Leading renewable energy consultancy and service provider, Natural Power, has supported the independent green energy operator, VALOREM, to raise debt financing of €195M from the investment manager AIP Management to fund the construction of its Finnish Matkussaari wind farm, with the provision of bankable, independent wind resource and energy yield assessments (EYA).

Located in Ostrobothnia, on the west coast of Finland, a few hundred kilometers north of the capital Helsinki, the 148.5MW Matkussaari site forms part of the Finnish VIIATTI project along with the 165MW Kalistanneva wind farm which was sold by VALOREM to a Finnish Consortium comprising HELEN Oy and The Bank of Ålands's Wind Power Fund. Together, both wind farms will generate c. 1TWh which represents around 1.2% of the Finnish annual electricity consumption.

Natural Power delivered wind resource and energy yield assessments for both Matkussaari and Kalistanneva projects including on-site wind data synthesis, spatial wind modelling, energy generation and wake modelling, and uncertainty assessments.

The work was led by Natural Power's team in France. Giles Dearden, Director of Due Diligence at Natural Power, said: "Using reliable data from the start of a project will lead to its success, and we are delighted to have supported VALOREM with this crucial stage of analysis at these two sites in Finland."

Matkussaari will host 27 wind turbines with a unit power of 5.5 MW, supplying the equivalent of the electricity consumption of 60,000 households each year. Work is due to start in March 2022 with commissioning scheduled for January 2025.