By Roland Murphy for AZBEX
With a pair of 9-0 votes, the Maricopa County Planning and Zoning Commission voted to advance two major energy projects on the far west side of the county in its Nov. 3 meeting. The approvals further cement what one staff member referred as the area’s status as “The region’s solar capital.”
Hyder Solar and Storage Project
In the first item before P&Z, Commissioners heard a Major Comprehensive Plan Amendment from Rural Development Area to Utilities for the Hyder Energy Project. The proposal centers around the planned construction of an 800MW alternating current solar energy generation facility and a battery energy storage system. The current request concerns Phase II of the project and covers a 1,997-acre site across 37 private parcels. A CPA for Phase I – totaling 3,619 acres – was approved last year.
The project would feature the deployment of up to 1,200,000 solar modules along with the BESS, a project substation and an operations and maintenance building. The BESS and support building would be built on 45 acres in the Phase I section of the development. According to the project narrative, “The Project transmission interconnect is anticipated to be less than 800 feet in length that would connect to a 500-kilovolt transmission line on 135- to 155-foot structures above grade within an up to 200-foot right-of-way.”
The planned site is a combined native desert and agricultural crop area. The narrative states, however, that “the local area has been heavily modified to support human habitation to include a transportation corridor, pipeline, county-maintained road network, telecommunications, above and below ground powerlines, and other planned our built solar farms…”
The project center is located roughly at Hyder and Agua Caliente roads. For the project to proceed, the developer will need to obtain a zone change with overlay and include a development plan within five years.
Harquahala Sun III
The second request before the County P&Z Commission concerned Harquahala Sun III, a proposed 9,033-acre, 1GW hybrid solar and BESS project on 63 parcels outside Tonopah, approximately 20 miles west of Buckeye. The site lies between Lower Buckeye and Elliot roads to the north and south and between 487th and 539th to the east and west.
Most of the properties for the site are currently used for irrigated agriculture or are vacant. There is also a limited number of residential structures.
The submitted narrative says: “The Project will be constructed in approximately four (4) phases with each phase including an approximately 250-MWac or more hybrid solar PV and battery power plant constructed on approximately 1,500 to 2,500 acres. Each phase of the project will include approximately 600,000 solar modules (~4,000,000 modules total) mounted on single axis trackers, inverters to convert direct current into grid-compatible alternating current, transformers to increase the voltage of the electricity generated, and a battery energy storage system. The Project will also include two 500 kV utility substations and one or more small buildings to house telecommunication equipment. The Project is expected to interconnect to the transmission grid at the Delaney Substation operated by Arizona Public Service (APS).”
Harquahala Sun III will expand upon planned improvements to be undertaken as part of the Harquahala Sun project planned in the same area. There are an additional nine solar projects of varying sizes in the area, which the proposal cites as a compatibility justification for approving the current request.
As with the Hyder Storage project, the development will have to obtain a zoning change within five years of the CPA.
