A major solar development is going before the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors — again.
Kimley-Horn & Associates’ site plan submittal and zoning change request are for the nearly-1,200-acre Harquahala Sun solar project.
The utility-scale solar development is on unincorporated county land west of Tonopah near the county line, south of both Interstate 10 and Salome Highway.
The change would be from Rural-43 zoning to Industrial-2, Industrial with a Plan of Development.
The panels and storage facility would be at the southwest corner of the intersection of Courthouse Road and 483rdAvenue, stretching east toward 491st and 499th avenues.
County documents show the plan is for the facility to generate about 150 megawatts of electricity and to store it on site. The facility is expected to generate 20 seasonal operation/maintenance jobs.
The board approved a comprehensive site plan amendment at a December meeting. A site plan, dated March 1 of this year, was taken before the Maricopa County Planning and Zoning Commission in early March.
At its March 10 meeting, the Planning and Zoning Commission recommended the zoning change and site plan approval by a 7-0 vote.
Comments were filed by several agencies and facility personnel, including some from Luke Air Force Base, which requested that the applicant route their proposal through the Department of Defense siting clearinghouse process, with Planning and Zoning recommending a condition that requires the applicant to revise the site plan as requested by DOD.
The board received one letter of opposition from someone concerned with bighorn sheep habitat in and around the Saddle Mountain area and the potential for disruption.
Arizona Game and Fish officials told the county the site will not have a significant impact on bighorn sheep in the area.
The southwest part of undeveloped Maricopa County has attracted several large solar plant applications during the past couple of years. A natural landing spot was the area west of Buckeye because it already had a proliferation of power plants and transmission lines spurred by Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station, the largest power plant in the state.
The Palo Verde 500-kilovolt switchyard is a key point in the western states power grid and is used as a reference point in the pricing of electricity across the Southwest.
The switchyard is connected to Path 46 — a major set of high-power utility lines that moves electricity across the Southwest.
Located in the unincorporated area of Tonopah, about 10 miles south of I-10 and 45 miles west of downtown Phoenix.
Palo Verde, the nation’s largest power plant by net generation, supplying electricity to seven utilities across Arizona, Nevada and California.
Arizona Public Service Co., which operates the plant and is Arizona’s largest public utility, and Salt River Project are two of the plant’s owners who use Palo Verde for plenty of baseload power.
That much power, enough to light 4 million homes, needs a complex and sturdy infrastructure into which solar plants can also feed.
Another recently approved permit is for a facility near Gila Bend. That’s the location of the Solana Generating Station — the first U.S. solar plant with molten salt thermal energy storage.
APS spokesperson Yessica Del Rincon said while Harquahala Sun and two other recently approved area facilities don’t belong to APS, the utility is not geographically limited on where in the Southwest it could look for solar diversification.
Other items on the board’s Planning and Zoning agenda for Wednesday include several items related to the Zanjero Trails housing subdivision plan. That’s located near the southwest corner of Glendale Avenue and Perryville Road in an unincorporated area near Buckeye.
Jason W. Brooks is a News editor for the Daily Independent and the Chandler Independent.
He covers the Chandler area for both yourvalley.net and the monthly print edition while writing for and assisting in the production of the Daily Independent.
Brooks is a well-traveled journalist who has documented life in small American communities in nearly all U.S. time zones.
Born in Washington, D.C. and raised there and in suburban Los Angeles, he has covered community news in California, New Mexico, Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska and northern Arizona.
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