Entergy Mississippi completes construction on Sunflower Solar Station
Entergy Mississippi completed construction on a 100-megawatt renewable solar power station near Ruleville in the Mississippi Delta.
The Sunflower Solar Station is the largest solar installation in Mississippi and will provide enough energy to power 16,000 homes.
“It’s a historic day for Entergy Mississippi, our customers, and our state,” Haley Fisackerly, Entergy Mississippi president and CEO, said. “Powering communities is the heart of our business, and this power station will do that in several ways—by providing clean, green power to customers and a hedge against rising natural gas prices and giving industries with renewable energy goals an incentive to locate or expand operations in our state.”
This facility is the first plant in what will be the largest expansion of renewable power in the state’s history. Through a program called EDGE – which stands for Economic Development with Green Energy — the company will replace some aging natural gas plants with 1,000 megawatts of renewable energy over the next five years.
The Sunflower Solar Station was built for Entergy Mississippi by Recurrent Energy, a subsidiary of Canadian Solar. Attala Steel Industries, based in Kosciusko, supplied 2,475 tons of steel for foundations, while A-1 Kendrick Fence Company, based in Jackson, installed the perimeter fence. Signal Energy served as the engineering, procurement, and construction provider.
“We are proud to have commissioned the largest solar project in Mississippi on behalf of Entergy in a way that has supported Mississippi businesses and paved the way for more renewable energy in the state,” Dr. Shawn Qu, chairman and CEO of Canadian Solar, said. “Sunflower is our first build-own-transfer project and our first project in Mississippi. We look forward to supporting the growth of solar throughout the southeast United States and repeating this model, which provides additional value for our customers.”
The plant sits on approximately 1,000 acres in Sunflower County and connects to Entergy’s transmission grid in Ruleville. It is a single-axis tracking photovoltaic power generator with 272,000 PV modules.
In 2021, Entergy Corp. announced plans to triple its renewable energy portfolio over three years. The company expects to have 11,000 megawatts of renewable energy generation by the end of 2030.
Entergy Mississippi — a subsidiary of Entergy Corp. — provides electricity to approximately 461,000 customers in 45 counties.
