By WMBD TV
MINONK, Ill. (WMBD) — With a drum roll from the audience and a flip of a switch, a new clean energy source became available for the residents of Minonk.
Nearly two dozen community members and dignitaries gathered June 16 on a windy day at the Woodford County village’s new Community Solar Farm. It’s the county’s first Illinois Shines community solar development program.
Built on a former coal mine, the 16,000-panel farm will generate more than 9.8 megawatts of renewable energy. That’s enough to power more than 7,000 homes a year.
The 42-acre farm, built and operated by Nexamp, TurningPoint Energy, and ComEd, consists of two separate fields about a football field apart. Those who want to get power from the facility can subscribe, a move that officials say could save people money.
According to a fact sheet from Nexamp, there is no enrollment or cancelation fee for subscribers and people only pay for what they get from the solar farm.
“Anyone can subscribe, regardless of the status of your roof or if you own or rent,” said Jessica Collingsworth, Nexamp’s central policy director. “So, this is a great opportunity to bring clean energy to community members by being subscribers of this project, as well as big companies like Rush Medical or the College of DuPage.
“They can also lower their electricity bills by paying subscriptions,” she added.
Fully funded by Illinois Shines, the farm took around two years to take from concept to final product.
“These projects are just two of the five projects that we’ve permitted in the city of Minonk. So, we plan to also construct three more projects. Those projects are a little further down the line in their ability to interconnect with the grid,” said Jordan Belknap, TurningPoint’s director of development. “There’s a there’s some upgrades to the electric grid that need to happen first. But we’re fully committed to seeing those projects through as well.”
The Minonk project are some of the first in the ComEd system to use distributed energy resource management systems, or DERMS. These systems use smart grid technology to better balance and manage energy flow across the system.
WMBD TV first reported this story. You can read the original story online at CIProud.com.
