Avantus and Toyota Tsusho America have completed construction of the Norton Solar Project, a 159 MWdc / 125 MWac utility-scale photovoltaic facility in Runnels County, central Texas, delivering one of the region’s larger solar completions of the first quarter of 2026. Construction began in August 2024 and the project reached substantial completion in October 2025, with commercial operations following shortly thereafter. The facility’s entire output is underpinned by a long-term virtual power purchase agreement between Toyota Tsusho America and Toyota Motor North America, providing the automotive group’s North American operations with a renewable energy matching mechanism aligned with its sustainability commitments. RES served as the engineering, procurement, and construction contractor, while Avantus led development, project delivery, and will retain ownership and operations going forward.

Runnels County and the Project’s Physical Scope

The Norton Solar Project occupies land in Runnels County, situated in the rolling plains of central Texas roughly 200 kilometres southwest of Fort Worth and within the deregulated ERCOT electricity market. Runnels County sits in the Concho Valley region, characterised by flat to gently rolling terrain, high solar irradiance, and the affordable land costs that have made central and west Texas among the most competitive geographies in the United States for utility-scale solar development. The project’s nameplate capacity of 159 MWdc — reduced at the inverter stage to 125 MWac for grid export — represents a standard utility-scale single-axis tracker installation, with rows of bifacial photovoltaic modules mounted on tracking systems that follow the sun from east to west throughout the day to maximise energy yield.

Project Fact Sheet: Norton Solar Project

Project Name: Norton Solar Project

Location: Runnels County, Texas, USA (central Texas, ~200 km southwest of Fort Worth)

Grid Market: ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas)

Nameplate Capacity: 159 MWdc / 125 MWac

Technology: Single-axis tracking, bifacial photovoltaic modules

Construction Start: August 2024

Substantial Completion: October 2025

Operational Date: Early 2026

Construction Employment: ~250 jobs at peak

Offtake Structure: Long-term Virtual Power Purchase Agreement (VPPA)

VPPA Buyer: Toyota Motor North America

VPPA Structuring Party: Toyota Tsusho America (TAI)

Project Entity: TAI Norton Solar

Project Team: Norton Solar Project

Developer / Owner / Operator: Avantus (San Francisco, CA)

Avantus EVP, Engineering and Construction: Fausto Perez

EPC Contractor: RES (Renewable Energy Systems)

Equity / VPPA Partner: Toyota Tsusho America (Toyota Group)

TAI Norton Solar VP: Akihiro Yoshida

Offtake Counterparty: Toyota Motor North America

Avantus Pipeline: ~24 GWdc solar + ~75 GWh energy storage (California and Desert Southwest)

At that scale and in that location, the Norton Solar Project will generate sufficient electricity to power approximately 25,000 to 30,000 average Texas households annually, and will displace a commensurate volume of fossil-fuelled generation from the ERCOT dispatch stack. The project interconnects to the ERCOT transmission grid via the regional system’s existing infrastructure in west-central Texas. Construction of the facility, which ran over approximately 14 months from August 2024 to the October 2025 substantial completion milestone, created nearly 250 jobs at peak employment in Runnels County — a meaningful economic injection for a rural county where energy-sector construction projects of this scale are among the most significant periodic employers available. Long-term operational benefits include property tax revenue for Runnels County, landowner lease payments, and ongoing employment in operations and maintenance.

The Ownership and Construction Team: Avantus, RES, and Toyota Tsusho America

Avantus — a utility-scale clean energy developer, owner, and operator headquartered in San Francisco — was the project developer throughout the Norton Solar Project’s lifecycle, from site origination and permitting through construction oversight and into operations. Fausto Perez, Avantus’s executive vice president of engineering and construction, described the completion of Norton as a demonstration of the firm’s core capability: delivering large-scale solar projects safely, on schedule, and within budget in a market environment where cost overruns and schedule slippage have affected a significant share of the sector’s project pipeline. Avantus carries a development pipeline of approximately 24 GWdc of solar and 75 GWh of energy storage across California and the Desert Southwest, and the Norton completion adds another project to a track record of executed assets that underpins its credibility with future equity and debt financing partners.

