Avangrid, a subsidiary of Spanish utility Iberdrola, has reached commercial operations at two PV power plants in the US state of Oregon.
With a combined 269MW of capacity – 189MW for the Daybreak Solar project and 80MW for the Bakeoven Solar project – and 650,000 installed solar panels, the two solar PV plants are located in Wasco County, adjacent to each other.
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The company has partnered with a local sheep ranger to graze around 3,000 sheep at the two projects. So-called solar grazing is becoming an increasingly popular means of controlling vegetation solar sites as well as maintaining land for agriculture.
Both solar PV plants are supplying electricity to the local distributor’s grid, Portland General Electric (PGE), through a voluntary state programme – called Green Future Impact (GFI) – that aims to large municipal, commercial and industrial customers to offtake capacity. Among the electricity offtakers for these two recently operational PV projects is semiconductor company Intel.
Avangrid CEO, Jose Antonio Miranda, said: “Together with PGE and Intel, we’re delivering a new source of reliable power that will energise Oregon’s communities and industries for decades to come.”
According to Avangrid, it is the leading supplier of electricity to PGE’s GFI programme through these two projects and a third solar PV plant that reached commercial operations in 2023. At the time, the Pachwáywit Fields project was dubbed the largest PV project in the state of Oregon.
A fourth project set to participate in the programme is currently under construction in Morrow County. Once operational later in the year, the Tower Solar will have a 166MW capacity and has already secured a power purchase agreement, which involves tech giant Meta.
The construction of these two solar projects will give a boost to Oregon’s installed PV capacity, which sat at less than 2GW at the end of 2025, according to data from trade body the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA). The trade association forecasts 2.6GW of new solar PV installations over the next five years, putting Oregon in the mid-range among all US states.
After five editions of Large Scale Solar USA, the event becomes SolarPLUS USA to mirror where the market is heading. The 2026 edition, held in Dallas, Texas, on 24-25 March, will bring together developers, investors and utilities to discuss managing hybrid assets, multi-state pipelines, power demand increase from data centres and AI as well as the co-location of solar PV with energy storage in a complex grid. For more details and how to attend the event, visit the website here.
