Partners Group invests $450m, buys PowerTransitions for brownfield renewables shift

• Partners Group will pour >USD 450 m into PowerTransitions, converting retired U.S. fossil plants into solar-plus-storage hubs to meet booming, AI-driven power demand.

Swiss private-markets heavyweight Partners Group has agreed to acquire PowerTransitions—EnCap Investments’ specialist in repowering retired thermal plants—and will inject more than USD 450 million to turbo-charge its growth. The Denver-based developer turns mothballed gas or coal sites with existing grid ties into clean-energy hubs by co-locating solar arrays and battery storage, a strategy that bypasses interconnection bottlenecks and slashes development timelines.

What Partners Group is buying

• Seed portfolio: 226 MW of legacy natural-gas peakers that generate stable cash flow today and provide points of interconnection for new renewables.

• Pipeline: 3 GW of additional U.S. thermal sites already identified in congestion-prone markets—ripe for solar-plus-storage retrofits.

Why the deal matters

• Exploding demand: U.S. electrification, manufacturing re-shoring and an AI-fuelled data-centre boom could require >130 GW of new generation within five years. Brownfield conversions can deliver capacity faster than greenfield builds.

• Grid reliability & decarbonisation: Adding two- to four-hour BESS alongside existing turbines lets operators firm renewable output while cutting fossil runtime.

• Permitting advantage: Retrofitting sites with grandfathered permits and interconnection rights avoids long queues and expensive grid-upgrade fees.

Next steps

Partners Group will work with PowerTransitions’ management—boasting 100+ years of brownfield-redevelopment know-how—on a “transformational value-creation plan” that layers solar and batteries onto the seed fleet, pursues further plant acquisitions and structures long-term offtake contracts. Legal counsel is being provided by Davis Polk & Wardwell.

The transaction marks Partners Group’s second U.S. power investment in 2025 and reinforces its thesis that repurposing stranded thermal assets is a capital-efficient way to meet surging, round-the-clock electricity demand while advancing decarbonisation.