Clean Energy Advocates Applaud Solar Announcement in the Tennessee Valley

Additional scaling needed to keep pace with other Southeastern utilities

Knoxville, Tenn. – Today the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) announced 377 megawatts of new solar through a 227 megawatt solar farm to be built in Colbert County, Alabama as well as a 150 megawatt solar farm planned for Lincoln County, Tennessee. These new solar installations will exclusively service Facebook’s new $750 million data center in northern Alabama.

Dr. Stephen A. Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, issued this statement in response to today’s announcement:

“We applaud Facebook for having the vision and the leadership to push for a clean energy future and TVA for responding to this large customer’s demand. We look forward to additional solar announcements. However, TVA will still need to scale up considerably over the next five years to keep pace with solar installations from other utilities in the Southeast and respond to all customer classes desire for more solar.

Notably, next door in the Carolinas, Duke Energy is simultaneously pursuing multiple paths for solar deployment including responding to requests from private companies, meeting public policy directives, and identifying the least-cost path to serve its customers. We are pleased to see that TVA is beginning to engage on the first path, and hope to see integration of more solar into TVA’s energy portfolio in order to serve TVA’s broad customer base.”

###

Founded in 1985, the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy is a nonprofit organization that promotes responsible energy choices to ensure clean, safe, and healthy communities throughout the Southeast. Learn more at www.cleanenergy.org.