Featured Photograph: Jerry Lanclos and George Lanclos review St. Landry Solar Farm Project with NextEra Resources representative Adam Shuler. (Photograph by Bobby Ardoin)
BOBBY ARDOIN
Editor/Contributing Writer
A second solar farming enterprise is seeking a permit application to operate in St. Landry Parish.
NextEra Resource officials said last week that they plan to locate a 2.500-acre solar farm south of Port Barre, with a completion date scheduled sometime in 2024.
Company representatives hosted an informal presentation at the Yambilee Building, with available topographical maps identifying an area between state highways 103 and 741 where the St. Landry Solar Project will be placed.
Project Manager Christopher Cothran said during an interview that the company expects to sign leases or lease-purchase agreements with about six landowners, although negotiations are ongoing for situating the 150-megawatt panels on property that will be eventually rezoned for industrial use.
NextEra Cothran said, plans to publicly address the solar farm project in January during meetings with the St. Landry Parish Council.
“It’s going to be a big project,” said Bill Rodier, executive director of the St. Landry Parish Economic and Development Board.
Rodier said he has been discussing plans for the solar farm with company officials for several months.
The announcement for the Port Barre-area solar farm is the second during the past two months.
In November the Parish Council approved the application for Light Source BP to use about 900 acres of property in the Plaisance area for what the company is labeling The Prairie Ronde Solar Project.
In a Friday interview parish president Jessie Bellard estimates that NextEra Resources will spend at least $200 million for the St. Landry Solar Project.
That’s considerably more Bellard said, than the Prairie Ronde Solar Project which Bellard said will cost the company about $175 million.
Cothran said usually once they begin, it takes solar farm projects 12 to 18 months to complete before they begin harvesting solar energy inside the panels using nearby transmission lines.
Both NextEra Resources and Light Source BP have announced that they are financing ongoing solar projects in other parts of Louisiana.
Light Source BP has a solar farm project scheduled for Pointe Coupee Parish, while NextEra has announced a 1,278-acre solar farm complex scheduled in Tangipahoa Parish.
