STANFIELD — Salt River Project’s Marigold Energy Center hosted its third open house at Stanfield Elementary School last night, where residents meandered through a display of renderings about the proposed solar and natural gas plant, and battery energy storage system. 

The solar panels would span a patchwork of land between Porter and Stanfield Roads that stretches from Barnes to Carranza Roads. Gas turbines and a substation are planned to sit on land near Barnes and Stanfield Roads. It would generate 675 MW from natural gas and 600 MW from solar, plus store 400 MW, after construction is completed in 2033.  

The project is currently in its third phase, which involves a lot of community input. SRP Director of Resource Planning, Acquisition, and Development Bill McClellan said they were looking forward to hearing some of those concerns.  

“We’ve heard a lot and had great input from the local community that have revolved around things like public safety, fire safety, water use, emissions [and] how that might impact local air quality,” he told InMaricopa. “These are things we’re working through, taking info on and responding to.”  

The next phase is the SRP Board of Directors Public Meeting to be held Sept. 14, followed by a transmission line siting committee public hearing on Sept. 21, and an Arizona Corporation Commission open meeting by the end of the year. 

If the regulatory review is approved, construction may begin in 2027 with a completion date sometime in 2033. 

Sharing the power 

SRP says the project would add more than 1,200 MW of capacity to the region, the maximum rate at which a power plant, generator or electrical system can produce or use. 

Other recent energy projects proposed in the area have models that add more energy to Arizona’s grid, like the proposed Horseshoe Energy Project in Hidden Valley, Energy Generation and Technology Campus just south of Maricopa and Rainbow Valley Energy in Mobile.  

Unique to the proposed Marigold Energy Center is a potential partnership with Electrical District No. 3 to be an off-taker of energy to help support the people who live in the area.  

McClellan declined to share how much power ED3 could receive from SRP output because those details are still being hammered out. 

“What I can say is that it’s an opportunity for them to be able to offtake from the project, meet their growing demands and improve the reliability on the system,” McClellan said. 

Despite that, hearing ED3 would receive some power from SRP was welcome news for locals like Stanfield resident Virginia McHaney. 

“I’m ready for some changes. It’s going to affect our cost of living and maybe we’ll grow a little bit more,” she said. 

The water question 

Though SRP would have the rights to use underground water supply if the project is approved, their water usage projections are based on the use of long-term storage credits certified by the Arizona Department of Water Resources.  

This aligns with SRP’s 2035 sustainability goal to eliminate or offset groundwater use for power generation within the active management area. 

As a comparison, SRP estimates that local alfalfa farming uses approximately four acre-feet of water per agricultural acre.  

“For our model we did a conservative high where we left the pumping the same as if they’re still doing agriculture … so we decided to model worst case even though we know we’re not going to farm on land owned by SRP,” said Senior Water Strategist Lacey James. 

Based on those rough estimates, Marigold Energy Center could use less than 200 acre feet per year, she said. The natural gas plant would use water, but the solar component would not. 

“We waited until we had it modeled with an ADWR groundwater model to see what the true impact would be and we also made it so that it wasn’t favorable to us,” James said. 

Feedback can be provided on the Marigold website, by calling 602-263-2872 or emailing 2872line@srpnet.com.