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NASSAU COUNTY, Fla. — The CEO of a Florida-based energy company is clarifying plans for property in Nassau County.
Michael D. Farkas is the Founder and CEO of NextNRG. He confirmed his company leased 1,600 acres of land from Rayonier in Nassau County in 2025. He said their plan is to create solar energy.
“Originally, the project was solely for energy generation, a smart grid project, where we would deploy solar panels, energy storage, and provide additional power to JEA. That was the original concept,” Farkas said.
Farkas explained the project would be ‘homegrown’ and incorporate Jacksonville-based companies, including Jinko Solar and Saft batteries. The goal is to provide clean energy at a low cost to JEA.
“Having resilient power, low-cost power could do a lot of things. A lot of businesses have an issue with the accelerated cost of electricity in the local community, makes it very difficult to want to bring your business there. This allows for, again, a lot of additional electricity available for the local community at a very, very low cost,” Farkas said.
The project ran into some problems, though. Farkas said they have not had success reaching an agreement with JEA.
“Hopefully we’ll have some forward momentum. It’s not been easy. There’s been some changes at JEA that we’ve been dealing with, but we’re very hopeful that they’ll understand the benefits for the local community and what we’re providing, and will ultimately be a little bit more open-minded,” Farkas said.
The project stirred up controversy after social media posts circulated online about NextNRG building an AI data center in Nassau County. This prompted Nassau County Commissioners to consider a 12-month moratorium on data center development.
Farkas confirmed they did discuss building a data center after running into challenges with getting the solar project off the ground; however, he said that is not the direction he wants to take.
“Our ultimate goal was to add additional energy generation to the local community at JEA. We were having some issues getting that accomplished, so we’re looking at some way to monetize the location. So we were considering possibly deploying a data center at that location. But our main goal and objective was really not, we’re not in the data center business, we are in the energy business,” Farkas said.
There is no timeline for development of the site. Farkas said it depends on whether he can reach an agreement with JEA.
A spokesperson for JEA confirmed NextNRG has reached out to JEA and that no agreements have been made.
“Currently, JEA has power purchase agreements for eight small-scale solar sites in Duval County, 150 megawatts of solar power from Florida Power & Light and is in the process of constructing two solar sites on the Westside,” a JEA spokesperson said.
