The North Fork Solar Farm was officially dedicated on June 26 at a ceremony attended by a variety of industry leaders and elected officials.
Bruce Rew with the Southwest Power Pool confirmed to those in attendance that the 120-megawatt solar farm is now the largest in SPP’s 14-state footprint.
The facility is the latest resource addition for the Oklahoma Municipal Power Authority (OMPA) and marks the first time solar will be part of its generating mix. The farm is located in southwest Oklahoma in Kiowa County on approximately 1,012 acres.
“This is an exciting day for us. It marks the continued evolution of our power supply,” OMPA General Manager Dave Osburn said.
The solar farm went online nearly three weeks prior to the official dedication. It was developed by Recurrent Energy, a subsidiary of Canadian Solar, Inc. OMPA has a 15-year power purchase agreement for 100 percent of the generation produced from the project.
“Today, with the addition of this solar farm, we’re now over 600 megawatts of solar and I just checked before I got here, and our meter shows this running at 119.2 megawatts as we speak,” said Rew, who is the Senior Vice President, Operations for the SPP, which represents the region’s power market and balancing authority. “As SPP continues its transition in the market, we will use every megawatt we can to deliver clean power to customers on a daily basis. And we really appreciate OMPA’s engagement with our organization.”
Osburn told those in attendance, which included members of the Authority’s Board of Directors and past General Managers, that the solar farm contributes to OMPA’s generating diversity, which has distinct benefits.
“Our diversity provides several things. One is risk-management and not being solely dependent on one resource,” Osburn said. “Approximately half of our energy now comes from fixed price contracts, as well. And that’s good, because it helps manage some of our fuel volatility moving forward. This will provide long-term, low-cost energy.
“Sometimes they ask why we’re doing this. We’ve done wind and hydro, and now solar. A lot of it is economics. It’s not based on some philosophical reasoning, it’s because it makes sense to our member cities.”
OMPA’s resource mix in 2023 was led by natural gas at 55 percent. Its combined renewable generation equaled 25 percent of the mix, with energy coming from wind, hydro and landfill-to-gas. Three different coal plants the Authority owned a share in closed in the last six years, as coal dipped to 9 percent of the resource mix in 2023.
OMPA’s demand has remained high, as its 2022 peak was the highest of the last decade and its overall energy delivered was third-highest during that same time period. The Authority serves 42 municipal-owned electric systems in Oklahoma, as well as one in Arkansas and another in Texas.
Michael Arndt, North American President for Recurrent Energy, boasted of the project’s economic development, which not only includes millions of dollars in sales and property taxes, but approximately 500 jobs created during construction, which began in 2023.
North Fork Solar represents Recurrent Energy’s first project in Oklahoma and first project in the SPP.
