Project Overview
The Wanlass Ranch produces more than just livestock from its grazing land – it also generates renewable energy for the community.
The proposed Sloughhouse Solar project would expand upon the renewable energy production already underway on this 400-acre site, by adding a new 50 megawatt solar energy and battery storage project there. When complete, Sloughhouse Solar will deliver more than 130,000,000 kilowatt-hours per year of renewable energy to the community – enough energy to power roughly 12,000 homes – while continuing the grazing activities.
Solar projects like Sloughhouse Solar will play an important role in California reaching its clean energy goals. By 2030, utilities will be required to procure half of their electricity from renewable sources. The Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD)’s Clean Energy Vision includes a goal to reach zero carbon emissions by 2030, the most ambitious goal of any large utility in the country.
Project Benefits
The project will produce major economic and environmental benefits, with minimal impacts:
Rancho Seco Solar II, operating DESRI project, Sacramento County
- Preserves existing agricultural uses and expands upon grazing activities
- Generates 100 percent clean renewable energy with zero emissions or pollution
- Improves SMUD local energy distribution infrastructure at no cost to ratepayers
- Reinforces resilience of the local electric grid
- Produces enough clean energy to power approximately 12,000 homes. Displacing the equivalent of roughly 90,000 metric tons of carbon emissions each year — the equivalent of taking over 19,000 cars off the road
- Maintains rural character, including sheep grazing land and Swainson’s Hawk foraging land
- Enhances existing farmland soils by use of long-term cover crops such as cool season grasses that sequester atmospheric
- Restores land at the end of the solar farm's useful life
- Reinforces Reinforces grid resilience of the local electric grid resilience of the local electric grid
- Provides millions of dollars of economic activity in Sacramento County
- Creates up to 150 construction jobs
- Increases county tax revenue by millions of dollars over the life of the project
- Enables SMUD to invest in the community instead of procuring energy from elsewhere
The project site was carefully chosen to minimize impacts to the environment while supporting the state’s renewable energy and economic goals.
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