These crop duster-height shots of 12 acres of solar paneling were snagged above FM 3013 half a mile south of Gebhardt Rd., where Harvest Moon Renewable Energy Company is getting ready to bring its juice to market in Sealy and Houston areas served by CenterPoint Energy. According to a fresh-from-the-farm press release, the plant’s 15,000-and-then-some solar panels, blossoming on the end of more than 1,000 steel posts, should produce around 2.5 million kilowatt-hours of power each year (bundled into the 952 million kWh the EPA says Houston uses annually). MP2 Energy will take care of the actual selling, and plans to fill in the gaps from the solar supply with power bought from other renewable sources.
Harvest Moon’s president Joey Romano, who previously developed the solar-focused Mirabeau B. apartments on Waugh at Hyde Park, is now running the operation with founder and CEO Joe Romano, formerly CEO of Contango Oil & Gas and CFO of Zilhka Energy. The company plans to allow customers to tour the family farm, but you can also watch the panel crop grow online — the company took a time-lapse video of the 120-day installation, which wrapped up late last year:
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- Solar power farm coming to Austin County [Sealy News]
- About Us [Harvest Moon Renewable Energy Company]
Photos and video: Harvest Moon
Thanks for the coverage, Swamplot. We really appreciate it. For additional information or to enroll in our Farm-to-Market Solar Energy program, please visit http://www.mp2energy.com/HarvestMoon/index.html.
I just signed a new contract to pay about 4 cents a KWH, fixed price, for 4 years. Can people really build solar farms in Texas and make money with todays energy costs?
I used the back of an actual envelope to calculate that Houston needs only 4,518 more acres (+/-) covered with solar panels to be finally free of Reliant. Oh, and a lot of sunny days. Oops, forgot to calculate how many windmills are needed for those long, sultry nights. There’s another envelope here somewhere….