renewable energy and battery projects.Currently, Evergen controls more than 100MW of renewables assets on its platform, including 7000 residential home batteries.Mr Hutt expects these figures to have doubled by the end of 2022.The pipeline is many orders of magnitude greater than that. We have many large-scale utility projects coming online in the next 18 months and growth in commercial and industrial batteries shopping centres, apartment blocks etc is starting to happen now, he said.The destabilisation of energy markets combined with high-energy costs is driving the race to buy storage that we were predicting three years ago ... Battery storage and EVs become economically viable much quicker in a market with such high prices.Mr Hutt backed AEMOs decision to suspend the spot price last week, but he was dismayed by the decision of the market operator to temporarily suspend all commissioning activities and approvals while it focuses on the supply crisis.I feel that any policy decisions taken now that lengthen the life of coal-fired generation and gas assets at this time would be something well look back in five years and regret, he said.