The Sacramento County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved Sloughhouse Solar LLC, a 50-megawatt solar photovoltaic array to supply power to the Sacramento Municipal Utility District.
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.
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. The project was approved by the Board of Supervisors Tuesday, after Sacramento County’s planning commission approved it in October.
The solar project is at 7794 Dillard Road, which is south of Highway 16, roughly between Rancho Murieta and Wilton.
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. D.E. Shaw conservatively estimates its Sloughhouse project will be able to power 12,000 homes.
