The acres of solar panels are being installed near I-15 west of Plymouth will produce 80 MW of electricity on March 15 2024.
PLYMOUTH – Utah will quickly add to its renewable energy profile when two Box Elder County solar farms covering approximately 500 acres each go live this year.
Box Elder County Commissioner Stan Summers said they expanded their footprint to over 500 acers a piece with the Rocket Solar project, which is pretty much finished and just waiting to flip the switch. The Steel Solar project is east of Nucor right off I-15.
“I haven’t heard anything about a ribbon cutting or anything, but it’s got to be close,” he said. “There was a supply chain issue early on. There was a company that couldn’t get their financing, so the panels became available, and we got them.”
The Steel Solar project has crews of about 200 workers who are currently installing solar panels and it appears like they are over halfway done. When finished, the Steel Solar project will generate some 80 megawatts and so will the Rocket Solar project in Corinne.
One megawatt of solar power can power over 700 U.S. homes for a year depending on how much power a home uses.
“These two solar power projects will not only generate power, but they will also generate over $1 million in taxes for Box Elder County,” Summers said. “The tax revenue will go back to the county and be used for our communities and schools. Currently, the properties are generating about $40,000 a year.”
Both of the solar farms are on private land.
One of the reasons the two locations were selected was because they have the most transmission lines near Nucor Steel and Northrup Grumman. These huge companies take an enormous amount of power and things are in place for them to take the power generated by the solar fields.
Both Box Elder County solar farms were supposed to be online in 2022 and so was the one being built in Tooele County – the Horseshoe Solar installation – to support Facebook. There were supply chain issues early on there, as well.
In July of 2022 the first major solar farm in Utah went live without much notice. The 104 megawatt Wellington-based solar farm power goes to Meta’s Data Center in Eagle Mountain.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said in 2022, only about 16 percent of Utah’s total electricity generation came from renewable energy sources. Solar energy generates more electricity than any other renewable resource in the state.
At the end of 2022, Utah ranked ninth among the states in the amount of solar power generating capacity, with 1,537 megawatts.