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Officials in northeast Arkansas will break ground next week on a giant $3.5 billion solar farm that will produce enough electricity to power hundreds of thousands of homes.
Solar panels will cover some 15,000 to 17,000 acres in Mississippi County, near the town of Wilson, making the array one of the largest solar projects in the country, according to county and company officials.
The company behind the project, Cypress Creek Energy, is an independent power producer located in Durham, North Carolina.
The project, called the Steel River Energy Center, will be built in three phases, the first two of which will produce 1.63 gigawatts of electricity and 1.9 gigawatts of electricity stored in batteries.
A third phase, scheduled for completion by 2029, would push the array’s capacity to 2.46 gigawatts of electricity and 2.94 gigawatts of stored electricity – enough to power close to a half-million homes, according to the company. One gigawatt is 1,000 megawatts. By comparison, Arkansas Nuclear One produces about 1.8 gigawatts of electricity.
The company also stated in a press release that the solar panels it will use will be made in the United States, and the steel infrastructure for the array will be made in Arkansas. U.S. Steel’s Big River Steel plant in Osceola will manufacture steel coils, which will then be turned into 400,000 steel posts by PACO Steel in Blytheville. The project will also create 700 construction jobs and $300 million in taxes that will be paid out over the life of the solar farm, which is typically 25 to 30 years.
The groundbreaking is set for July 14 in Wilson, with company, state and local officials planning to attend. Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who usually attends such high-profile events, was not listed, nor was anyone from her administration. An email was sent to the governor’s office to ask if it was sending anyone, but we had not received a response by the time this story was posted.
Sanders and Republican legislators have not been particularly friendly to the solar industry, scaling back financial incentives for residential and commercial solar development. Nationally, President Trump and MAGA Republicans oppose federal subsidies for solar and have actively opposed solar power in general, instead leaning into the use of fossil fuels, such as coal and natural gas.
Cliff Chitwood, president of Mississippi County Economic Development, said solar energy is one answer to creating needed electricity.
“We turned off coal, and that didn’t make any sense,” he said, “and then we sorta went into a lull. And then data centers came along, and now we’ve found ourselves in a hole. This is a way to get ourselves out of that hole we dug ourselves.”
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Byron Tate is managing editor at the Arkansas Times. His email is byrontate@arktimes.com More by Byron Tate
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