Near Arlington, Oregon, 500 MW each of wind and solar could feed a 4,000-MWh battery on 29,950 acres
East of the Cascades, the high desert around Arlington, Oregon is the kind of place where wind rarely stops and summer sun hammers the plateau for hundreds of days a year. It’s also where a developer is now proposing to build one of the region’s most ambitious clean energy projects.
The Big River Renewable Energy project would layer 500 megawatts of wind, 500 megawatts of solar, and a 4,000-megawatt-hour battery storage system across nearly 30,000 acres of open rangeland — a physical transformation of real Oregon terrain that could meaningfully reshape how the region keeps its lights on.
A project born from Oregon’s wind and sun
The developer behind Big River is EDPR North America, a renewable energy company that already operates 300 megawatts of capacity in Oregon — enough to power more than 81,200 homes. That existing footprint gives the company genuine credibility in the state and a working understanding of how large-scale projects get built and sustained here.
That dual format signals an effort to reach residents who may not be able to travel but still have a stake in what gets built near their communities.
Gilliam County, where Arlington sits, offers a near-ideal combination of resources. The high desert plateau east of the Cascades catches persistent wind and long hours of direct sunlight, making it one of the more compelling locations in the Pacific Northwest for co-locating wind and solar on a single site.
The project’s dual-generation design is central to its ambition. Five hundred megawatts of wind and 500 megawatts of solar would operate together across the same 29,950-acre footprint, each technology compensating for the other’s natural rhythms across different hours and seasons. EDPR frames this explicitly as a partnership with local landowners and communities — landowner revenue is listed among the project’s economic benefits, suggesting the company is building relationships with the families who hold the land rather than simply leasing it from a distance.
Why 4,000 MWh of battery storage changes everything
The 4,000-megawatt-hour battery storage system is what separates Big River from a conventional wind or solar farm. At that scale, the battery can absorb large surpluses of generated electricity and hold them until the grid actually needs the power, rather than letting excess generation go to waste or forcing curtailments.
Wind and solar have historically carried a reliability problem: they produce energy when nature cooperates, not necessarily when demand peaks. A battery of this size acts as a buffer, smoothing out the mismatch between generation and actual need.
Think of it as a bridge. When wind turbines are spinning hard at 2 a.m. and demand is low, the battery stores that energy. When a summer afternoon drives air-conditioning loads up, and solar output starts to fade, the battery dispatches what it saved — turning an intermittent resource into something far more predictable and dispatchable. For context, most utility-scale battery projects in the United States operate in the range of tens to low hundreds of megawatt-hours. A system an order of magnitude larger can meaningfully support grid stability rather than simply shaving small peaks.
Nearly 30,000 acres: What that land actually looks like
Twenty-nine thousand, nine hundred and fifty acres is roughly 47 square miles. In Gilliam County, that terrain is largely open rangeland — a high desert landscape used for grazing cattle and dryland agriculture, wide and flat to rolling, and thinly populated.
Wind and solar projects are often compatible with existing land uses in ways that other industrial facilities aren’t. Turbines stand on relatively small concrete pads, leaving surrounding land available for grazing. Solar arrays can similarly coexist with certain agricultural practices. For families who’ve worked this land for generations, a long-term lease agreement with a renewable energy developer can represent meaningful, stable income alongside traditional agricultural activities.
A project covering nearly 30,000 acres will also raise legitimate questions about visual impact and effects on local wildlife and habitat. Those concerns are precisely what Oregon’s formal siting review process is designed to examine before any construction begins.
Oregon’s energy agency opens the review clock
On August 4, 2026, the Oregon Department of Energy received a Notice of Intent from EDPR to file an Application for a Site Certificate — the formal first step in Oregon’s energy facility siting process under the Oregon Department of Energy – Big River submission. The department issued public notice three days later, opening a comment period that runs through September 25, 2026.
A public informational meeting was held on August 20, 2026, offered both in person and virtually. That dual format signals an effort to reach residents who may not be able to travel but still have a stake in what gets built near their communities.
The Application for a Site Certificate is a significant regulatory milestone in Oregon. Large energy facilities can’t be built without one, and the review process involves environmental analysis, agency coordination, and public input at multiple stages. Filing the notice of intent starts that clock — but completing the full application, receiving a site certificate, and moving toward construction would each require additional steps and time beyond where things stand now.
What this could mean for Oregon’s grid and its communities
Oregon has set ambitious clean energy targets, and grid reliability remains a central challenge as the state moves away from fossil fuel generation. A project capable of delivering up to 1,000 megawatts of combined wind and solar capacity, backed by 4,000 megawatt-hours of storage, could contribute meaningfully to both goals.
EDPR lists a range of economic benefits alongside the energy output: revenue for public services, local spending during and after construction, permanent operations jobs, and construction employment. For a rural county like Gilliam, those contributions can matter well beyond the energy sector.
The company’s track record in Oregon is relevant here. Three hundred megawatts of operational capacity already running in the state — powering tens of thousands of homes — suggests EDPR knows how to navigate Oregon’s regulatory environment and deliver projects that actually come online.
At the human scale, the project’s impact would be felt most directly by the landowners hosting the infrastructure, the workers building and maintaining it, and the communities whose tax bases and service budgets would reflect the new economic activity. If Big River clears its regulatory hurdles, those are the people who’ll see the difference first.
Kelly is an experienced writer with 15 years of experience exploring the big stories that shape our world, from tech breakthroughs and space exploration to climate, energy, and the fascinating quirks of science. She has a talent for turning complex ideas into sharp, memorable insights that stay with readers long after they’ve finished reading.
