SmartFundingHub offers competitive loans for financing wind turbines. Fundamental to all of the deals available is that Funders generally only fund the installation stage and not the pre-planning and consenting stages. This means that the project owner will have to fund the pre-installation stages, which can typically be up to £100k. Remember that if for any reason your site fails to obtain the necessary consents then all costs incurred up to that point would have to be written-off.

Assuming the you have the funding in place to cover pre-installation costs, then the approximate terms offered by our Funders are typically:

• Normally funding of 75 – 90% of the total project cost is possible. So, if the total project cost is £1M, a loan of £750 – £900k would be available. Assuming you have already obtained the consents, then the cost of these can normally be offset against the site owner’s contribution to the project.
• Precise terms vary, but typically the interest rate on the loan is 3.5% above LIBOR (London Inter-Bank Offered Rate), which currently means an overall interest rate of around 4 – 5%.
• Often the interest is around 1% less during the build stage, before the system is generating revenue.
• Some Funders require additional security to be provided, others do not. Some require the entire loan amount to be secured against alternative assets such as land or property, and want to see that the business (or individual) has sufficient alternative income to repay the loan in the event of a problem with the system not functioning.
• Others Funders require no additional security other than the wind project; in these cases the institutions are confident that the system will produce the forecast revenue for the duration of the loan.
• Exactly how much security is required (if any) and the interest rate on the loan are negotiable to a certain degree.
• In addition most loans have a set-up fee of around 2 – 3%
• Loan terms are typically 8 to 15 years.