Final approvals for Sloughhouse Solar LLC, a proposed 50-megawatt solar photovoltaic array to supply power to the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, go to the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.
The project, first proposed in the summer of 2021, is to be developed by D. E. Shaw Renewable Investments, a subsidiary of New York hedge fund manager D. E. Shaw & Co. LP.
Sloughhouse Solar would supply about 1% of SMUD’s total electrical load with renewable, clean power, according to SMUD’s power-purchase agreement for the project, approved in the summer of 2021.
Under the power-purchase agreement, SMUD commits to buying electricity from the project for 27 years at a set rate in return for D.E. Shaw financing and building it.
Sloughhouse Solar is proposed on two parcels that total 795 acres in an agriculturally zoned part of the county. The proposed array would cover about 372 acres of the property, mostly on grazing land, but it would also cover about 160 acres of agricultural farmland, according to the county’s staff report.
Sacramento County’s planning commission approved the project in October.
The Sacramento County Board of Supervisors is being asked to certify the project’s environmental document, approve its California Environmental Quality Act findings, and approve its use permit and a special development permit, among other approvals.
The solar project is at 7794 Dillard Road, which is south of Highway 16, roughly between Rancho Murieta and Wilton.
Part of the property, roughly 90 acres, has an existing 9.4-megawatt solar array on it that the county approved in 2011. The Sloughhouse Solar project is independent of the existing Dillard Recurrent Solar Park array, which is owned by Recurrent Energy, the U.S. arm of solar developer Canadian Solar Inc. (Nasdaq: CSIQ), based in Guelph, Ontario.
Sloughhouse Solar would allow the continuing grazing activity on the farmland, according to its Sloughhouse Solar website.
In 2021, SMUD set an ambitious goal of getting to zero-carbon power by 2030. The Sloughhouse Solar project and others like it are how SMUD plans to reach that goal, which is set 15 years ahead of California’s statewide zero-carbon target of 2045, which is the most advanced in the country.
SMUD currently gets about 440 megawatts of electricity from utility-scale solar power projects, which have been installed over 40 years. SMUD wants to add about 1,500 megawatts of additional solar generation by 2030, said SMUD spokesman Gamaliel Ortiz. Solar projects located within SMUD's service area, basically Sacramento County, total over 280 megawatts, Ortiz said.
A megawatt is roughly enough electricity to power the instantaneous demand of between 250 and 750 homes. DE Shaw conservatively estimates its Sloughhouse project will be able to power 12,000 homes.
Another large solar project for SMUD is currently proposed nearby in Sacramento County.
Coyote Creek Agrivoltaic Ranch is in planning for a 200-megawatt facility in Sloughhouse. The Coyote Creek Agrivoltaic Ranch project will be the largest solar array in SMUD’s territory, covering 1,200 acres on a parcel that is over 2,550 acres. It will generate enough electricity to cover 5% of the utility’s electrical load. SMUD already gets electricity from a 160-megawatt solar array on 550 acres of SMUD land at the decommissioned Rancho Seco Nuclear Generating Station in the southern part of Sacramento County. Both the Rancho Seco and Coyote Creek solar farms are also owned by D. E. Shaw Renewable Investments.
SMUD itself is the lead developer of the proposed Country Acres Solar, a 344-megawatt project in southwestern Placer County. Country Acres Solar is on a parcel of about 1,300 acres in Placer County on Baseline Road, a few miles west of the Roseville city limit.
D. E. Shaw manages about $60 billion in assets.
SMUD is the sixth-largest community-owned electric provider in the country. Its power mix surpassed 50% non-carbon-emitting power sourced in 2019.
