Panamint Capital has secured a $1.8 billion green loan for Big Rooter Power, a 1.2 GWdc solar project being built on reclaimed coal mine land at its Twin Oaks power station in Robertson County, Texas. The company says it will be the largest solar project built at an existing coal mining site and the largest brownfield renewable project in North America.
The project sits halfway between Dallas and Houston and will connect with the existing coal-fired Twin Oaks plant to form a hybrid power station, pv magazine USA reported.
Two phases, two financings
The first phase of the loan, worth $769 million, has closed and funds Big Rooter West, a 491 MWdc plant on which construction started in July. According to PV Tech, it is made up of a $240 million construction-to-term loan, a $461 million tax equity bridge loan and a $68 million letter of credit facility, arranged by Lloyds, MUFG and SMBC. Commercial operation of Big Rooter West is expected in August 2028.
The second phase of more than $1 billion will fund Big Rooter East, a 658 MWdc plant. Construction is due to start in December 2026, the financing is expected to close in the first quarter of 2027, and commercial operation is planned for August 2029.
The power will be sold under a long-term power purchase agreement with a large corporation that Panamint has not named.
Built on mined land
Big Rooter covers 4,458 acres of reclaimed coal mine land and includes interconnection infrastructure within the 10,000-acre Twin Oaks complex. The site combines power generation, surface mining, energy storage, high-voltage transmission and planned data centre capacity.
"When Big Rooter is complete, the Twin Oaks complex will have 1.5 GW of operating thermal and renewable power," said Apolka Totth, Chief Executive Officer of Panamint Capital.
The wider buildout at the complex also includes more than 20 miles of new 345 kV transmission lines, 1.6 GWh of battery storage and 790 MW of data centre capacity under development. PV Tech reported that the coal plant itself is expected to keep running.
US-made supply chain
First Solar will supply about 2 million panels made at its factories in Ohio, Louisiana and Alabama. Solv Energy is the engineering, procurement and construction contractor for the solar, substation and transmission work, and the project will use more than 34,000 tons of domestically manufactured steel. Panamint expects more than 800 jobs across both phases.
Panamint is a Nevada-based energy investment company founded in 2019, which had 718 MW of generating capacity in operation in 2025.
What it means for US developers
Big Rooter shows how existing power plant sites can speed up large solar projects: the land is already industrial, the grid connection exists and transmission can be extended from the same hub. With US-made modules and steel that reduce exposure to import duties, and a corporate buyer signed up, the project also shows the kind of package that lenders are still willing to finance at gigawatt scale in Texas.
Source: pv magazine USA, PV Tech
