A large solar farm north of Houston that received about $200 million in financing a year ago has come online.
Recurrent Energy, a subsidiary of Canadian Solar, announced Thursday that Liberty Solar, a 134 megawatt project in Liberty County, about 50 miles northeast of Houston, had started operations. The project has contracts to feed electricity to corporate customers including Autodesk, Biogen, an electronics unit of Merck and Wayfair.
The project, which secured $120 million in construction debt, a letter of credit facility and a term facility from Rabobank, Nord LB and U.S. Bank in September 2023, feeds power to the grid operated by the Midcontinent Independent System Operator and will produce enough energy to power approximately 15,000 homes annually, the company said. U.S. Bancorp Impact Finance provided the tax equity financing of $80 million, which came in exchange for a portion of the project’s tax credits.
While the electric grid serving roughly 90% of the state is operated by the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, a small portion in East Texas is served by MISO. El Paso and far West Texas are in the Western Interconnection, and portions of the Panhandle region are in the Eastern Interconnection.
“Projects like Liberty Solar are instrumental to meeting the soaring demand for electricity in Texas,” Mark Stover, executive director of the Texas Solar Power Association, said in a statement from the company. “We commend Recurrent Energy for pushing through the development process and working with corporate buyers to deliver new, predictable, clean power to the MISO region of Texas.”
Solar power has been an increasing source of energy on the Texas grid. At noon Monday, more than 25% of the power flowing on the ERCOT grid came from solar, with about half generated by natural gas plants.
Source: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/recurrent-energy-solar-farm-houston-19876952.phpt
