SunEdison will move ahead on a number of utility scale PV projects in Central and Southern California thanks to a new round of funding from a consortium of partners led by New Energy Capital Partners. The group is investing $63.7 million to develop and build more than 150 megawatts of projects, which are anticipated to provide 320,000 megawatt hours annually.

New Energy Capital was joined by North Sky Capital and EverStream Energy Capital to raise funds for the projects.

"We depend on strong relationships with committed finance partners," stated Tim Derrick, President and General Manager of North America at SunEdison.  "Working together enables us to deliver predictably priced clean energy to our customers while generating construction jobs in the communities that will benefit from the energy generated by the projects." 

The projects are being supported through the New Energy Capital Cleantech Infrastructure Fund and the Cleantech Alliance Fund, both which are managed by New Energy Capital and North Sky Capital, respectively. Amongst other things, the funds are designed to support union jobs.

"This investment offers attractive returns for our investors and we anticipate that it will create approximately 250,000 man-hours of work for highly-skilled union laborers in California," said Scott Barrington, CEO of North Sky Capital, the manager of the Cleantech Alliance Fund.

While SunEdison is one of the longest-standing solar project developers and has helped pioneer the use of power-purchase agreements for commercial entities to go solar, the company has still had to rely on outside funding to develop utility-scale projects.

"Developers face significant funding gaps at certain stages of the development cycle, and we are committed to bringing flexible and efficient capital to high quality assets," said PJ Lee, Managing Partner of Everstream Energy Capital Partners.

SunEdison, formerly MEMC, has shifted its focus from the semiconductor business to a solar company that specializes in solar as a service for customers. In fact, the company decided just last month to sell off its semiconductor business, which will now operate as a separate entity with its own board of directors.

SunEdison currently has over 1 gigawatt of solar projects under its management. The company also had a project pipeline of 2.9 gigawatts of projects and a 1.0 gigawatt backlog of projects as of the end of the second quarter in 2013. In addition, there were over 200 megawatts of projects in the pipeline that were under construction as of the end of the last quarter.