Australian company buys Illinois wind power projects, 5 others

DES MOINES, Iowa -- Australian investment and asset management company Babcock & Brown Ltd. said Tuesday it has acquired seven wind farm projects in the United States, including one in central and another in northern Illinois.

The projects were acquired from Gamesa Energy USA, a division of Madrid, Spain-based Gamesa Energia S.A. and Navitas Energy Inc., a Minneapolis-based company largely owned by Gamesa.

The wind projects are in Woodford and Stephenson counties in Illinois, Pocahontas County in Iowa, Manitowoc County in Wisconsin, Brookings County in South Dakota and Logan County in Ohio. They total 750 megawatts, enough to power more than 190,000 homes per year.

"These future wind farms are ideal additions to Babcock & Brown's near-term development pipeline because they are located in markets in which we are focused, and they are also located near areas where we have existing wind farms," said Hunter Armistead, head of Babcock & Brown's North American Energy Development Group. "We look forward to developing these projects and bringing them online in the near future, further adding to the production of clean and renewable wind energy in the Midwest."

Babcock & Brown has more than 3,000 megawatts of wind energy under development primarily in the United States and Europe.

Babcock & Brown Wind Partners, a specialized investment fund focused on wind energy generation, has a portfolio of interests in 35 wind farms on three continents with installed capacity of about 1,700 megawatts.

Based in Sydney, Australia, Babcock & Brown was founded in San Francisco in 1977 and is listed on the Australian Stock Exchange.