In March 2024 Partners Group was preparing to sell VSB Group, the German wind and solar developer it had controlled since 2020. Nine months later TotalEnergies signed for it, and in April 2025 the deal closed. The price that emerged sits below the headline figure attached to the sale when it first surfaced. What TotalEnergies actually paid for is the harder question.
Key takeaways
- TotalEnergies announced on 4 December 2024 that it had agreed to acquire VSB Group, a Germany-based renewable energy project developer, from Partners Group for an equity consideration of $1.65 billion, and the transaction completed on 2 April 2025.
- Partners Group acquired an 80 percent stake in VSB Group in April 2020, with VSB founder Andreas Dorner retaining a 20 percent interest, and the value of that 2020 entry was not disclosed.
- Under Partners Group's ownership, VSB Group's development pipeline grew from 8 GW to more than 18 GW, its operating and under-construction capacity rose from 53 MW to more than 475 MW, and its EBITDA increased five-fold.
- VSB Group, founded in 1996, operates in Germany, France, Poland, Croatia, Italy and Finland, has developed more than 2.3 GW of renewable generation and manages 3 GW of assets, and sells power through support schemes and PPAs with buyers including Carrefour, Mercedes Benz and Respect Energy.
- Nomura Greentech acted as exclusive financial adviser and A&O Shearman as legal adviser to Partners Group on the sale of VSB Group to TotalEnergies, which said VSB can deliver more than 5 GW over the next five years toward its 100 GW by 2030 target.
How did VSB move from a planned sale to a completed deal?
It took just over a year from the first reports of a sale to completion. A private equity owner sells when the asset it built is easiest to value, and for a developer that is when the pipeline is large and some of it is already generating.
Partners Group bought into VSB in April 2020. At that point the business was a mid-sized developer and operator whose track record covered more than 2,000 MW of wind and about 200 MW of solar across more than 655 turbines and 58 photovoltaic plants, while its own operating and under-construction capacity stood at just 53 MW. Partners Group's stated aim was international growth backed by fresh capital for acquisitions.
By March 2024, when this post first covered the process, Partners Group was preparing the sale. The signed agreement followed on 4 December 2024. After merger control approval, it completed on 2 April 2025.
The signing day carried a second announcement. TotalEnergies agreed at the same time to sell a 50 percent stake in a 2 GW US solar and battery portfolio to Apollo Global Management. That pairing is the clearest sign that VSB was bought as a platform for future projects rather than as a pool of megawatts.
What does $1.65 billion buy when most of VSB is still pipeline?
It buys a development machine. A development pipeline is the list of projects a company is working on that have not yet been built, at every stage from early land agreements to permitted sites awaiting construction. Many early projects never get built, so a pipeline is an upper bound.
VSB had more than 475 MW in operation or under construction. Spread across that built capacity alone, the $1.65 billion works out at roughly $3.5 million per MW, a figure that only makes sense if most of the value sits somewhere other than the built fleet. Spread across the 18,475 MW Leap records for the whole deal, it falls to under $0.1 million per MW. Neither is a valuation multiple: the first ignores the pipeline, the second treats a permitted wind farm and an early land option as equal.
The honest reading is that the price covers three things at once: a modest operating fleet, a very large pipeline, and a business that manages 3 GW of assets for itself and third parties. TotalEnergies was buying the people and processes that turn land into turbines, and the five-fold rise in EBITDA under Partners Group was the evidence that the process works.
Which assets sit at the core of the VSB platform?
The projects Leap links to the deal show a business spread across onshore wind in several countries, with repowering as a recurring theme. Repowering means replacing ageing turbines on an existing site with fewer, larger machines, which keeps the grid connection and permits while lifting output.
The largest construction asset is the Elster wind park repowering in Saxony-Anhalt: 105.6 MW, an investment of $224 million, financial close in August 2023 and expected operation in January 2027. In Poland, VSB owns the 45 MW Taczalin wind farm, operating since 2013, the 42.6 MW Baranow-Rychta wind farm, operating since July 2023, and the 41.6 MW Raciborz wind farm, which began operating in May 2025. The biggest late-stage project is Puutionsaari in Finland, 350 MW with an investment of $550 million and expected operation at the end of 2029.
The offtake side shows how the cash flows are secured. In February 2024 the Taczalin operating company signed a PPA with Respect Energy covering 45.1 MW. In September 2024 VSB signed a PPA with Carrefour for 43.3 MW of wind and solar assets in France. Both are modest, but they show the platform selling into corporate demand rather than relying only on support schemes.
Enerdatics records 12 corporate transactions in Germany between January 2024 and June 2025, nine in 2024 and three in the first half of 2025, and only one of them carries a structured deal value. VSB is not that one. Its $1.65 billion appears in Leap's deal narrative as an equity consideration, while the structured value field stays undisclosed, as it often does when the price buys a whole company rather than a defined set of megawatts.
What does the deal signal for German developer platforms?
It confirms the private equity build-and-sell model as a working route to exit. Partners Group bought a majority of a regional developer, funded its expansion, multiplied its pipeline and earnings, and sold to a strategic buyer within five years. The same firm ran a similar playbook in offshore wind, as the Partners Group exit from Borssele III/IV shows: buy early, build value, then sell in steps or in one block once the asset is easy to price.
For TotalEnergies, VSB fits a pattern of buying developers outright rather than projects one at a time. Its earlier route to full control of Total Eren followed the same logic on a larger scale. The open question is how much of the 18 GW pipeline survives contact with permitting and grid queues. If a meaningful share of it reaches construction, the price will look cheap in hindsight. If it does not, TotalEnergies will have paid platform money for a 475 MW fleet.
Frequently asked questions
Who bought VSB Group and for how much? TotalEnergies agreed on 4 December 2024 to acquire VSB Group from Partners Group for an equity consideration of $1.65 billion. The deal completed on 2 April 2025 after merger control approval.
How long did Partners Group own VSB? Partners Group acquired an 80 percent stake in April 2020 and agreed to sell in December 2024, a holding period of under five years. Founder Andreas Dorner retained 20 percent at the time of Partners Group's entry.
How large is VSB's portfolio? VSB has more than 475 MW in operation or under construction and a development pipeline of more than 18 GW across wind, solar and battery storage, focused on Germany, Poland and France.
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