The Public Service Commission of Wisconsin has approved the more than 1.3 gigawatt (GW) Vista Sands Solar Project, set to be the biggest solar farm in the state and one of the largest ever built in the U.S.
Vista Sands Solar LLC, a subsidiary of Doral Renewables, will construct the facility with a generating capacity of 1,315.6 MWac plus a 300 MW battery energy storage system (BESS) in the Village of Plover and the towns of Grant, Plover, and Buena Vista in Portage County, Wisconsin. Doral is targeting construction to begin in March 2025 and wrap up in December 2028.
The proposed project will encompass about 7,110 acres of the roughly 9,854-acre project study area, which is mostly farmland. The solar array is planned to take up just over 5,000 acres, and an additional nearly 1,600 acres of alternative spots for PV were provided by Doral in its application to the PSC initially submitted in January 2024. The BESS and associated operation and maintenance building will require 5.1 acres.
Since Doral is an independent power producer, the Wisconsin PSC did not review any costs associated with Vista Sands. The Commission would only do so if the facility is purchased by Wisconsin utilities.
Before Vista Sands dreams of connecting to the Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO), Doral will have to procure major components and build out parts of the site. Its wish list includes PV panels, power conversion units, inverters, approximately 318 miles of collector corridors for collector circuits and medium voltage lines, one substation, and a 345 kV overhead gen-tie transmission line of approximately 1,600 feet in length connecting the primary project substation to the point of interconnection. Vista Sands is seeking a Certificate of Public Convenience and Necessity (CPCN) and all other approvals required for construction.
“Today the PSC approved the biggest step toward curbing Wisconsin’s carbon emissions in the state’s history. Deployment of clean energy on this scale will do more to advance state energy policy than has any construction project in Wisconsin to date,” expressed Clean Wisconsin general counsel Katie Nekola. Wisconsin is targeting net-zero emissions by 2050.
Clean Wisconsin submitted testimony to the PSC about the benefits of the project, which include renewable energy for roughly 200,000 homes. A report from Quantum Energy released in October estimates that in its first year of operation, Vista Sands would avoid more than 1.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide and 1,129 metric tons of particulate matter being released into the air, equivalent to the annual emissions from more than 353,000 vehicles. Quantum found clean power produced by Vista Sands would result in approximately 1,216 GWh less natural gas generation and 950 GWh less coal generation on the MISO regional grid while adding 2,296 GWh of clean electricity, meaning 94% of the electricity generated by Vista Sands would displace polluting fossil fuel generation.
Portage County and surrounding communities will also receive a total of $6.5 million a year in payments from the project. Doral estimates Vista Sands Solar will usher in a total capital investment of nearly $2 billion and create approximately 500 jobs during construction and about 50 permanent jobs.
Farming the sun
Doral Renewables is no stranger to turning farmland into solar megaprojects. The company recently completed the first phase of the fittingly named Mammoth Solar in Indiana, another 1.3 GW behemoth that also promises to dramatically alter its former landscape. Mammoth should be selling electrons by 2026 and be completed late in that year or in early 2027, Doral president and CEO Nick Cohen told Renewable Energy World in a recent interview.
“We’re not really taking the farmland out of commission,” Cohen explained of projects like Mammoth and Vista Sands. “We’re farming the sun, which is what they’re doing anyhow, and most of what they’re farming out there is going to ethanol, so I don’t see how it’s different that now it’s just going straight to electricity.”
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Conservationists and wildlife advocates have raised concerns about Vista Sands’ proximity to the Buena Vista Grassland State Wildlife Area, home of the state’s largest population of threatened prairie chickens. The final Environmental Impact Statement issued by the PSC also cited worries over those chickens, even if mitigation suggestions are followed. Doral says it will not construct any panels within 500 feet of the chickens’ grounds as identified by the Wisconsin DNR.
As it turns out, Doral is particularly familiar with handling livestock. The developer leans into dual-use practices, also known as agrivoltaics, and embraces a more traditional definition of farming- small, local, and steeped in heritage and family values. Its agrivoltaics project at Mammoth now includes more than 1,200 animals, including sheep, pigs, donkeys, and alpaca. That heartland-friendly attitude appears to have paid dividends with local farmers who agreed to lease land to Doral for both the Mammoth and Vista Sands projects. At the end of the leases, the solar panels will be removed and the land will remain the property of the families who have maintained it for generations, in many cases.
“We feel very connected to the community, and we know the names of all the farming families in this project and their stories,” insisted Doral project manager Ed Baptista. “We really put a lot of effort in getting to know people rather than just being some sort of out-of-town company that’s doing a project.”
“That’s important to us in all the projects that we do because we’re going to own and operate them for 30 to 35 years,” he added. “So we’re going to be neighbors.”
