A $249 million solar project in Hidalgo County is in limbo — here’s why

A $249 million solar project in rural Hidalgo County appears to be in limbo after the company behind it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last month and said it expects to lay off about 78% of its workforce. 

Pine Gate Renewables, an energy developer founded in 2016 and headquartered in Asheville, North Carolina, operated more than 100 utility-scale solar projects throughout the U.S. at its peak. It had another 130 projects under development — about two dozen of them in Texas. 

One of them, a proposed 249-megawatt solar project, was planned to be built about a mile west of Linn in northern Hidalgo County. 

Once completed, the project was slated to generate enough electricity to power roughly 40,000 homes annually, based on national averages cited by the Solar Energy Industries Association. It was also expected to create 300 construction jobs.