Ribbon cut on Plymouth solar farm

Plymouth solar farm to power 1,200 homes

Credit: Rich Klindworth

By: WNCT Staff | WNCT
Published: January 30, 2012
Updated: January 30, 2012 - 4:03 PM

PLYMOUTH, N.C. - It is really sunny here in the east.

If you've ever lived in other parts of the country, you realize just how many sunny days North Carolina sees.

Well now that sunshine is going to help one of our poorer areas. Phase 1 of 4 is now done.

Within the year, SunEnergy1 plans to put out 20 megawatts of electricity to the national grid.

“It's all clean energy,” said Kenny Habul, CEO of SunEnergy1. “20 megawatts is an awful lot of kilowatt hours.”

Habul says that's enough electricity for 2,000 – 2,500 homes.

But the town of Plymouth won't necessarily get that power and won't see a lower electric bill.

SunEnergy1 will sell the power to Dominion Power, who will then disperse it.

However, phase 1 was $10 million worth of construction. And the area will benefit from that.

“Washington County and the town of Plymouth will be able to apply property taxes to about $10 million worth of infrastructure that's been added,” said Brian Roth, mayor of Plymouth.

Once all 4 phases are done later this year, the mayor says that property could be assessed for 30 to 40 million dollars.

“There's long term jobs, apart from the initial and the instant impacts on the community with the investment and long term jobs in terms of maintenance and monitoring,” said Habul. “As a company, we intend to have a base here in eastern North Carolina and we intend to move a lot of operations here, so over the long term we'll be building our workforce up in this region from locals.”

Also over the long-term, officials say if there is more solar energy, which is relatively maintenance free and durable, you could see those energy bills start to go down rather than up.

SunEnergy1's CEO says they are in talks with putting another solar farm in the east.

Today’s solar farm should be putting out electricity in about a month.