Dive Brief:

• Dallas-based Panda Power Funds snapped up the majority stake in a state-of-the-art natural gas plant planned for the Northern Virginia suburbs near Washington D.C. The value of the deal was not disclosed.
• The deal for the 750-MW Stonewall generation station in Loudoun County, Va., is the private equity firm's first investment in Virginia.

The plant is expected to be:

• a zero-liquid-discharge facility that will easily meet the Environmental Protection Agency's recently proposed standards to limit carbon dioxide emissions from new facilities. 
• built along existing transmission lines, eliminating the need to for new lines to import power into the region.
• operational in the spring of 2017, with Bechtel as the EPC contractor.

Dive Insight:

The site of the plant is in the middle of one of the fastest growing counties in the US. It is a national hub for data storage facilities, defense contractors and technology companies. Roughly 70% of the world's Internet traffic flows through Loudoun County.