FPL Group Inc. of Florida said Tuesday it will buy Central Maine Power Co.’s non-nuclear power plants for $846 million and join with Tractebel SA to build two power plants in Maine.
The partnership with Belgium’s Tractebel also will purchase two 300-megawatt power plants in New Jersey and Massachusetts from Intercontinental Energy Corp., a closely held Hingham, Mass.-power developer. The sale terms were withheld.
FPL, which has 3.6 million customers in Florida, has been expanding from a regional power company into a national competitor. The plants will give the company inexpensive power to sell in the heavily populated Northeast, where rates are among the highest in the nation.
“The Central Maine plants are considered low-cost compared to everything else in the region,” said Daniel Ford, an analyst with HSBC James Capel, who rates FPL’s stock as “neutral.”
The Intercontinental plants, fueled by natural gas, have the capacity to light 600,000 homes. Similar plants are valued at about $300 million each, said Edward Tirello, a NatWest Securities analyst.
