The Sacramento Municipal Utility district is proposing a new 75-megawatt solar photovoltaic project with battery storage on 400 acres in a rural area north of Wilton.
The utility this week issued a notice of preparation to interested parties on the scope of the project. SMUD is preparing a full environmental impact report on the Oveja Ranch Solar Project, even though it doesn’t need to prepare a full EIR under a recent California law.
“Transparency is very important to us. An EIR lets us communicate environmental impacts of the project,” Amanda Beck, manager of renewable project development with SMUD, told the Business Journal.
The cost of the project is still too early to tell, she said.
Beck also said that SMUD is taking the lead on this project at this time, The utility sometimes enters projects with other developers, and it could still do that with this project.
Assembly Bill 205, signed into law in 2022, allows the California Energy Commission to approve large renewable power plants with a streamlined process, which can confer approval in nine months.
To be eligible, a project must be larger than 50 megawatts. A megawatt is enough electricity to power about 750 homes. Getting a full EIR on a project under the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, generally adds 18 moths to two years to the permitting of project, if it is approved.
Utility-scale solar arrays are the primary means SMUD and California are using to meet the state’s 2045 zero-carbon target, which seeks to replace fossil fuel-powered electricity with cleaner renewable power plants.
SMUD has set its own even more aggressive 100% zero-carbon target for 2030. State law mandates all utilities in the state generate at least 50% of electricity from renewable sources by 2030. SMUD passed the 50% renewables threshold six years ago.
Oveja Ranch will be east of Excelsior Road and north of Grant Line Road, which is in the the vicinity of existing and proposed large SMUD utility-scale solar projects in the areas around Sloughhouse.
Coyote Creek Agrivoltaic Ranch is in planning for a 200-megawatt facility in Sacramento County. It 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 also include 400-megawatt-hour battery storage operation on-site. Coyote Creek is on vacant rolling prairie used for sheep grazing.
Once built, part of the Coyote Creek land will be used for ground-mounted solar generation, as well as sheep grazing. Coyote Creek is being developed for SMUD by New York-based D. E. Shaw Renewable Investments.
D.E. Shaw also won final approvals from Sacramento County in January for Sloughhouse Solar LLC, a proposed 50-megawatt solar photovoltaic array to supply power to SMUD. That project was first proposed in the summer of 2021. Sloughhouse Solar would also allow livestock grazing to continue on its land, according to the Sloughhouse Solar website.
Years ago, SMUD developed the Rancho Seco 1 Solar Facility on the former parking lots and buildings of the long-closed Rancho Seco nuclear power station in the southern part of the county. That 11-megawatt array replaced former buildings, concrete and asphalt. When it opened Rancho Seco 2 in 2021, that 160-megawatt installation was built on grazing land near the decommissioned reactor.
The Rancho Seco solar sites had the benefit for SMUD that they were near existing substations and utility lines.
The Oveja Ranch proposal includes the construction of a generation substation and interconnecting transmission lines.
