Pleasant Valley Solar 2 financing clears way for data centers and high-tech manufacturing in Idaho

Large-scale solar opens doors to economic development in the region.

September 16, 2025 Michael Puttré

rPlus expects its 150 MW Pleasant Valley Solar 2 to begin supplying electricity in 2026, joining the 200 MW first phase that was commissioned in April.

Image: rPlus Energies

Utah-based developer rPlus Energies’ securing of $100 million in tax equity funding from Truist Bank for its Pleasant Valley Solar 2 project in Idaho means the 125 MW facility’s planned opening in the early summer of 2026 is on track. More importantly, the company said the milestone indicates large-scale solar remains the go-to solution for electricity demand requirements in the northwestern United States.

Luigi Resta, president and CEO of rPlus Energies, told pv magazine USA that the company has spent a lot of time focusing on areas that didn’t have a huge penetration of large renewable energy projects but that nevertheless had significant demand on the horizon.

“The whole Pacific Northwest is really capacity restrained right now, with traditional hydropower now more dependent on rain-related events than predictable long-duration snowmelt,” Resta said. “Regional utilities are really looking for more reliable dispatchable power, and solar combined with batteries is low cost as well as being very reliable, dependable and dispatchable.”

Pleasant Valley Solar 2 is joining the recently commissioned 200 MW Solar Valley 1 project delivering electricity to Idaho Power and supporting Meta’s data center near Boise. Resta said the timing of rPlus Energies’ projects supported Meta’s decision to build its $800 million data center there.

Other data center projects are also planned for Idaho. In addition, semiconductor manufacturer Micron is building two fabricating facilities, including a $15 billion plant in Ada County that broke ground in 2023. The 2022 CHIPS and Sciences Act is credited with spurring domestic high-tech manufacturing in the U.S., which in turn is increasing demand for reliable solar power.

According to Resta, major would-be off-takers such as Meta and Micron see solar power as adaptable to their building schedules and reliable enough to bring them to out-of-the-way locations like Idaho. The combination of opportunity and readily added capacity attracts customers that in turn make financing large-scale projects possible.

“You can’t fly by the seat of your pants when scheduling and designing projects on this scale,” he said. “Pleasant Valley involves very large projects that are very capital intensive, and require financing for debt and financing for tax investment purposes.”

Sundt Renewables is providing engineering, procurement and construction services on Pleasant Valley Solar 2, as it did for Pleasant Valley 1. The current phase of the project is using Thornova Solar PV modules mounted on Nextracker single-axis trackers. Ingeteam is supplying the inverters.

As present, there are no requirements for battery-based storage for either phase of Pleasant Valley Solar. Resta said the land has been set aside and permitted to add storage in the future but it has not yet been contracted. On that note, he points out that the availability and nature of the land in the region is not only perfect for large-scale solar projects but supports future expansion.

“Solar is a great use of this rural land,” Resta said. “It’s tabletop flat sage brush high-plains desert. It’s not high-value agricultural land and really represents the best use of the land from the perspective of ranchers and farmers. Interconnection was not a problem because the city of Boise is only 30 miles away and we didn’t have to queue for scheduling.”

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