Thirteen months after awarding a contract for a 200-megawatt solar facility in west Lowndes County to a Florida-based company, TVA has awarded another contract to the same company for another 150-megawatt solar plant.
TVA announced Wednesday it will again partner with Origis Energy to develop the 150-megawatt solar and 50-megawatt battery storage facility adjacent to the Origis solar plant approved by TVA in February 2020.
Although neither TVA or Origis officials announced the total investment, Golden Triangle Development LINK CEO Joe Max Higgins said the investment in the two solar facilities would be about $350 million.
“The rule of thumb is a million dollars per megawatt,” Higgins said. “So roughly speaking, between the two, it would be a $350 million capital investment. To put that in perspective, PACCAR was $400 million and Yokohama was $350 million. So this project is a pretty big deal.”
In announcing the second facility, TVA said it had reached an agreement to sell the power generated by the second plant to support Facebook’s two data centers in the Tennessee Valley. Origis will own and operate the Lowndes County plant.
Higgins said TVA had already signed contracts for all of the solar power produced by the first Origis solar plant, which is under contract to begin producing power in fall 2022.
“Of that 200 megawatts, 100 was sold to General Motors in Spring Hill, Tennessee, 60 megawatts was sold to Knoxville Public Utilities and the remaining 40 megawatts was also sold,” Higgins said.
Both facilities will be located on 4,000 acres west of the Infinity Megasite that Origis leased in 2020.
In fact, Origis originally hoped to build a 350-megawatt facility on that property, Origis Chief Procurement Officer Johann Vanhee said, before TVA opted for a smaller, 200-megawatt facility.
“What I said to TVA was, ‘If you are ever interested in the additional 150 (megawatts) let me know,'” Vanhee said in announcing the 200-megawatt contract. “They were very frank and said, ‘Yes, we are interested.’ Again, there was no guarantee, but TVA did express interest, so we will continue to develop plans for the remaining 150 megawatts.”
Vanhee said the original 350-megawatt facility would be the largest solar facility east of the Mississippi River. Combined, the two facilities will produce 350 megawatts along with another 100 megawatts in battery storage.
TVA said the second solar facility is expected to start producing energy in late 2023.
The two facilities will mean 250 construction jobs, but they will employ only three to five people after the plants go into operation.
The real economic impact for the county will come from property tax revenue, Higgins said.
“The easiest way to do the math is that the first (solar facility) will generate an average of $284,000 for the county (annually) and $321,000 for the county schools over the first 10 years,” Higgins said. “When the second one is added in, that number will go up to an average of $662,000 for the county and $750,000 for the schools.”
Higgins said the county supervisors approved a fee-in-lieu of taxes agreement for both projects in February 2020. That allows companies to pay a fee of one-third of full property taxes for up to 10 years.
Those fee-in-lieu revenues could begin as early as 2023 for the first project and 2025 for the second, Higgins said.
The projects are a part of TVA’s Green Invest program to add a significant amount of renewable energy to its customers.
Higgins said Wednesday’s announcement may not mean the end of solar facility production in the Golden Triangle.
“We’re working on two more solar projects, one in Lowndes County and one in Clay County,” Higgins said. “Here is the office, the talk (Wednesday) was, ‘We got this one, now let’s go get another one.'”
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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