Pulaski County agrees to tap into solar power for offices

Pulaski County announced Thursday it’ll harness solar power in hopes of helping the environment and its bottom line.

The county has reached an agreement with Today’s Power, which calls for the Electric Cooperatives of Arkansas subsidiary to build and operate an 8-megawatt solar facility to power county offices at a savings of at least $150,000 in the first year.

The Today’s Power project will use 40 acres at the Port of Little Rock, which also will use the power generation to offset its electricity costs, and 12 acres near the county’s criminal justice complex off Roosevelt Road. County Judge Barry Hyde, said the $13.6 million project likely will be operational in the first quarter of 2020.

“This project will not only improve the eco-health of our county, it will save taxpayers money and add value to the ever-expanding Little Rock Port as well,” Hyde said at a news conference Thursday to announce the initiative.

Pulaski County spends between $850,000 to $1 million annually on electricity to power its buildings across the county, at a rate of 7.4 cents per kilowatt hour, he said. Today’s Power will charge the county 4.9 cents per kilowatt hour.

Today’s Power will build, maintain and operate the solar facility for the county. The county is projected to save at least $3 million over the life of the 20-year agreement.

Construction is expected to begin “any day,” Hyde said.

The project is one of 17 solar projects around the state in various stages of development that the Arkansas Advanced Energy Association said was enabled by Act 464 of 2019.

Katie Laning Niebaum, the association’s executive director, said the Pulaski County project exemplifies the new opportunities available under the act, commonly known as the Solar Access Act. Among other things, it allows third-party financing or leasing.

Arkansas already is counted among the fastest-growing states for solar job creation, with its biggest year for solar installation coming in 2018, according to GMT Research and the Solar Energy Industries Association. It said the state added 188 megawatts of solar generation last year, ranking 18th among the 50 states.

Third-party solar leasing could double or triple the number of solar jobs in Arkansas, according to a recent analysis from the Business Innovations Legal Clinic of the William H. Bowen School of Law at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

“No private or public entity could lease a solar facility prior to [Act] 464,” Niebaum said. “The reason why it’s helpful in the case of a government entity like Pulaski County — which doesn’t pay taxes and can’t take the benefit of the federal tax credit that’s available — [is] by the agreement with a third-party, you’re able to capture those savings through a structured deal like that, making the overall costs go down.”