Exelon To Sell 3 Coal Power Plants for $400 Million

Brandon Shores Plant with Scrubber Depiction

Exelon Corporation has agreed to sell its three Maryland coal-fired power plants for $400 million to Raven Power Holdings LLC, which is owned by New York-based private equity firm Riverstone Holdings LLC.  Exelon was required to sell the three plants — the Brandon Shores and H.A. Wagner plants in Anne Arundel County and the C.P. Crane plant in Baltimore Conty — by the end of the year as a condition of its $7.9 billion purchase of Constellation Energy Group in March.

The sale, subject to approval by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice, is expected to be finalized in the last three months of the year. The Justice Department, FERC and the Maryland Public Service Commission required the sale as a condition of the merger.

Raven Power is a newly created portfolio company of Riverstone Holdings, and the co-founders of Riverstone, Pierre Lapeyre and David Leuschen, said the energy investors were attracted to the Maryland plants because of their experienced workforce and strong record of safe and environmentally sound operation.

The plants have undergone environmental upgrades since 2008. Constellation spent nearly $1 billion in 2010 on a pollution "scrubber" at Brandon Shores, the largest of the three Maryland plants. The facility, in Pasadena, is now considered one of the cleanest coal plants in the nation.

Riverstone, a private equity firm founded in 2000, invests in energy exploration and production, oil field services and power, and renewable energy. (The Baltimore Sun, 8/9/2012)