Regardless of financial turbulence within the photo voltaic vitality market, Flint Hills Sources stated Tuesday it’ll spend $75 million to proceed with a big photo voltaic array at its oil refinery in Rosemount.
The power — with 50 % extra energy era than initially deliberate — would be the largest of its form for a U.S. oil refinery.
“There’s actually nothing like this,” stated Jake Reint, a Flint Hills spokesman.
It can even be one of many largest U.S. photo voltaic vegetation dedicated to — and owned by — a single buyer, in addition to one of many bigger photo voltaic services in Minnesota. Flint Hill’s 45-megawatt plant will host over 100,000 photo voltaic panels. It can produce sufficient vitality to energy as much as 8,400 houses.
The state’s largest photo voltaic farm at present is Xcel Power’s 100-megawatt array in Chisago County, although even bigger tasks are within the pipeline.
Flint Hills in early 2021 introduced it was contemplating the photo voltaic plant as a technique to minimize its electrical energy invoice with carbon-free energy. Three months in the past, Rosemount’s metropolis council permitted a obligatory allow for the 314-acre challenge.
Flint Hills’ Pine Bend plant is likely one of the largest oil refineries within the Midwest and Minnesota’s largest motor gasoline provider. It is also one of many Higher Midwest’s largest producers of aviation gasoline and asphalt.
Oil refining consumes enormous quantities of electrical energy, and Flint Hills — an arm of Wichita, Kan.-based Koch Industries — is one in every of Xcel’s largest Minnesota electrical energy prospects. However the refinery has been working to chop its energy prices lately.
In 2019, Flint Hills invested about $100 million in a 50-megawatt, on-site energy plant. That generator, a part of a mixed warmth energy system, is fueled by pure gasoline and waste warmth and gives about 40% of the plant’s electrical energy.
The brand new photo voltaic array on common will present one other 10% to 12% of the refinery’s electrical energy wants. However when the solar is shining, the photo voltaic array and the ability plant can present as much as 70% of Pine’s Bend’s energy, based on the corporate.
Development of the photo voltaic array will begin quickly, with an anticipated completion date in 2023. Scottsdale, Ariz.-based Depcom Energy will engineer and constructed the challenge.
Many photo voltaic tasks nationally have been placed on maintain because the trade is at present in financial tumult regardless of federal tax credit used to assist with financing.
Like many industries, photo voltaic has been harm by rising gear costs due to inflation coupled with provide chain constrictions. As well as, a federal investigation into photo voltaic panel imports has stymied exports from Asia, the world’s important producer of photo voltaic gear.
The investigation stems from a grievance by a small U.S. photo voltaic panel producer. It accuses Chinese language photo voltaic producers of dodging U.S. tariffs by routing operations by different Asian international locations, together with Vietnam and Malaysia.
As a lot as 17.5 gigawatts of deliberate U.S. photo voltaic capability installations in 2022 are unsure as a result of U.S. Commerce Division’s inquiry, Rystad Power analysis reveals. (A gigawatt equals 1,000 megawatts.)
Reint stated Flint Hills does not anticipate the trade’s present challenges to have an effect on the Rosemount challenge.
“We’re assured we will likely be OK,” he stated.
