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Pattern Energy Group LP CEO Mike Garland spoke with SNL Energy about Pattern's wind growth strategy and the role of private equity in renewable generation development, its plan of attack in gas-heavy Southwest markets and its role in transmission development. Pattern Energy is backed by Riverstone Holdings LLC.
The following is an edited transcript of the interview.
SNL Energy: As a private energy company, can you talk a little about Pattern's growth strategy and what sort of opportunities your company is looking to capitalize on in terms of asset geography, project size and the customers you'd like to serve?
Garland: We have about eight transmission lines we're developing currently and we anticipate they'll take a little bit of time to mature, but we'll be seeing those starting to roll out in a couple years. In terms of geography, we're primarily focused in North America. We see Canada as an excellent opportunity for us over the next couple of years. The U.S. market is still very strong for us, and we have a couple of very strategic projects going on in Latin America. The pipeline that we brought over when we were established was a mature pipeline, and therefore that's allowed us to hit the ground running. Our first project was Hatchet Ridge, which was started three months after we were created, and we now have closed the Manitoba project. Both of those had been matured for quite awhile, and we have several other developments that we are pursuing that have been matured for quite a few years. We anticipate probably two more projects this year starting construction toward the end of this year, and then continuing into next year, 300 to 400 MW of additional projects in 2011.
Our pipeline could very easily do more than that, but we like the optionality of having more choices rather than less so we're not having to do any one project. We can always choose not to do a project if it isn't creating the returns or is creating risk that we're not comfortable with. In the United States, we tend to be in some of the premium states like California, but we have projects being developed in 14, 15 states around the country right now, and...