Strata Solar, a Chapel Hill solar energy developer, announced plans Monday for a 100 megawatt solar farm in Duplin County, five times bigger than the next-largest solar farm in the state.

The $250 million project is slated to begin construction this year and to begin generating electricity in late 2014 in Warsaw, about 75 miles south of Raleigh. Strata Solar said the project would generate enough power for 11,500 homes.

The company plans to file a formal proposal with the N.C. Utilities Commission in the coming weeks. Strata Solar would sell the power to Progress Energy, a subsidiary of Duke Energy, but the company has not yet finalized a power purchase agreement with the electric utility.

Strata has built about 100 megawatts of solar projects that are generating electricity in North Carolina, and has several hundred megawatts more under development in the state, including two projects sized at 20 megawatts.

Apple, the maker of the iPhone and iPad, has developed a 20-megawatt solar farm at its data center in Maiden, about 40 miles northwest of Charlotte.

Strata employs 50 at its Chapel Hill office and plans to employ 400 contractors in the field to assemble the Duplin County solar projects.

Staff writer John Murawski

A Chapel Hill green energy developer has chosen its home base to build one of the state's largest solar energy plants.

If approved by the N.C. Utilities Commission, Strata Solar's proposed 40-acre solar farm in Chapel Hill would be the biggest solar farm in the Triangle.

It's one of two 5-megawatt projects the company proposed this week and among more than a dozen Strata Solar has developed or planned to date.

Strata Solar also proposed a similarly-sized solar project in Howard's Creek, about 200 miles west of Raleigh. The company was founded in 2009 and has about 30 employees.

A Chapel Hill solar developer said today it plans to build two solar farms in the state, each almost 5 megawatts in power capacity and both ranking as the second-largest solar farms in the state.

At that size, the two planned solar farms announced today by Strata Solar would be among at least five in this state measuring around 5 megawatts that are in some stage of development.

With that many solar farms of nearly identical size, a clear pattern is emerging: 5 megawatts is the new measure for a large industrial-scale solar farm. It replaces the unofficial old standard, which used to be 1 megawatt, a seemingly insurmountable barrier only a few years ago.

"The reason 5 is the new 1 is there are a lot more investors coming into the marketplace," said John Morrison, chief operating officer at Strata Solar. "It's in the range that's financable."
 

A Chapel Hill solar energy developer is proposing a major solar farm in western North Carolina.

Strata Solar wants to build a 4.5 megawatt solar farm in Kings Mountain, according to an application filed today with the N.C. Utilities Commission. Building the project, about 200 miles west of Raleigh, will cost nearly $22 million and require nearly 22,000 solar panels. Federal and state subsidies will reduce the total project cost by more than half.

If approved by the utilities commission, it would be the second-largest solar farm in the state, after a 15.5 megawatt project in Davidson County that feeds into Duke Energy's power grid.

The biggest solar farm in the Triangle is a 2.2 megawatt project on the Cary campus of software developer SAS.