$770 million Solar Farm investment comes to Childress County
- Jan 4, 2018
- 2 min read
by Drew Powell | Thu, October 4, 2018 at 6:32 PM
CHILDRESS, Texas (KVII) — New job opportunities are coming to Childress, Texas with the creation of Solar Farm One and Solar Farm Two. The projects are named “MISAE” which means “Born beneath the white-hot sun” in Native American language.
“The economic impact will first be in our sales tax because of the amount of people that will be here,” said Jay Mayden, Childress County Judge. “We will have lots of people here in the County to build this, we're looking at 700 people just to build it.”
The construction and operation of two solar farms located 10 to 12 miles southeast of Childress will benefit Childress ISD and the Childress County Hospital District financially.
“We get paid based on our ADA and it’s about $106,000 a year,” said Rick Teran, Superintendent at Childress ISD. “That will be the same thing for solar farm two.”
“It’s a big financial impact because they’re willing to pay a pilot payment and the second way the hospital could benefit is just from the employees that come in and obviously they’ll need medical services,” said Kevin Latimer, CEO of Childress County Hospital District.
A project of this magnitude has both Childress County and city officials working together to accommodate the investment into a new solar farm.
“They would need temporary housing with an expected 700 people coming to work on this,” said Latimer. “Some people would be here long enough to put their kids in schools. We’re looking at between 10 and 12 full time jobs after its in operation.”
Judge Mayden tells ABC 7 News there are some final details being ironed out before construction begins on 5,474 acres set aside for Solar Farm One and Solar Farm Two.
“Right now, there’s some easements they have to go through to get more transmission lines built to our substation,” said Mayden. “That isn’t a problem, were working on that now. Once that goes into-affect it’s just getting the manpower to start building this thing.”
Solar Farm One is going to be developed on 1,674 acres and will provide 60,000 homes with green energy. Solar Farm Two is being developed on 3,800 acres and will supply 129,000 homes with green energy.
Mayden tells ABC 7 News the green energy is for the Dallas & Fort Worth area.
Construction on Solar Farm One is expected to start in a couple of months with construction of Solar Farm Two scheduled to begin in mid-2019 and be completed in 2020.
The renewable energy developer is Miguel Oneto, who is skilled in Solar PV, wind energy, renewable energy and entrepreneurship.
