Panamint closes $769M first phase of loan for Big Rooter solar at coal site

Panamint Capital has closed the $769 million first phase of a $1.8 billion green loan for Big Rooter Power, a 1.2 GWdc solar project at its Twin Oaks Power Station and Calvert Mine in Robertson County, Texas, the firm announced on November 4, 2026. Lloyds, MUFG and SMBC lead both phases, with MUFG as administrative agent.

The first phase pays for Big Rooter West, 491 MWdc, under construction since July 2026 and on track, Panamint says, for commercial operation in August 2028. The second, over $1 billion, is for the 658 MWdc Big Rooter East, which the firm expects to close in the first quarter of 2027 and to reach commercial operation in August 2029.

Most of the money is a bridge. West's financing is a $240 million construction-to-term loan, a $461 million tax equity bridge loan and a $68 million letter of credit facility; East's is $336 million, $587 million and $91 million. By our arithmetic the two bridge loans come to $1.048 billion, about 59% of a $1.783 billion package.

The coal plant is staying. Twin Oaks is a 310 MW lignite coal-fired power station, and the solar farm uses its operating interconnection infrastructure. In Panamint's July groundbreaking release, chief executive Apolka Totth said that once Big Rooter is complete the complex will have 1.5 GW of operating thermal and renewable power, plus new 345 kV transmission, 1.6 GWh of battery energy storage and 790 MW of data center capacity under development. Panamint's managing director of development said then that the power goes to one of the country's largest companies under a long-term power purchase agreement; neither release names the buyer.

The project has also grown in the telling. In July Panamint called it a $1.7 billion project that would be the largest solar project constructed at an existing coal mining site in North America; the loan package alone now tops that figure, and the November release says Big Rooter will be the largest brownfield renewable energy project in North America.