RES — Renewable Energy Systems, a leading global renewable energy construction company with one of the largest independent wind, solar, and battery project build portfolios in North America — served as the EPC contractor responsible for the Norton project’s full engineering, procurement, and construction execution. Toyota Tsusho America (TAI) is the US operating arm of Toyota Tsusho Corporation, a member of the Toyota Group that specialises in trading, project development, and supply chain management across energy, metals, materials, and other sectors. TAI Norton Solar is the project entity through which Toyota Tsusho America structured its ownership and equity position in the Norton facility, with Akihiro Yoshida serving as VP of TAI Norton Solar and the primary client-side executive communicating project performance and satisfaction.

The Toyota VPPA: What It Is and Why It Matters

The Norton Solar Project’s revenue is anchored by a long-term virtual power purchase agreement between Toyota Tsusho America and Toyota Motor North America, the US holding company for Toyota’s manufacturing, sales, and corporate operations in North America — which include plants in Texas, Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee, and West Virginia. A virtual PPA differs from a physical PPA in an important way: rather than delivering electricity directly from the solar plant to Toyota’s facilities, a VPPA allows Toyota Motor North America to financially match its electricity consumption with the output of the Norton Solar Project. Toyota pays a fixed contract price to Toyota Tsusho America for the project’s output, while the electricity itself flows into the ERCOT grid and Toyota’s facilities draw power from the local grid at prevailing rates — with the VPPA payments and renewable energy certificates from Norton providing the accounting and contractual basis for Toyota’s renewable energy claims.

This structure has become the dominant mechanism through which Fortune 500 corporations source renewable energy at scale, particularly in deregulated markets like ERCOT where direct physical delivery from a single generator to a dispersed set of facilities is logistically complex. By locking in a fixed price for 159 MWdc of solar output through a long-term VPPA, Toyota Motor North America hedges its electricity cost exposure, advances its Science Based Targets-aligned emissions reduction commitments, and contributes to the buildout of new renewable energy capacity — a key criterion for additionality in corporate renewable energy procurement frameworks. The Toyota Group’s commitment to Norton through this VPPA reflects the same logic driving corporate clean energy procurement across the automotive sector: as vehicle electrification increases the power intensity of manufacturing operations and as climate commitments demand verifiable scope 2 emissions reductions, utility-scale solar VPPAs offer the most cost-effective and scalable mechanism available.

Texas Solar’s Completion Surge and Avantus’s Broader US Strategy

The Norton Solar Project’s completion in early 2026 arrives in what continues to be an extraordinary period of utility-scale solar construction activity in Texas. ERCOT added more than 10 GW of new solar capacity in 2024 alone, surpassing California to become the largest annual solar installation market in the United States for the first time. The combination of abundant land, high solar resource, competitive interconnection costs, low permitting friction relative to other US states, and deep demand from corporate buyers — particularly in the AI data centre, semiconductor, and automotive manufacturing sectors expanding across the state — has made ERCOT the most active single market for utility-scale solar development globally on an annual basis. Among the developers establishing a systematic Texas solar presence within this cycle is Ashtrom Renewable Energy, whose Tierra Bonita Solar Project in Pecos County — a 400MWdc facility backed by $270 million in green financing and a 20-year CPS Energy PPA — became one of the first solar projects in the US to complete a production tax credit transfer under the Inflation Reduction Act, setting a transactional precedent that has since been widely replicated across the ERCOT market.

Avantus’s decision to develop Norton as a central Texas project, and to bring a Toyota Group counterparty into the capital and offtake structure, reflects both the depth of demand from major US corporations for ERCOT-sited renewable energy and the developer’s own geographic expansion from its roots in California and the Desert Southwest. With a 24 GWdc development pipeline and 75 GWh of storage under development, Avantus is among the larger independent clean energy developers in the United States, operating in a tier just below the hyperscale portfolios of NextEra Energy Resources and Invenergy. The completion of Norton on time and within budget — delivered by a construction team of nearly 250 at peak in rural Runnels County — adds a verified reference project to the company’s portfolio and strengthens its position in the competitive market for corporate and utility offtake contracts that will define the next decade of US solar deployment.