What was once a flat work site in April is now home to a new substation powering Pine Bluff’s Highland Pellets biomass facility.

City, county and state representatives, community and business leaders and Entergy Mississippi, Inc. gathered on Wednesday for the company’s dedication of its Brookhaven solar site—one of three in Mississippi that make up Entergy’s “Bright Future” pilot solar system.

Representatives from Entergy Mississippi, Inc. and DeSoto County gathered today to celebrate history in the making, and the star of the event was the sun itself.

Entergy Arkansas' Bobby Pharr has, arguably, the best office in the whole company. As manager of the lakes, Pharr's work space overlooks picturesque Lake Catherine, the body of water that was formed about 70 years ago when company founder Harvey Couch built Remmel Dam on the Ouachita River near Hot Springs. At the time, the electricity generated at Remmel Dam was the biggest power source the company had going. Today, it's still cranking out clean electricity, but it supplies only a small fraction of what is consumed these days by Entergy customers.

New Orleans will soon become home to the city's first utility-scale solar project that not only harnesses the power of the sun, but stores it as well.