Sunnyside Perfect for Solar
Houston is one of only seven cities in North America participating in the C40 Reinventing Cities Competition. This global competition is a challenge to transform underutilized city sites into sustainable and resilient urban projects. The City of Houston issued a call for project proposals and in 2019 announced Sunnyside Energy as the winning project.
BQ Energy and Wolfe Energy will redevelop a 240-acre decommissioned landfill in the Sunnyside neighborhood of south Houston into a 52 MW solar farm. The site will also include 150 MW of battery storage and an Agricultural Hub and Training Center. BQ Energy hired PRISM to produce exterior renderings and an animation to demonstrate the scale of the project and its impact on the surrounding historically disadvantaged community.
The scale of energy production at Sunnyside Energy is considered utility-scale, with the ability to power 5,000 – 10,000 homes with clean, locally generated energy. The project team is designing the solar array and will build, operate, and maintain it. It will connect to the electricity grid operated by CenterPoint Energy, but the solar and battery storage projects will be privately owned and operated. When operational, Sunnyside Energy is expected to offset 120 million pounds of CO2 per year. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality approved the project in April 2022. No formal groundbreaking has been set yet.
