A look at the golf links behind the main building of the Guam International Country Club in Dededo, as seen on June 13, 2024.
Signs are displayed in support and opposition during a public hearing on Bill 135-38 at the Guam Congress Building in Hagåtña on July 22, 2025. Bill 135-38, a measure being revisited by lawmakers to allow the CHamoru Land Trust Commission the ability to authorize the Guam International Country Club in Dededo to convert from the municipal golf course to a power-generating solar farm during a public hearing held before lawmakers.
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A look at the golf links behind the main building of the Guam International Country Club in Dededo, as seen on June 13, 2024.
Signs are displayed in support and opposition during a public hearing on Bill 135-38 at the Guam Congress Building in Hagåtña on July 22, 2025. Bill 135-38, a measure being revisited by lawmakers to allow the CHamoru Land Trust Commission the ability to authorize the Guam International Country Club in Dededo to convert from the municipal golf course to a power-generating solar farm during a public hearing held before lawmakers.
Corrections and clarifications: This story has been updated to correctly reflect that the Guam International Country Club sits on over 200 acres of land. A previous version of the story contained other information.
The old Guam International Country Club golf course in Dededo is a step closer to becoming a 57.4-megawatt solar farm.
Members of the Consolidated Commission on Utilities voted unanimously on Wednesday to let the Guam Power Authority award deals to buy energy from the planned solar facilities.
It’s a major step towards converting the old Dededo golf course, which sits on over 200 acres of CHamoru Land Trust property, into a solar farm.
Final approval is still needed from the Public Utilities Commission, Guam’s rate-setting authority, before the deals can move forward.
If the PUC approves the deals, GPA will purchase energy from the solar facilities and then sell it to power customers for 25 years, with the option for a 5-year extension.
Energy sold to the power authority will come in under GPA’s price-cap of 17.9 cents per kilowatt hour for new solar capacity, according to a presentation to the CCU.
Alongside the 57.4 MW capacity at the old Dededo golf course, another solar site by Andersen Air Force Base in Yigo will provide almost 5 MW of capacity, as part of the deals.
Construction is expected to start before July 4, if the PUC agrees to the energy purchase, GPA leadership has said.
GPA wants the matter before the PUC by their June meeting, authority General Manager John Benavente has said.
That meeting date has yet to be announced.
There will actually be four different companies that get contracts to sell GPA energy, power authority legal counsel Marianne Woloschuk explained on Wednesday.
The over 200-acre Dededo golf course will be split into three separate solar sites, she said. Those sites, along with fourth site in Yigo, will each be owned by a different company, all named Sun Energy, LLC 1, 2, 3, or 4.
Each one would get a contract with GPA.
Woloschuk said the four companies are owned by Sun Energy Holdings.
That holding company, in turn, is owned by Power Solutions, the company that bought out Guam International Country Club, according to Woloschuk.
GICC is the holder of the lease for the over 200-acre Land Trust property. The lease expires in 2042.
The country club faced hardship in the post-pandemic years, and was at one time around $988,000 behind on rent to the Land Trust.
A golf course-to-solar farm switch is meant to keep the lease going and money flowing to the Land Trust and has been estimated to generate around $8 million to $15 million for the trust, Pacific Daily News files show.
Despite opposition from multiple Dededo residents, the conversion has approval from the Land Trust and the Legislature.
Woloschuk on Wednesday said the Land Trust also approved an easement agreement that will let GPA use just under an acre of the Dededo property for a power substation.
The planned Dededo solar facility will come with a 35-MW battery that can be used to store energy generated during daylight hours for distribution in the evening, GPA’s Benavente said Wednesday.
An underground line from the facility will feed into the Dededo substation, Benavente said.
“The Dededo substation is tied into an underground transmission line, so as long as after the storm, the solar facility can generate power immediately, it can come out to the grid,” he said.
The addition of about 62 MW of solar generation capacity from the golf course facility would come on top of other solar projects GPA plans to have online by 2028.
Here are recent solar awards by GPA:
Plans are part of GPA’s larger “Phase IV” solar project, which has a goal of delivering 330 MW of additional solar generation capacity to the electrical grid by 2028.
Reach reporter Joe Taitano II at JTaitano@guampdn.com.
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