Silicon Ranch develops two Georgia solar sites for Georgia Power CARES
Silicon Ranch has announced development of two new utility-scale solar projects in Georgia: the Wrens facility in Jefferson County and Norwood III in Warren County. Both projects will sell their energy output and renewable energy attributes to Georgia Power under the Clean and Renewable Energy Subscription programme, known as CARES. The company said it will develop, build, own, and operate each facility, consistent with its long-standing model of retaining full ownership across its portfolio.
No capacity figures for the individual projects were disclosed in the release, nor were project costs, expected generation volumes, or the contracted price per megawatt-hour under the CARES offtake. Silicon Ranch's portfolio overall spans more than eight gigawatts of solar and battery storage systems that are contracted, under construction, or operating across the United States and Canada. The developer said total committed investment in Georgia now stands at nearly five billion dollars.
Domestic supply chain and agrivoltaics
Silicon Ranch is sourcing key components from US-based manufacturers. Solar modules will come from First Solar, which operates plants in Alabama, Ohio, and Louisiana. Steel trackers and mounting hardware will be supplied by Nextpower, which has facilities across several US states including Tennessee. The domestic-sourcing strategy positions the projects to benefit from the Inflation Reduction Act's bonus investment tax credits for projects using domestically produced content, though the company did not reference those incentives explicitly in its announcement.
The two sites will also operate under Silicon Ranch's Regenerative Energy agribusiness model, which combines solar generation with regenerative agriculture practices: deep-rooted, multi-species grasses and pollinator habitats planted beneath and around the arrays to improve soil health and biodiversity. The company is also reviewing managed livestock grazing at both locations, and it noted that it owns the largest flock of sheep in Georgia. A patented cattle-grazing system, CattleTracker, has already been deployed commercially at one existing site.
Market context
Georgia is one of the most active utility-scale solar markets in the south-eastern United States, driven by rising industrial and data-centre load as well as Georgia Power's expanding renewable procurement. The CARES programme is a subscription-based mechanism through which Georgia Power acquires clean energy output from independent developers to serve growing demand, and it has attracted several large-scale build-out commitments in recent years.
Silicon Ranch occupies a distinctive position in this market by combining long-term ownership with an integrated agrivoltaics offering, a model that several other independent power producers are beginning to replicate as landowner relations and biodiversity obligations become more prominent in project permitting. The broader agrivoltaics sector, which co-locates agricultural use with solar generation on the same parcel, is moving from pilot-scale to portfolio-scale in the US, supported by Department of Agriculture research grants and, in some states, by dual land-use zoning relief.
Georgia Power is itself owned by Southern Company, one of the largest regulated utilities in the country, giving the offtake counterparty an investment-grade credit profile that underpins project finance on CARES-linked developments. The projects' next key milestones will be a confirmed construction start date, capacity confirmation, and commercial operation schedule for each site.