Longroad Energy Holdings, which recently opened a remote operations center in Portland, develops and operates wind and solar energy projects throughout North America. It has raised over $11 billion in capital, aided by investment from the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, a sovereign wealth fund, and Infratil Limited, a publicly traded energy and infrastructure investment company.
This financing has helped the company put together 33 projects with a total of 3,300 megawatts of capacity, including four high-voltage transmission lines. Longroad also has three projects planned for Maine. One is a 22-turbine wind farm in the Hancock County town of Eastbrook. The others are solar projects, in Unity Township, near Clinton, and Fairfield, near Waterville.
Longroad was organized two years ago by members of the former management team of First Wind, the Boston-based energy developer that built eight wind farms in Maine before the company was sold in 2015.
The operations center is staffed by Maine Maritime Academy grads and military veterans. The power engineering technology skills taught at the school, plus the workforce talent base from Maine’s wind industry, made Portland a logical, if perhaps unexpected, place to site the operations center.
“By basing it in Portland,” said E.J. Martin, the company’s vice president for operations and maintenance, “I knew I would be able to attract people who wanted to live here.”
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