Cypress Creek Energy and Google on July 14 joined community leaders, project partners, and elected officials to mark the start of construction on the first two phases of Steel River Energy Center in Arkansas, the nation’s largest solar energy project to date.
The project’s first two phases will deliver 1.6 GWdc of new solar generation and 1.9 GWh of new battery storage to the local grid.
Once fully complete, the three-phase project will provide 2.5 GWdc of solar and 2.9 GWh of battery storage to the local grid system by 2029. This is enough electricity to power more than 315,000 Arkansas homes each year.
Under a power purchase agreement with project owner and operator Cypress Creek, Google has secured energy from the first two phases of Steel River Energy Center, which represents the largest solar and storage project across Google’s global portfolio to date.
"The project will connect to the regional grid, adding new generation and storage capacity to help power Arkansas’s growing industrial economy, including steel manufacturing, new data centers, and other major employers across the region," a news release noted.
Nearly all of the project’s structural steel will come from Mississippi County, Ark. For the project’s first two phases, PACO Steel will provide more than 400,000 steel piles manufactured in Blytheville using more than 142,000 tons of steel coils produced at U.S. Steel’s Big River Steel facility in Osceola. Each structural steel pile is stamped, “Proudly made in Mississippi County, Arkansas.”
Sitting atop those piles are solar trackers from Nextpower, built with domestically produced steel, including significant steel content from Big River. The project will also utilize 100% U.S.-made solar modules from First Solar and battery energy storage systems from LG Energy Solution Vertech, assembled in the United States with battery cells manufactured entirely in North America, predominantly at U.S. factories.
Cypress Creek Energy is a U.S. independent power producer and developer of energy infrastructure.
