Dive Brief:
- A private company is planning to develop a 70 MW solar plant, what the developer calls one of the largest green energy projects in the state , near Kingman, Ariz., but will first need regulators to rezone a large swath of land in order to make it possible, the Daily Miner reports.
- Grey Hawk Solar has asked the Mohave County Board of Supervisor to rezone 1,550 acres from farm and agricultural land, and the board could make a decision next week, according to The Daily Miner.
- The project would be constructed in conjunction with a 20-year power purchase agreement signed with UniSource Energy Services, a utility which recently garnered headlines when it proposed new demand charges on residential solar customers.
Dive Insight:
The president of Torch Clean Energy, the parent of Grey Hawk, outlined to The Daily Miner the project details and community resistance to the solar facility.
"We'll pay tens of millions of dollars in property taxes over the life of the project, but we will take no county services," President Jon Kilberg told the newspaper. "There will be no towers, no reflection. ... There is no structure taller than a house."
UniSource helped select the site, asking the company to develop the facility close to the utility's load. "We originally planned for an area in Kingman already zoned for solar," Kilberg said. "We're excited. We've seen a lot of these fail and we hope the community is supportive."
The Mohave County Board of Supervisors could vote on March 21 to rezone the land, adding a solar production overlay to the current agricultural designation.
UniSource, which serves less than 100,000 customers, has made other solar headlines this year. The utility has proposed a monthly $5 to $10 increase to its basic service charge for residential and small commercial customers, requiring a demand charge for new solar owners and an optional demand charge for all other customers.
The utility explained in its filing with the Arizona Corporation Commission that retail sales are down almost 8% from the last rate case period. Industrial and mining customer usage is down 50% and residential customer usage is down nearly 4% and expected to continue to decline.
The utility also asked the commission to approve a net metering credit that would initially be $0.0584/kWh, or “the price of power from large solar arrays." The rate would be updated annually.