Those traveling from Yakima County to the Tri-Cities area via State Route 24 will get a good glimpse at what the future of electricity production could look like in Central Washington.
The majority of panels for the Goose Prairie Solar project, located roughly 8 miles east of Moxee, have been erected this spring, and the project could begin full operation as soon as Sept. 30, developers said this week.
“We are actually slightly ahead of schedule,” Jacob Crist, senior project manager with developer Brookfield Renewable, said Wednesday during the monthly Energy Facility Site Evaluation Council meeting.
Brookfield Renewable plans to begin energization of the site on June 18, ramp up production to 90% sometime in late July or early August, then receive a final sign-off on the project on or about Sept. 30, Crist told the EFSEC board.
Substation work “has progressed to the 95% (completion) range, with the last major equipment delivered to the Goose Prairie site in late April," Crist said. Electricity produced by the project will go into Bonneville Power Administration’s Midway-to-Moxee transmission line, which bisects the site.
He also provided state officials with a first-quarter report showing the Goose Prairie project remains within environmental compliance standards that were stipulated when Gov. Jay Inslee approved the 80-megawatt solar energy facility in December 2021.
When construction began last fall at the 625-acre site near SR 24, Den Beste Road and Desmarais Road, Crist and other Brookfield Renewable officials said January 2025 was the target date for power to flow from the Goose Prairie site into the region’s electrical grid.
Nearby solar projects
Goose Prairie is one of four solar projects that have been approved for the State Route 24 corridor of northeast Yakima County, and the first to begin construction. Three others are expected to be built further east, near the Benton County line, beginning this summer.
The projects are part of a statewide and national push for solar, wind and other renewable energy operations as leaders ranging from state officials to President Joe Biden discuss and promote ways to reduce the use of carbon-based fuels.
With those goals and objectives coming from elected officials, several national and international companies see an economic opportunity and have proposed more than a dozen new solar- and wind-powered projects in Washington.
With its 300-plus days of sunshine each year, the Yakima Valley has the most important ingredient for solar power in abundance. Six solar projects have either been approved or are in the approval process.
One of these projects, Black Rock, was approved by Yakima County officials in May 2022, and two adjacent solar initiatives, High Top and Ostrea, were approved by Inslee last spring after more than a year of consideration by the state’s EFSEC officials.
All three of those projects are about 12 miles east of the Goose Prairie site, near the Silver Dollar Café at the intersection of SR 24 and SR 241, north of Sunnyside.
Black Rock, developed by California-based BayWa.r.e. Solar Projects LLC, will feature 264,000 solar panels spread over a 1,060-acre site north of the Rattlesnake Hills and south of the Yakima Training Center. It is expected to generate 94 megawatts, capable of powering nearly 20,000 homes annually in the region.
High Top and its nearby solar power project, Ostrea, will be built by California-based Cypress Creek Renewables. The two 80-megawatt projects can provide power for a combined 30,000 homes, Inslee said as he announced their approval at Yakima’s Perry Technical Institute in April 2023.
They are separate projects because they will be served by different power lines: High Top by PacifiCorp’s Union Gap-to-Midway 230 kV transmission line, and Ostrea by Bonneville Power Administration’s Moxee-to-Midway 115 kV transmission line – which also will take power from the Goose Prairie solar panels.
High Top and Ostrea cover roughly 1,600 acres each, with the solar panels and other equipment planned on 926 and 811 acres, respectively. The sites are north of SR 24 and south of the Yakima Training Center on property owned by Zine and Najiba Badissy, who agreed to long-term leases with the developer.
The Badissy family also is leasing some of its land to BayWa.r.e. for the Black Rock solar project.
Brandon Reinhardt, BayWa.r.e.’s senior director of land entitlement, told the Yakima Herald-Republic in November that construction of Black Rock’s solar arrays and other infrastructure should begin this summer and take between a year and 18 months to complete.
It is targeted to go online by September 2025, Reinhardt said.
Tai Wallace, senior director of development for Cypress Creek, said construction of High Top and Ostrea should begin at some point this year, with a mid- to late-2025 target for the operation to start delivering power.
Proposed projects adjacent to Yakima County
Two other projects just across the Yakima County/Benton County line, Wautoma Solar near the State Routes 24 and 241 intersection, and Hop Hill Solar off SR 241 just east of Sunnyside, remain under consideration by state officials.
At Wednesday’s monthly meeting, EFSEC site specialist Lance Caputo said a mitigated determination of nonsignificance, or MDNS, will be issued this week for the Wautoma site, with a two-week public comment period beginning Monday, May 20.
The MDNS includes measures intended to address a proposal’s adverse impacts on the environment, according to EFSEC’s list of definitions. The Wautoma site MDNS will be available online, both under the list of recently issued documents on the efsec.wa.gov homepage, and under the “energy facilities” tab on the website, which lists each project under consideration.
Wautoma is a 470-megawatt solar photovoltaic generation facility coupled with a 4-hour, 470-MW battery energy storage system. It would be built on the family-owned, 6,000-acre Robert Ranch 5+1 at 1521 Wautoma Road, about 12 miles north of Sunnyside.
It would be developed by Canada-based Innergex Renewable Energy.
Also near the Yakima County line is the Hop Hill project, a 500-megawatt solar energy and power storage facility near Sunnyside and Grandview that would be built on a 5,000-acre site east of SR 241 and north of Interstate 82 by Florida-based BrightNight Power.
At its May 15 meeting, EFSEC board members learned steps such as a water source survey by the state Department of Ecology are still being completed at the Hop Hill site. Once field work is completed in coordination with the applicant, state agencies and tribal governments, a State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) determination can be made for the application.
