A second utility-scale solar project has been quietly taking shape on farmland in Hale County for four years, according to a review of Hale County probate records by this newspaper, and a state easement recorded Tuesday shows the project crossing land held in trust for conservation under Alabama’s Forever Wild program.
The instrument, recorded Tuesday at the Hale County courthouse, is a utility right-of-way easement granted by the Alabama Trust Fund’s Forever Wild Land Trust to Channel Cat Solar LLC, a Delaware company. It allows the company to run a utility connection across a half-acre corner of the Forever Wild Field Trial Area in Hale County for a term of 50 years, renewable, in exchange for a one-time payment of $1,924. Gov. Kay Ivey signed the easement Oct. 23, 2025, and the Forever Wild board approved it unanimously at its May 2, 2024 meeting in Jacksonville.
A transcript of that meeting, recorded with the easement, describes the project in the state’s own words. Channel Cat Solar “requested an easement that would cross the Forever Wild Field Trial Area in Hale County,” State Lands Director Patricia McCurdy told the board, to “connect those two sort of corner touching parcels” so that electricity “generated on one parcel” could be “transferred to a substation on another privately owned parcel.” A board member asked whether the company could route around the state land instead; McCurdy answered that staff had evaluated the alternative and recalled wetlands or terrain making the crossing the more logical path. The exact route, she noted, was still to be precisely determined at the time of the vote.
The land under the project belongs to two Hale County owners. Seale Farms, LLC, of Greensboro, signed a solar lease and easement agreement with Channel Cat Solar covering some or all of approximately 921 acres, effective June 13, 2022, according to a memorandum recorded that August. Martha W. Thompson, of Birmingham, signed a similar agreement covering some or all of approximately 320 acres, effective July 28, 2022, recorded that September.
The recorded memoranda do not state how many acres are committed, what rent is paid, or whether the agreements, which a later instrument characterizes as exclusive options to lease, have been exercised. In October 2024, Seale Farms assigned its landlord interest to a new family entity, Seale Solar, LLC; Gayle L. Seale signed as manager of both companies.
Every instrument was prepared by Walden Renewables Development LLC of Portsmouth, N.H., whose executive, John B. Kenworthy, signed each one as executive officer of Channel Cat Solar. Walden describes itself as a renewable energy developer founded by Henry Weitzner and Kenworthy, based in New York, with a pipeline of more than 9 gigawatts of solar, wind, and battery projects across the country, backed by an investment arm of RWE, the German energy company.
The project’s connection to the power grid is documented in detail at the federal level. On June 29, 2022, sixteen days after the Seale agreement took effect, Channel Cat Solar submitted its first interconnection request to Southern Company’s transmission operators, and a second that August. The two resulting interconnection agreements, both executed Oct. 25, 2023 and filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that November, describe a two-phase solar photovoltaic project with batteries in Hale County delivering up to 250 megawatts combined—170 megawatts in the first phase and 80 megawatts in the second.
Under the agreements, Alabama Power will build a new shared 230-kilovolt substation for the project by looping in its existing Greene County to Moundville 230-kilovolt transmission line, with Channel Cat responsible for an estimated $11.5 million in utility-side interconnection costs across both phases. The agreements require Channel Cat to purchase the substation site and deed it to Alabama Power, with land transfer deadlines of Feb. 1 and March 30; no such deed appears in the Hale County records reviewed by this newspaper as of Tuesday, though the agreements permit the schedules to be reset. The milestone schedules call for commercial operation of the two phases by June 1 and July 30, 2027.
The records establish a project developing on an orderly timeline: land agreements signed in summer 2022, interconnection agreements with Alabama Power in fall 2023, state board approval in spring 2024, and the executed state crossing recorded this week.
What the records do not show is equally worth stating. Nothing in the Hale County land records, the Forever Wild file, or the federal filings reviewed by this newspaper connects the Channel Cat project to the Lock Five to S. Bessemer 500-kilovolt transmission line, to the planned Lock 5 substation off County Road 16, or to any data center development; the project’s documented interconnection is at 230 kilovolts, into an existing line running between Greene County and Moundville.
On the record so far, Hale County is home to two separate utility-scale solar projects by two unrelated developers: the EG Saturn project near Newbern, previously reported by this newspaper, whose land agreements date to September 2022, and the Channel Cat project near Greensboro, whose agreements predate them by roughly three months.
