While the Inovateus team loves to develop, build and supply solar projects throughout several regions of the U.S. and the world, we are especially excited when we have a chance to be a part of a solar farm in our own back forty. The recent news about the close of financing for the project under way in Kokomo, Indiana, highlights one example of locally grown solar, but there’s more to the story than the details announced in the press release.
In case you missed the news, here’s the summary. We’re managing the installation of a 7 MWDC (5.4 MWAC) ground-mounted solar system on a remediated Superfund parcel of land owned by the city of Kokomo. In addition to operating and maintaining the power plant, Inovateus will co-own Kokomo Solar 1, and the local utility will buy the kilowatt-hours generated by the facility under the terms of a 20-year power purchase agreement. South Bend-based 1st Source Bank provided the construction and term loan financing package for the project.
Those are a few of the basic facts, but here’s some additional information.
The site itself was once the home of a massive Continental Steel plant that was shuttered in the 1980s, according to Carey Stranahan, Kokomo’s city engineer. After the abandoned structures were demolished in the 1990s, the heavily contaminated site lay barren until it underwent a $40 million remediation effort led by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.
Stranahan says the city finally took legal ownership of the brownfield site about a year ago and was figuring out how it could be utilized, since most commercial redevelopment or building a park would not have been feasible. But when Inovateus answered a request for proposal and approached the city about developing the land for a solar farm, the idea made sense.
From a revenue standpoint, the city will garner income from the long-term lease agreement and see savings from reduced maintenance costs, the city engineer says. Since the property once was home to a large, energy-consuming factory complex, the utility infrastructure is already in place, with a big substation located just south of the site. This was not a “permit-heavy project,” so the land required no rezoning or special exceptions. A soil management plan was also approved prior to the pounding of the first racking post.
Once construction is completed on the 26-acre site by the end of 2016, Kokomo Solar 1 will be the only major solar plant in Howard County. In fact, it will be the first utility power plant of any kind in the county–as well as the utility’s first major solar installation to provide clean solar-watts for the Hoosier State.
Thanks to the yeoman work of our team and our EPC partners Heartland Construction, the buildout of Kokomo Solar 1 is well under way. As you can see from our live project feed, hundreds of ballasted racking systems are already in place or nearly installed, and the first pallets of what will be more than 21,000 solar panels are being deployed. By early next year, the power plant will be generating approximately 9.1 million kilowatt-hours of solar energy for the people and businesses of Kokomo.
We congratulate the city of Kokomo for making the choice to develop this underutilized land with solar and to start the transition to clean energy.
By Mauricio Anon, brand ambassador, Inovateus Solar
