
J.B. Hunt Transport Services Inc., the state’s largest trucking and supply chain company, has harnessed the sun.
A new solar field will offset about 80% of the power it uses at its three main corporate campus sites in Lowell. The company commissioned an 18,000-panel solar farm Wednesday in Gentry, about 35 miles to the west. The 40-acre J.B. Hunt Solar Facility will use more than 10,000 bi-facial solar modules to capture sunlight and convert it into electricity. Carroll County Electric Cooperative will transmit the power to its grid, and give J.B. Hunt, a perennial Fortune 500 company, credit for it.
The project is among a flurry of solar power stations that had interconnection agreements before an Oct. 1 policy deadline. Projects with interconnection deals before then were “grandfathered in” under Arkansas previous rules for net metering. That’s the accounting method that gives residential and commercial power users a credit for the surplus electricity they put onto the grid.
Last year’s policy change reduced that credit by about six-tenths, making systems interconnected in the future less economical.
Millions of Kilowatt Hours
A J.B. Hunt news release said the facility will produce about 9.3 million kilowatt hours of electricity a year.
Greer Woodruff, the company’s executive vice president of safety, sustainability and maintenance, said the solar generation facility will create a load of electricity equivalent to an amount that could power nearly 1,200 homes.
“By commissioning this solar facility, J.B. Hunt is demonstrating our commitment to enhancing the communities we serve and to investing in economically viable practices aimed at creating a more sustainable supply chain,” Woodruff said in the release.
“And, by drawing power from the sun and not a carbon-based source, the carbon dioxide kept from entering the atmosphere will be equivalent to eliminating 1,400 passenger vehicles from the road each year,” Woodruff added. “This is a great example of how we can create a more sustainable Northwest Arkansas for future generations ….”
Another NextEra Project
NextEra Energy of Juno Beach, Florida, managed the project. NextEra has collaborated with Entergy Arkansas on several of its utility-scale solar generation plants, and is working on the massive 300-megawatt Tupelo Brake solar project near Newport.
Construction on the Gentry project began in 2024, J.B. Hunt said. “Both Trio (formerly Edison Energy) and Carroll County Electric Cooperative Corp. provided ongoing consultation throughout planning and development,” the release said.
The company said it is committed to making sustainability a corporate cornerstone, from maintenance and equipment to engineering and technology. The goal is to run the most efficient transportation network in North America, it said.