Stories in this Regional News Roundup are excerpted from weekly newspapers from around the region. This is part one, with part two scheduled to appear in Sunday’s Tribune.
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COLFAX — Vesper Energy, a company located in Dallas, gave a presentation to the Whitman County Planning Commission on Dec. 6, about plans for a solar farm in Whitman County.
The company is looking at 560 acres for the project and plans a 100-megawatt solar farm with lithium-ion battery storage for over 5 to 10 acres.
Vesper Energy Community Affairs Manager Alex Rohr said the project, called Daystar Renewable Energy, is a solar and energy storage project.
“The goal would be to have 100 megawatts of solar and 100 megawatts of storage,” Rohr said, noting that in the long term, solar and battery storage will mitigate costs across the grid.
Rohr said the project will bring in $14.9 million across the county, in addition to $1.7 million in 2027. “That’s about comparative value,” he said.
Rohr said the company estimated the land would be paid approximately $1.05 million in taxes during that period.
“Roughly 14 times the tax revenue as it would currently be over the life of the project,” he said.
Rohr said the largest the project can go is 900 acres.
Rohr said the first thing the company’s teams do when they identify an area is look at the grid as a whole. “When and where more energy resources are needed,” he said, noting they look at the grid, substation and an electrical corridor.
Rohr said they reached out to landowners in the area, and are currently working with potential landowners to finalize the project location. “This project has quite a bit to go still,” he said, noting the location is more definite.
According to reports, the area they are looking at is northwest of Thornton on Thorn Creek Road.
“This is all on private property on individual land,” said Rohr, noting the company knows who might be interested in building a partnership. “We generally are looking for long-term leases.”
Rohr said that once the project is done the landowners do what they want to do, and they help the farmer keep the land running. “It’s just another check they get regardless of what happens to commodity prices and crops in general,” he said.
Rohr said the way the solar energy project would work is through harvesting the sun and collecting energy. The company would then connect to a substation, which in turn provides energy to Avista’s power grid.
— Teresa Simpson, Whitman County Gazette (Colfax), Thursday
