3 Oahu solar farms shackled in wake of SunEdison filing

Three stalled solar energy farms on Oahu are now tied up in a gigantic bankruptcy case filed Thursday by SunEdison Inc.

The solar projects had been set to go online by the end of this year and feed enough power for roughly 18,040 homes at peak production into the grid through Hawaiian Electric Co.

HECO, however, terminated contracts for the 112 megawatts of electricity from SunEdison after milestone deadlines were missed, and the utility declined to restructure the contracts for the projects in Mililani, Haleiwa and Waiawa after another firm that was a creditor of SunEdison, DE Shaw, offered to complete the partially built farms on which SunEdison said it had already invested $42 million.

HECO called the bankruptcy unfortunate but also cited it as the reason the utility company was reluctant to agree to transferring and renewing the contracts to a SunEdison creditor.

“We will be watching to see how SunEdison’s bankruptcy case proceeds,” the company said in a statement. “Whether with DE Shaw or another party, we want to find the best way to get utility-scale renewable projects that can use this space on the grid as quickly as possible.”

Johnathan Bolton, a local business and bankruptcy attorney representing HECO, noted that all recent transactions between SunEdison and its creditors will be scrutinized to determine whether they were appropriate or should be challenged.

SunEdison filed for bankruptcy protection after a two-year, $3.1 billion acquisition binge that drove its debt to unmanageable levels and sent investors running for the exits.

The clean-power giant listed $16.1 billion of debt in Chapter 11 filings in Manhattan federal court, making it the biggest U.S. bankruptcy in more than a year. While the buying spree ultimately did SunEdison in, the bankruptcy comes as energy companies of all sorts are succumbing to a slump in prices.

Difficult step

Bankruptcy was the best way to deal with a cash crisis, SunEdison said Thursday. Its shares plunged to less than 40 cents before trading was suspended.

“Our decision to initiate a court-supervised restructuring was a difficult but important step to address our immediate liquidity issues,” SunEdison Chief Executive Officer Ahmad Chatila said in a statement. The company will use the bankruptcy process to cut debt and shed “noncore assets,” he said.

SunEdison has commitments for $300 million in financing to support day-to-day operations during the reorganization. The money is being supplied by a group of first- and second-lien lenders, the company said in the statement. In court papers the company said it might also refinance as much as $350 million worth of second-lien loans and second-lien notes.

SunEdison’s spending spree ended in March when the company’s $1.9 billion deal for Vivint Solar Inc. fell apart. Federal regulators are probing the canceled sale, and Vivint has filed suit.

The Maryland Heights, Mo.-based company began its shopping binge in 2014, buying up wind and solar projects on every continent except Antarctica. The acquisitions included three wind energy farms in Hawaii from First Wind. At first the market responded positively, driving SunEdison’s shares to a peak of $32.

Investors began to question the company’s business model when it announced plans to purchase Vivint in July at a 52 percent premium. At $2.2 billion it would have been SunEdison’s biggest deal. Furthermore, Vivint installs rooftop solar systems, a very different market from SunEdison’s other acquisitions — mainly big, utility-scale power plants.

The transaction was delayed, renegotiated down to $1.9 billion and finally canceled in March when lenders pulled financing after SunEdison said it needed more time to prepare its 2015 annual report. Analysts were left wondering whether a lawsuit over the failed deal would drive the company into bankruptcy.

Employee ‘wrongdoing’

The company’s troubles have been manifold. It recently disclosed that it received a subpoena from the U.S. Justice Department and a similar inquiry from the Securities and Exchange Commission. The government is seeking information about the scrapped Vivint deal and the conduct of a former employee alleged to have committed wrongdoing “in connection with the Vivint termination negotiations,” SunEdison said in a regulatory filing.

This month SunEdison said an independent counsel hired by its board identified “wrongdoing” by a former employee and an “overly optimistic” culture fostered by management. According to the company, an unidentified nonexecutive employee was fired for actions related to the Vivint deal, which weren’t described.

Star-Advertiser staff and Bloomberg News contributed to this story.