PROPOSED · NCS SOLAR PROJECT

The mouth of Butte Creek Canyon, paved in glass.

A 300-megawatt solar and battery project is proposed on about 1,700 acres of blue oak grassland along Skyway. It will be decided in Sacramento, not in Butte County. Drag across to see it.

Aerial photo looking northeast up Skyway: Butte Creek Canyon on the left, open blue oak grassland on the right. The same view with the proposed solar array, battery yard and substation covering the grassland right of Skyway.
TODAYBlue oak grassland on Skyway
PROPOSEDNCS Solar Project
Aerial photo of the real site from a small plane. The array is an artist's visualization, with equipment drawn ~1.35× real size so it reads at this distance.Layout from the developer's site plan
What's proposed

One project. Industrial scale.

Cenergy Power, a developer based in Orange County and Modesto, wants to build the NCS Solar Project at 2000 Skyway, between Skyway and Neal Road, east of Highway 99. Here is what it includes, in the developer's own numbers.

300MW
of solar panels on single-axis trackers, roughly half a million panels.
Panel count estimated from 300 MW at typical module sizes
120MW
of lithium battery storage in outdoor cabinets, next to a new substation and switchyard on Skyway.
Cenergy Power, NCS Solar project site
~1,700acres
of private grazing land, with panels covering up to 1,300 acres of it.
Cenergy Power, NCS Solar project site
~2,500
healthy blue oaks cut down, out of more than 7,000 oaks on the site.
Developer's estimate · Action News Now, Sept. 22, 2026
AB 205
The developer is filing with the State, so the California Energy Commission decides, not Butte County.
Cenergy Power, NCS Solar project site
2028
The developer's target: state approval in February 2028, construction April 2028 through the end of 2029.
Cenergy Power, NCS Solar project site
Watch it

Fly over it. Watch it spread.

Both clips start from the same real aerial photograph, taken from a small plane over Skyway. The flyover moves the camera through a 3D model of the proposed layout. The build-out shows the grading and the panels spreading out from Skyway.

Up close

Right against the canyon.

A lower pass over the Skyway frontage. The developer's site plan puts the substation, switchyard and battery yard here, across from Spanish Garden Drive, a few hundred feet from the homes along Skyway.

Low aerial view of the proposed battery yard, substation and solar array along Skyway, with Butte Creek Canyon behind.
1Battery yard. 120 MW of lithium storage in rows of outdoor cabinets, each about 20 ft long.
2Substation and switchyard. Connects to the 230 kV transmission line that crosses the west side of the site.
3Skyway. The site plan shows two new entrances with turn lanes. This is the main road between Chico and Paradise.
4Homes along Skyway and the Honey Run Road junction, just across the highway.
5Butte Creek Canyon. The canyon rims and the creek's spring-run salmon habitat sit just north of the site.
6Oaks left standing. The developer plans about 400 acres of open space, keeping up to half of the healthy blue oaks.
Roofs first

We're already going solar. On our roofs.

Butte County homes, businesses, schools and parking lots have connected about 241 MW of rooftop and carport solar, most of it in the last ten years, all on land that was already built on. About 115 MW of that went up since 2021.

This one project would be 300 MW. On its own, it would outweigh everything Butte County has put on its roofs, and it would be built on 1,700 acres of oak grassland.

Rooftop & carport solar in Butte County, cumulative

Megawatts connected to the grid by end of year · 2026 through May
Source: California DGStats, NEM solar interconnections, Butte County (PG&E), through May 31, 2026
Map of Chico with the NCS Solar site drawn to scale east of Highway 99 on Skyway, the same footprint laid over central Chico, and all Butte County rooftop solar gathered into one small block for comparison.
The site drawn to scale next to Chico, and the same footprint laid over central Chico. The small square is all 241 MW of Butte County rooftop solar gathered in one place (about 360 acres of panels, estimated). Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors.
The oaks

Trees that were here before any of us.

Blue oaks grow slowly and can live for centuries. They shade the grassland, drop the acorns deer depend on, and shelter quail and the small animals that live under a fallen limb. The developer counted more than 7,000 of them, found about 5,000 healthy, and says about 2,500 of the healthy trees would come down.

10 blue oaks on the site10 healthy oaks cutSource: developer figures reported by Action News Now, Sept. 22, 2026

"These oak trees went through a fire. The ones that you're cutting down survived a fire that we all went through."
A neighbor at the Sept. 22 open house, quoted by Action News Now

The creek next door

Butte Creek, right now.

The canyon just north of the site holds one of the last wild runs of spring-run Chinook salmon in California. This is the creek today, live from the gauge near Chico.

Streamflow
—cfs
Loading the gauge…
Water temperature
—°F
Spring-run salmon start to struggle above about 68 °F while they hold in the canyon over summer.
Against 95 years
—th pct
Today's flow compared with every past reading for this date.
USGS 11390000 / CDEC BCK · via Butte Creek Watch
21,500
spring-run adults returned in 2021, one of the biggest runs on record.
92%
of them, 19,773 fish, died before they could spawn in that hot, low-water summer.
51
fish counted in the 2024 snorkel survey. The recovery target is 3,000 adults.

Salmon figures: CDFW snorkel & carcass surveys as published by Friends of Butte Creek.

Who decides

Decided in Sacramento.

A 2022 state law, AB 205, lets developers of large solar and battery projects skip the county and go straight to the California Energy Commission. Cenergy says it chose that path because it made the project easier to finance. The CEC review still includes environmental analysis, public workshops and hearings, so public comment counts, but only if people show up on the record.

Sept 22, 2026
Developer's open house in Chico. About 100 people attend.
Oct 2026
Planned filing of the AB 205 application with the CEC.
+270 days
After the CEC deems the application complete, it has 270 days to approve or deny.
Feb 2028
Developer's target for state approval.
Apr 2028
Construction would begin.
End 2029
Construction would be complete.

Schedule from Cenergy Power's NCS Solar project site; the developer says it may move. 270-day review: Action News Now, Sept. 22, 2026.

Speak up

It isn't decided yet. Be on the record.

The application hasn't even been filed. The best time to speak is now, before the design is locked, and again once the state opens its review.

one

Tell the developer

Cenergy's project site has a comment form that goes to the NCS Solar team. Be specific: the oaks, Skyway, the canyon, fire.

Open the comment form →
two

Follow the state

Once the application is filed, the CEC opens a public docket for it. Subscribe to it to get every document, workshop and hearing notice.

CEC Opt-In program →
three

Share this page

Most people driving Skyway have no idea this is coming. Show them.

Facebook X Email
four

Stand with the creek

Friends of Butte Creek has spent decades protecting the creek's water and its salmon. Support their work.

Give to Friends of Butte Creek →
Take the visuals

Free to share, print and post. Please keep the "artist's visualization" credit.

Hero aerial Low pass Before / after Roofs vs. Skyway map Flyover video Build-out video