US independent power producer (IPP) Cypress Creek Renewables has acquired the Steel River project in Arkansas from Swift Current Energy, which will combined 2.4GW of solar capacity and 720MW/2,900MWh of battery energy storage systems (BESS).
The project is currently under development in Mississippi county, in north-eastern Arkansas, and Cypress Creek expects to develop the project in three separate phases, each comprised of 815MW of solar capacity and 240MW/960MWh of batteries. The IPP expects all phases to reach commercial operation by 2029, with total capital costs at the project in excess of US$4.5 billion.
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Cypress Creek also noted that the project will use “American-made structural steel and solar panels from domestic manufacturers,” alongside additional equipment from “Arkansas-based suppliers whenever possible”, but has not named any of these local suppliers; PV Tech has asked Cypress Creek for further details on these suppliers.
A number of US companies have signed deals with solar module manufacturers to provide US-made steel frames for their installations, such as Nextpower and Bila Solar, as the US looks to take ownership of more of the solar supply chain.
“Steel River reflects the scale of infrastructure required to meet America’s rapidly growing electricity demand,” said Cypress Creek CIO Jeffrey Meigel, referring to the scale of the project, which is comparable to some of the other large solar-plus-storage projects in the US.
The Steel River project’s storage component is larger than that of the 2GW Bellefield solar-plus-storage project, at which construction was completed last year, and its solar portion is larger than that of the Edwards & Sanborn solar-plus-storage project, which included the world’s largest operational BESS when it started commercial operations in 2024.
New solar projects accounted for 54% of all new electricity-generating capacity added to the US grid in 2025, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), while solar and BESS collectively accounted for 79% of new capacity added last year. Swift Current Energy CEO and co-founder Eric Lammers said that the sale of the Steel River project during such a time of strong growth in the US solar and storage sectors sets up the company for “continued success and growth”.
“Swift Current’s sale of this monumental project, our largest to date, sets up our company for continued success and growth,” said Lammers. “We’re thrilled that our team has forged a strong working partnership with Mississippi County, and we look forward to continuing to work with the county on other projects in our portfolio.”
Swift Current Energy has a total development pipeline of more than 10GW of solar, wind and BESS capacity, and is currently developing close to 1GW of new solar capacity through three projects, two of which are in Illinois and one of which is in Pennsylvania.
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.
