December 4,2016-
San Jose-based Sunpower, who built the 670 acre, 102 MW Henrietta Solar farm near NAS Lemoore has applied to Kings County for a conditional use permit to build an even larger 130MW solar facility in southwest Kings County. The project is called Alamo Springs ,a 985 acre solar farm to be built at 46953 Devils Den, along Highway 33 near the Kern County line. The remote location is west of I-5.
Sunpower applied for their permit November 15 with the filing of an initial study says county planner Chuck Kinney.
The addition of 130MW of planned solar brings the county total of projects either built or in the pipeline to over 1200MW. That’s a similar total in next door Fresno County. A pipeline of 2400MW of future power is more than enough to offset the 2000MW set to mothballed at Diablo Canyon nuclear plant in 2025.
Of the 27 solar project in the county 18 of them have been built. The largest is Mustang Solar at 160MW that went on line in late August. Fresno County has several huge solar farms in the works that will each generate 400MW not far from the Fresno/Kings County line in the Westside.