Why 715 MW of US Solar Just Sold Without a Power Contract

Exus Renewables has bought four late-stage solar projects in Wisconsin and Louisiana from ib vogt, 715 MWp in total. Two carried power purchase agreements with a Louisiana electricity cooperative, signed in 2021. Those agreements appear to have gone, and the buyer is treating that as the reason to buy rather than the reason not to.

Key takeaways

• Exus Renewables North America, backed by Partners Group, has acquired a 715 MWp late-stage solar portfolio from ibV Energy Partners, an ib vogt company. Terms were not disclosed, and Enerdatics records the transaction as a preliminary analysis.
• The portfolio holds four projects: the 310 MW Maple Grove phases one and two in Barron County, Wisconsin, which includes co-located battery storage and signed a MISO interconnection agreement in December 2025; the 125 MW Bayou Teche in St. Mary Parish, Louisiana; and the 280 MW Bayou Chicot in Evangeline Parish, Louisiana. Both Louisiana projects begin construction in 2026.
• Bayou Teche and Bayou Chicot signed power purchase agreements with 1803 Electric Cooperative in March 2021. By August 2023 they faced higher capital costs, financing and supply-chain pressure, and MISO rule changes that cut the winter capacity value of solar. Enerdatics' reading of the record is that those agreements were terminated.
• Exus says it is in active talks with hyperscalers and utilities serving data-centre load over new offtake, and expects to conclude within four to six weeks. A minority portion of Bayou Chicot is expected to run merchant into the MISO day-ahead market.
• The sale follows ibV Energy Partners' February 2026 plan to divest 1.1 GW across MISO, PJM and SPP, announced after it closed more than 600 MW of utility-scale solar and storage in 2025.

Why would a late-stage solar project be worth more without a power contract?

Because the contract it lost was priced for a different decade. A power purchase agreement fixes the price at which a project sells its output over a defined term, usually ten years or more. These were signed in March 2021, before the construction cost inflation, financing cost rises and supply-chain disruption that followed. By August 2023 the arithmetic no longer worked. The record describes those pressures arriving together, alongside a change in how MISO credits generation capacity in winter, which cut the capacity value a solar project there could count on. Enerdatics' reading is that the agreements were terminated, carried in the record as an assessment rather than a confirmed fact.

What survived is the slow part. Land, permits, zoning and a queue position take years and do not reset when a contract falls away. A project carrying a 2021 price into 2026 construction costs is worth less than the same project free to sign today. Losing the contract removed the liability and left what cannot be replaced.

What is Exus actually buying in the interconnection position?

Time. An interconnection agreement is the contract that fixes how much power a project may inject into the grid, at which point, and which network upgrades it must pay for. It ends a queue process that commonly runs for years in MISO, and it is the hardest thing in a project to accelerate with money.

Maple Grove signed its MISO agreement in December 2025, and the portfolio is described as benefiting from relatively quick interconnection potential. That is what a buyer with capital and no queue position values most, and Exus has bought it before rather than built it, as when NextVolt sold it a 250 MW battery project at early development stage and handed over construction and operations. The seller clears the queue; the buyer funds construction, signs the offtake and owns the asset.

Who is going to buy the power, and does that demand exist yet?

Exus says hyperscalers and utilities serving data-centre load, within four to six weeks. That is a company expectation, not a signed outcome.

The demand it refers to is mostly not operating. In Louisiana, Enerdatics records 42.3 MW of data-centre capacity operational across 11 sites, against 1,433.8 MW in construction across eight and 1,732.8 MW planned across 17. In Wisconsin it is 234.3 MW operational across 24 sites, 751.2 MW in construction across five, and 4,383.5 MW planned across 37. The two states run about 277 MW of data-centre load today and have roughly 8,300 MW building or announced, thirty times that base.

The same records carry the caveat. Wisconsin also holds three cancelled data centres totalling 750 MW, a reminder that announced load is not delivered load. These projects lost their contracts in 2023 because a cooperative offtaker could not carry that period's cost increases. They are being bought in 2026 on the expectation that a buyer with cheaper capital and a harder deadline will carry them instead. The bet has changed counterparty, not nature.

Enerdatics records 209 US development-stage solar transactions since the start of 2024, of which only 25 carry a disclosed value. Louisiana accounts for five solar deals of any stage over the same period, and just one is priced: JERA Nex's August 2024 purchase of a 480 MWdc operating portfolio from Lightsource bp for $624 million, or $1.30 million per MW, a finished asset rather than a development position. Median disclosed pricing sits at $0.09 million per MW across 18 deals in 2024 and $0.21 million per MW across five in 2025, with only two priced deals so far in 2026, too thin to read as a trend. This transaction adds no price.

What does the deal signal for the US solar market?

It signals that a terminated offtake contract has stopped being a defect. For two years the market treated projects whose PPAs collapsed in the 2022 and 2023 cost shock as damaged goods. Data-centre demand has introduced a buyer willing to pay more than a rural cooperative could, on a timetable that rewards any project already permitted. An uncontracted late-stage project is now an option, not an orphan.

The seller side has not changed. ib vogt has sold for years, a pattern visible earlier in 2026 when its exit from Aura Power closed a decade-long develop-and-sell partnership, and the February 2026 plan to divest 1.1 GW across three power markets is the same model on schedule. What differs here is the buyer taking the offtake risk, including a merchant tail on part of Bayou Chicot that will sell into MISO day-ahead prices unhedged.

The price stays private, so value here is inferred from stage and location rather than observed, a problem Enerdatics has described before in US portfolio deals where the pricing signal has to be assembled from a handful of comparables rather than read off the tape. If Exus signs a hyperscaler contract in six weeks, the value it creates will sit in a document that is not public either.

Frequently asked questions

How much did Exus pay for the ib vogt solar portfolio?Terms were not disclosed. Enerdatics records 209 US development-stage solar transactions since the start of 2024, only 25 of them priced, with a 2024 median of $0.09 million per MW.

Why did the Louisiana projects lose their power purchase agreements?They signed with 1803 Electric Cooperative in March 2021. By August 2023 they faced higher costs, financing and supply-chain pressure, and MISO rule changes that cut the winter capacity value of solar. Enerdatics' reading is that the agreements were terminated, and the transaction is recorded as a preliminary analysis.

What is a MISO interconnection agreement?It is the contract between a project and the grid operator setting how much power the project may inject, at which point, and which transmission upgrades it must fund. Maple Grove signed its agreement in December 2025.

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