A $98 million solar farm in Morehouse Parish is looking for tax breaks for manufacturing renewable power, The Advocate reports. This information came from an advance notification filed with Louisiana’s economic development office.
Bayou Galion Solar Projfect LLC, which is a subsidiary of Recurrent Energy Development Holdings, proposed building a 98.1-megawatt solar farm on 1,000 acres leased from landowners outside of Bastrop. This could power almost 21,000 homes. Bayou Galion, which is also a subsidiary of Canadian Solar, estimated that it would create three permanent jobs to run the solar farm and support 150 construction jobs starting in July 2022. Those jobs would end by December 2024.
Bayou Galion is hoping for an up to 80% property tax abatement for 10 years through Louisiana’s Industrial Tax Exemption Program. The state has approved all of the solar farms proposed for economic incentives so far. However, some residents have pushed back to include a local permitting process
Since Entergy announced it would be buying solar power, the demand for solar farms has increased. Entergy, which has been mostly interested in solar farms in southeast Louisiana, is one of Louisiana’s utilities that have been looking to buy renewable energy. Cleco and Lafayette Utilities System are also in the market for renewable energy.
Entergy noted that new requests for proposals are expected in the coming years as part of “a recurring series of RFPs for renewable resources to support ongoing Entergy Louisiana energy needs to capitalize on the improving economics of solar and potentially offer other technologies relative to conventional resources.”
Louisiana’s first utility-scale solar farm, which is 50 megawatts, is in West Baton Rouge Parish and is being connected to the power grid under a 20-year power supply contract with Entergy, which has two open requests for proposals. One, released in June 2020, is for 300 megawatts. The second recently opened for 500 megawatts of power. Entergy Louisiana has already made its final decisions with undisclosed companies for the 300-megawatt proposal. However, The Advocate noted that it is still negotiating a deal.
