WASHINGTON PARISH, La. — Washington Parish is one of the most scenic rural areas in Louisiana.
From its piney woods to its rolling hills, the so-called toe in the boot of the state is as country as you can get in a region better known for its bayous and Mardi Gras.
Solar panels now rise from pastureland where cows and horses once roamed.
“Had no idea what they were doing for a long time,” farmer Kirk Kirland said. “We would drive by and think, what are they building out there? There were rumors of different things. Most of them didn’t turn out to be true.”
Kirkland and Valerie Abrams run a small farm not far from the 500-acre Iris Solar facility on Highway 16 near Franklinton.
“It looks bizarre compared to the corn and cows that were there before,” he said.
The massive site contains 187,000 solar panels, which generate 50 megawatts of power.
It’s one of seven solar farms in the state, now sending electricity to Entergy customers in New Orleans and across Louisiana.
"The big push behind that really is the desire to see us decarbonize our generation portfolio,” Entergy Louisiana CEO Phillip May said. “That’s driven by our customers, frankly.”
Louisiana has been known for decades as an oil and gas state.
May says the state is now in a position to leverage its growing clean power production to attract new industries now seeking zero-carbon energy.
“We have a huge opportunity to see large industrial customers making significant investment in the state of Louisiana. We’re talking about tens of billions of dollars in energy-intensive projects. We’re talking about things like LNG export, clean fuels, like sustainable aviation fuels or green diesels, including things like new chemical processing and so forth.”
Entergy New Orleans has a 20-year power purchase agreement with the company that owns the Iris Solar farm. The utility boasts that this project and others like it coming online is a big part of keeping New Orleans on the path to a green energy future.
“I expect we’re going to be more aggressive in looking for solar opportunities, but they’ll probably be within the city and looking at rooftop solar, looking at community solar gardens, looking at vacant land,” Entergy New Orleans CEO Deanna Rodriguez said.
Entergy now has plans to eventually produce 2,500 megawatts from solar power as part of a long-term plan to shift away from fossil fuels and toward renewables.
That’s enough electricity to power more than 400,000 homes at the same time.
This comes as Gov. John Bel Edwards’ climate task force is calling for the utility to have net zero emissions by 2050.
“These programs will allow us to see less volatility in our bills,” May said. “You may remember last summer when gas prices spiked. We saw significant volatility and price increases resulting from high natural gas prices. Solar energy has a nice stable price.”
There has been some pushback from rural communities about the amount of agricultural land now being gobbled up to harvest the sun.
Back at Kirk Kirland’s farm, he hopes Washington Parish can strike the right balance between moos and megawatts.
“It takes a lot of acreage,” Kirkland said. “But out here, there’s still a lot of acreage to go around. I don’t know what the future will hold. Maybe they’ll end up taking too much.”
Entergy Louisiana now has plans to receive power from a second major solar farm now proposed for Washington Parish.
It would be built not far from the Iris facility, along Sunlight Road in Franklinton.
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