CIT Group served as coordinating lead arranger for $204.5 million in debt financing to support construction of Holstein Solar, a 200-megawatt solar farm to be built in Nolan County, TX.

The project was sold by 8minute Solar Energy to Duke Energy Renewables upon close of the financing.

8minute Solar Energy is based in Los Angeles and is the largest private solar and storage developer in the U.S. with more than14 gigawatts of solar and storage under development in California, the Southwest, Texas, and the Southeast while also having brought more than 2 gigawatts of solar power plants into operation.

Duke Energy Renewables, a nonregulated unit of Duke Energy, operates wind and solar generation facilities across the U.S., with a total capacity of 3,000 megawatts.

CIT led a group of four other banks in arranging the Holstein Solar financing.

Holstein is the third major solar project that CIT has financed in Texas in a little over a year.

“We were pleased to work with both 8minute and Duke Energy Renewables to advance the Holstein project as we continue to grow our portfolio of clean energy financings across the U.S.,” said Mike Lorusso, managing director and group head for CIT’s Power and Energy business.

“We’re convinced that large-scale solar power plants like Holstein Solar will become the dominant form of power generation in the future,” said Tom Buttgenbach, president and CEO of 8minute. “We greatly appreciated the expertise of CIT’s Power and Energy team in arranging the financing for this exciting new project.”