BrightNight, a leading renewable power company, announced a $440 million strategic investment from the Infrastructure business at Goldman Sachs Alternatives.
BrightNight is a leading renewable integrated power company designed to provide utility and commercial and industrial customers with clean, dispatchable renewable power solutions. BrightNight works with customers across the U.S. to design, develop, and operate safe, reliable, large-scale renewable power projects optimized to better manage the intermittent nature of renewable energy. Its deep customer engagement process, team of proven power experts, and industry-leading solutions enable customers to meet and exceed challenging energy sustainability standards, rapidly changing grid dynamics, and facilitate the transition away from fossil fuel generation.
West Palm Beach-based BrightNight released the industry-first Artificial Intelligence platform, PowerAlpha®, allows it to design, optimize, and operate renewable power plants with industry-leading economics and performance. In addition to Goldman Sachs, current BrightNight investors and partners include Global Infrastructure Partners and CPPIB-backed Cordelio Power.
Cedric Lucas, Managing Director in Infrastructure at Goldman Sachs Alternatives
“Our investment demonstrates the strength of BrightNight’s platform and the differentiated solar and storage project portfolio Martin and the team have developed,” said Cedric Lucas, Managing Director in Infrastructure at Goldman Sachs Alternatives. “We share a joint ambition to build a leading renewable independent power producer (IPP) and, through this partnership, we look to accelerate its growth by providing long-term capital backing and leveraging our firm’s capabilities and relationships in the sector.”
This investment, together with existing capital commitments, is expected to fully fund BrightNight’s five-year business plan and advance execution of its 31-gigawatt renewable power project portfolio enhanced by its proprietary AI software platform, PowerAlpha® which was announced earlier this year. This investment adds an established and aligned partner with deep energy transition and capital markets experience and further strengthens the Company’s balance sheet. The transaction is expected to close in September 2024.
Martin Hermann, BrightNight Chairman and CEO
“BrightNight was founded on a unique combination of strengths that capitalize on strong secular energy transition tailwinds. We have quickly established a large and differentiated portfolio in high-demand growth markets seeking decarbonizing renewable energy solutions to meet growing load and reliability needs,” said BrightNight Chairman and CEO Martin Hermann.
“BrightNight’s best-in-class team, extensive project portfolio, and revolutionary AI-powered software platform, PowerAlpha®, position us to maximize value for our utility and corporate customers. We look forward to continuing this journey in partnership with Goldman Sachs.”
BrightNight’s PowerAlpha platform accelerates the global clean energy transition and decarbonization by ensuring the generation of reliable power at the lowest cost attainable in various geographies and power grids globally. Its benefits as realized in the design, optimize, and operate stages within the project’s lifecycle include:
- Designs optimal renewable power solutions to reliably meet the growing load on the power grid. It takes a net value optimization approach to optimize every project for every customer’s specific needs through dispatchable firm and semi-firm hybrid power solutions.
- Optimizes lifetime project cost and value by centralizing the engineering, development, financing, operation, and maintenance of renewable power plants in a single integrated platform, with a singular focus on serving customer needs at lowest cost and highest reliability.
- Operates renewable projects seamlessly and efficiently by significantly improving forecast accuracy through AI-driven analytics, bringing significant cost savings for renewable asset operators.
- Enables customers to make optimal asset allocation decisions, engage in long-term resource planning, define replacement or augmentation strategies, and enhance the utilization of power transmission infrastructure. Ultimately, PowerAlpha® helps BrightNight’s customers put renewable resources where they make the most impact and achieve their clean energy goals.
- Designs around-the-clock, high-load-factor solutions for data centers, delivering up to 99% load factor at significantly lower cost compared with available market alternatives.
Teresa Mattamouros, Managing Director in Infrastructure at Goldman Sachs Alternatives
“Demand for renewable energy continues to benefit from strong secular energy transition tailwinds, including substantial corporate decarbonization goals and both federal and state-level policy support,” said Teresa Mattamouros, Managing Director in Infrastructure at Goldman Sachs Alternatives. “We have been impressed by BrightNight’s unique development approach, focusing on markets with attractive commercial dynamics and targeting high-value interconnection positions.”
In 2019, BrightNight was featured in an exclsuive HBO documentary, “Ice On Fire” which produced and narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio. ICE ON FIRE is an eye-opening documentary that focuses on many never-before-seen solutions designed to slow down our escalating environmental crisis, goes beyond the current climate change narrative and offers hope that we can actually stave off the worst effects of global warming.
“Ice on Fire” Director Leila Conners with Leonardo DiCaprio (left) and Leila Conners with BrightNight CEO Martin Hermann (right)
Eleven years after Film Director Leila Conners first collaborated with Leonardo DiCaprio on “The 11th Hour,” which emphasized the problems of climate change, ICE ON FIRE instead focuses on the cutting-edge research behind today’s climate science – and the innovations aimed at reducing carbon in the atmosphere, which could pave the way for a reduction in the global temperature rise and a benefit to the planet’s life systems.
“My partners and I made ICE ON FIRE to give a voice to the scientists and researchers who work tirelessly every day on the frontlines of climate change,” says producer and narrator Leonardo DiCaprio. “We wanted to make a film that depicts the beauty of our planet while highlighting much-needed solutions across renewable energy and carbon sequestration. This film does more than show what is at stake if we continue on a course of inaction and complacency – it shows how, with the help of dedicated scientists, we can all fight back. I hope audiences will be inspired to take action to protect our beautiful planet.”
Now, five years after the documentary release, the Palm Beach County startup, BrightNight, is a U.S. based company with a global reach. They have forged partnership with organizations across the country, projects across the world, and BrightNight team members based in five different countries: United States, India, Philippines, Australia, and Bangladesh.
Brian Boland, CFO at BrightNight
BrightNight CFO Brian Boland added: “We are excited to announce our partnership with Goldman Sachs and have been fortunate to garner the support of world-class partners over the years. Goldman Sachs’ investment, together with our existing capital commitments and bank group, will help drive execution of our IPP business model and build-out of our utility-scale portfolio – delivering critical clean energy infrastructure to serve our customers across the U.S.
To learn more about BrightNight, visit www.brightnightpower.com