What better way to celebrate the new year than with the commissioning of a solar power plant that Inovateus developed and built in our own backyard. On December 29, the 7 MWDC Kokomo Solar 1 project came online and became one of the largest photovoltaic arrays in the state of Indiana.
The plant has begun generating the first portion of the approximately 9.1 million kilowatt-hours of solar energy expected annually to be provided via a 20-year power purchase agreement to Duke Energy and the people of Indiana.
Just last week, our partner Alterra Power issued a press release about the opening, which has since been picked up by a host of trade and news outlets. One highlight of the press release, and something we are particularly happy to note, is “a previously announced $8.9 million construction loan was repaid via a $5 million 10-year term loan and $4 million tax equity investment, both provided by 1st Source Bank, a subsidiary of 1st Source Corporation.”
The Kokomo Perspective site also published a touching first-person profile feature about one of the solar project construction team members, whose dad, uncles, and cousins worked at the Continental Steel plant that occupied the Superfund site back in the day. In addition, the Kokomo Tribune came out with this article about the project.
We’ve written about Kokomo Solar 1 in earlier blogs, which provide additional details about this important project. One of the highlights was turning a contaminated brownfield site into a solar farm—“a blight-to-bright story that we hope will be a model for other municipalities wanting to put unused land to good use.” The fact we’re most proud of is that Kokomo represents Inovateus’ first foray into investment and ownership of a solar project.
Of course, the success of the Kokomo project was a result of a full team effort. I’d like to acknowledge my fellow Inovateus team members for their efforts: Bill Leffew, construction manager; Jonny Rienks, design engineer; Jorge Varela, project coordinator; Jefferson Gerwig, purchasing manager; and Austin Williams, account executive.
We’re just getting started as project investors and owners. Alterra and Inovateus are codeveloping Spartan PV I, a 13.5-MWDC multisite solar project at Michigan State University that will start construction early this year.
It’s looking like 2017 is going to be brilliant!
By Nathan Vogel, director of strategy, Inovateus Solar
