Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners has closed its $600 million Valley of Fire Fund. Its first two purchases are already settled: a majority of a large solar and battery plant outside Las Vegas, and a 2.65 GW development portfolio. Both are coming from the same seller, and the seller is another Quinbrook fund.
Key takeaways
- Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners closed the $600 million Quinbrook Valley of Fire Fund, announced on 4 April 2024, with Blackstone Strategic Partners as lead investor and Ares Management Infrastructure Secondaries as cornerstone investor.
- The Quinbrook Valley of Fire Fund will use its capital to acquire 51 percent of the Gemini solar and storage project near Las Vegas and 100 percent of the 2.65 GW Valley of Fire development portfolio from Quinbrook's Low Carbon Power Fund.
- The Gemini project in Nevada combines 690 MWac of solar capacity with a 1,416 MWh battery, and APG acquired the other 49 percent of Gemini in 2022 on behalf of its pension fund client ABP.
- The Valley of Fire portfolio comprises seven solar PV projects totalling more than 2.65 GW across Nevada, Colorado and Arizona, with potential for a further 1.5 GW of battery capacity.
- Enerdatics records the $600 million Quinbrook Valley of Fire Fund as the second largest US solar equity raise of 2024, behind Pine Gate Renewables' $650 million.
Why does this fund look like a continuation vehicle?
A continuation fund is a new vehicle a manager sets up to buy assets from one of its own older funds. The older fund's investors can take their money out, while the manager keeps running the assets with fresh capital behind them. Leap describes the Valley of Fire Fund as a continuation of the large-scale solar and storage strategy of Quinbrook's Low Carbon Power Fund, which held its final close in 2019. Every asset the new fund is set to buy comes from that predecessor.
The investor line-up fits that reading. Ares came in through its Infrastructure Secondaries strategy, a business built to buy into portfolios that already exist rather than to seed new ones. Blackstone Strategic Partners led the raise, and the fund also drew commitments from other US and European institutional investors.
The logic is about timing. A fund that closed in 2019 has investors who expect their capital back on a schedule. A portfolio of desert solar projects still in development does not mature on anyone's fundraising calendar. Moving the assets into a new vehicle lets Quinbrook keep control of them while giving the older fund's investors a way out.
What does the fund actually get with Gemini?
Gemini is the anchor asset. It pairs 690 MWac of solar with a 1,416 MWh battery just outside Las Vegas, so the battery holds roughly two hours of the solar plant's full output. The project is expected to power 260,000 homes during super peak periods and to displace 1.5 million metric tons of CO2 a year. Super peak is the short window of highest demand, usually hot evenings, which is exactly when storage attached to solar is most useful.
The fund buys 51 percent, not the whole plant. APG bought the other 49 percent in 2022 on behalf of its pension fund client ABP. So control of Gemini moves from one Quinbrook fund to another while the second shareholder stays exactly where it was. The majority stake is what keeps the asset under Quinbrook's management.
That also shapes how the $600 million should be read. It is not the price of Gemini or of the portfolio. It is the size of the pool that pays for a majority of one operating-scale project plus a development pipeline, and Leap does not break down how much of it goes to each purchase.
How much of Valley of Fire is still early stage?
The second purchase is the full Valley of Fire portfolio: seven solar PV projects in Nevada, Colorado and Arizona, totalling more than 2.65 GW. Leap describes them as ranging from early to late-stage development. A development portfolio carries permitting, grid connection and offtake risk that an operating plant does not, so its value depends heavily on how many of the seven reach construction.
There is room to add storage on top. The portfolio could host a further 1.5 GW of battery capacity, which would follow the Gemini template of pairing solar with batteries for the evening peak. Leap also lists Purple Sage Energy Center among the assets tied to this financing. In March 2024, two weeks before the fund closed, Primergy Solar signed a PPA with San Diego Community Power for 400 MW from Purple Sage, a contract Enerdatics has ranked among San Diego Community Power's contracts.
The advisers were PTJ Partners as lead financial advisor, Kirkland & Ellis as legal counsel to Quinbrook and Proskauer Rose as legal counsel to Blackstone Strategic Partners.
Enerdatics' data shows 22 US solar equity financings in 2024, worth about $4.1 billion in total. Quinbrook's $600 million is about one seventh of that sum and the second largest single solar equity raise of the year, behind Pine Gate Renewables' $650 million later in April. The rest of the top tier was made up of developers raising money for their own pipelines: Nexamp's $520 million, rPlus Energies' $460 million, BrightNight's $440 million and Doral's $400 million. Quinbrook's raise is the outlier in that group, because the money moves assets between two funds run by the same firm. Much larger multi-sector funds closed in the same period, as Brookfield's second Global Transition Fund shows, but within solar alone few raises came close.
What does the deal signal for US solar fundraising?
Secondary capital has become a practical way to carry long-dated solar and storage assets past the life of the fund that started them. Quinbrook did not need to sell Gemini to a third party or rush the Valley of Fire projects to market. It found investors willing to underwrite the same assets under a new wrapper.
The trade-off sits with governance. When a manager sits on both sides of a transfer, the price paid matters to two sets of investors at once, and nothing in the public record says how it was set. For buyers watching the market, the signal is that large solar and storage portfolios in the US Southwest may change funds without ever being offered to the wider market.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Quinbrook Valley of Fire Fund? It is a $600 million fund closed by Quinbrook Infrastructure Partners in April 2024 to continue the solar and storage strategy of its Low Carbon Power Fund, led by Blackstone Strategic Partners with Ares Management Infrastructure Secondaries as cornerstone.
What will the Valley of Fire Fund buy? The fund will acquire 51 percent of the Gemini solar and storage project near Las Vegas and 100 percent of the 2.65 GW Valley of Fire development portfolio from Quinbrook's Low Carbon Power Fund.
Who owns the rest of Gemini? APG acquired 49 percent of the Gemini project in 2022 on behalf of its pension fund client ABP.
Ready to get deal-ready answers in seconds? Try Enerdatics Leap AI and access verified intelligence across M&A, financings, PPAs, projects, and energy market developments through natural language.
.jpeg)
