The Mockingbird Photo voltaic Heart, Ørsted’s largest photo voltaic undertaking globally, is now on-line, subsequent to protected prairie donated by the renewable vitality large.
This huge 468-megawatt (MW) photo voltaic farm is ready to energy 80,000 houses and companies, offering a significant enhance to the Texas grid.
However the launch of Mockingbird Photo voltaic isn’t nearly clear vitality – it’s additionally about restoring valuable ecosystems. Ørsted has donated 953 acres of the Smiley-Woodfin Native Prairie Grassland, which sits subsequent to the photo voltaic middle, to The Nature Conservancy. The donated land is now the Smiley Meadow Protect, a protected space for tallgrass prairie that’s residence to greater than 400 species of grasses and wildflowers.
Tallgrass prairies are a few of the rarest ecosystems within the US, with lower than 1% of Texas’ authentic tallgrass prairies nonetheless in existence. Tallgrass prairie does lots of heavy lifting for the atmosphere, together with storing carbon, stopping floods, and offering essential habitats for pollinators.
“Native prairies are the rarest landscapes left in Texas – a lot in order that many individuals have by no means seen one,” stated David Bezanson, land safety technique program director for The Nature Conservancy in Texas. He added that preserving Smiley Meadow is not going to solely preserve top-of-the-line prairie remnants left but in addition assist restore different prairie habitats and enhance regional biodiversity.
The Mockingbird Photo voltaic Heart, a half-billion-dollar undertaking, is a part of Ørsted’s $20 billion push to increase renewable vitality manufacturing throughout the US. Past producing electrical energy, it should inject $75 million into native property taxes, benefiting colleges and different public providers. The undertaking additionally created over 550 building jobs and can proceed to be supported by operations workers shifting ahead.
Ørsted labored with US corporations, together with First Photo voltaic, for photo voltaic panels and partnered with native companies like Drake Building and Pfifer Farms for building supplies. It additionally gave greater than $50,000 to native volunteer hearth departments in Roxton and Brookston.
With Mockingbird Photo voltaic now up and working, Ørsted has greater than 6 gigawatts of onshore wind, photo voltaic, and battery storage tasks both in operation or being constructed throughout the US.
Learn extra: Ørsted bought an enormous Tesla battery storage system for the world’s single-largest offshore wind farm
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