By Steve Sharp
steves@wdtimes.com
CONCORD — A substantial portion of the scenic rural landscape south of the We Energies Concord Generating Station along County Highway E to Interstate 94 could be seeing some interesting and massive new technological development in the coming years if one of the world’s leading clean energy firms locates its desired 300-megawatt solar power generating stations there.
“We are definitely interested in the site,” Bobby Howard, manager of renewable development for Invenergy, told the Daily Times Tuesday afternoon. “We recently put in applications for a Dodgeville facility and we are developing in multiple areas of the state, including Concord.”
Howard called the proposed Concord project, which could come in at cost of $1.3 million per megawatt to develop at current market costs, “extremely speculative” at this point, but he said Invenergy has people in the field examining possibilities of the area to create solar power.
“We have land agents in the field as we speak. We are down-the-line on this project and it’s tough to see if this will be a project or not,” he said.
According to Jefferson County officials, however, some landowners have already signed up to have their land used for the project.
Invenergy’s website states, “We solve the energy challenges facing our customers and communities. We are powered by decades of entrepreneurial experience and unparalleled execution. We provide power generation and storage solutions at scale around the world to create a cleaner energy future.”
Invenergy has a presence across the U.S. and parts of Europe, South America and Asia. Howard works out of the Invenergy’s Chicago office.
“We harness the power of the sun to deliver low-cost, clean energy solutions to customers and communities,” Invenergy stated. “In the last 10 years, the cost to install utility-scale solar projects has dropped by more than 70 percent and continues to fall. Solar technology is simple and scalable, and provides great flexibility for the future of the grid. As a daytime power source, solar helps meet electricity demand during peak demand hours.”
Invenergy said it has been applying its “diverse energy experience and innovation toward expanding the company’s portfolio to include solar power generation since 2012.”
In keeping with what it called “our disciplined development strategy,” Invenergy said it looks for unique opportunities to deploy solar.
“From identifying and building the largest solar project in Illinois, to re-purposing a golf course for solar on Long Island, Invenergy has demonstrated an ability to deliver,” the website stated.
At this point in the Concord-area project, Howard said, Invenergy engages consultant land agents who talk to land owners to see if they want to lease the land and participate in the solar energy project.
“We think we will have feedback on interested land owners by the end of the year,” Howard said. “The next steps after that are local and state permitting, and further estimating of feasibility. There are a lot of steps to get through. Ideally, sometime down the road we will move into development.”
Howard said the Concord location is attractive to Invenergy for a number of reasons. Among these are that the We Energies generating station is there, allowing for a close connection to the electrical grid. Among other attractive qualities of the area are that there is a lot of open, flat land, good sun exposure and the location is a good distance from other solar sites in Jefferson County.
“The Concord Generating Station is the point of interconnection with the grid. The actual project could be east of the river, or much father south,” Howard said. “But Concord would be the connecting substation.”
Howard said the costs of the project would depend also on the amount of infrastructure that would have to be put in place.
“The less infrastructure that has to be installed, the cheaper these projects are,” he said. “So we are starting at the substation and working south and we have a lot of landowners to talk to yet. It’s possible it could follow the river. Just where the project will go depends on when and where we sign up land.”
Howard said Invenergy became interested in making the Concord area part of its Wisconsin solar endeavor two years ago.
“The cost of solar has been trending downward and as it becomes cheaper and cheaper, things have moved north in the U.S. and it’s now more feasible to build these types of facilities in Wisconsin,” Howard said. “We determined a market at the state level and there are good solar resources in Jefferson County. We overlapped that with the convenience of the Concord substation and that is why we are here now.”
Howard acknowledged the other solar generating project that exist in Jefferson County that have been done by other companies.
“We wanted to stay away from those and have some room to work,” he said. “We found our position on the grid and did our study earlier this year and are awaiting the results. But as we are waiting, we want to also be moving ahead in other areas, so we are in the field and doing multiple tasks to try to align things perfectly while moving things forward on the land acquisitions side so we can get going on more active development.”
Howard said the total cost of the project, at this stage of the game, is impossible to determine, given the way solar and other related technologies are evolving.
“But it would be targeted at a 300 megawatt project,” he said. “This is equivalent to 75,000 homes’ consumption of electricity for a year. The acreage needed for that is 2,100 acres. This is not a parking lot to be paved over. There would be 20-40 feet between the racks, with ground cover between them including native prairie, so the 2,100 acres would not be all panels.”
He said the panels might be perhaps 3-by-7 feet in size.
“We always look for good solar resources in general for these projects,” Howard said. “We want flat land that is away from wetlands and other environmentally sensitive areas, and the Concord area checks all the boxes we desire.”
Howard said there would be almost no destruction of woods in the area.
“We want to avoid that, due to cost of it and ideally if we lease lands with no shading that is all the better,” he said.
According to Howard, the solar project being proposed for Concord would come as a low-maintenance endeavor.
“Low maintenance is the beauty of solar panels,” Howard said. “The most active maintenance is mowing the lawn in most cases. A panel can break and in that case you replace and repair it, but the scheduled maintenance is pretty low. It’s a pretty low effort to keep these things running.”
The Invenergy website states further it is “working for the future.”
“At Invenergy, our approach to creating clean energy solutions is entrepreneurial, innovative and sustainable. We work for the future and are not constrained by the next earnings call. With more than 100 projects in development or operation across the U.S., Canada, Europe, Japan, and Latin America, we’re leveraging innovative design and next-generation technology to create a new paradigm for energy production,” the firm stated. As the earth’s population swells to 8 billion, energy is one of the biggest challenges of our lifetime. At Invenergy, we see it as an opportunity. Some say it’s too costly and difficult to produce clean energy at scale. We disagree, because we’ve been doing it for years. Our wind, solar and natural gas project portfolio totals 7,897 megawatts — and has led to 58.6 million tons of avoided CO2 emissions.”
Howard said the best-case scenario for starting construction on the solar farm would be at the earliest the spring of 2020.
“That is, if everything goes absolutely perfectly,” he said.
Jefferson County Board Supervisor Lloyd Zastrow represents District 10, which includes portions of the towns of Concord and Ixonia. His family has farmed for generations on County Highway E, just north of Interstate 94. Zastrow said he has been hearing recently of neighbors who have been approached by Invenergy about the business using their lands for solar panel placement. Zastrow said he plans to meet with Invenergy’s field people in the coming days to hear more specifically about their intentions.
“They sent me a letter and they want to talk to me,” Zastrow told the Daily Times this morning. “They already signed up several land owners in Concord and Farmington, and are looking to get from 2,100 up to 3,500 acres that they want to put these panels on.”
Zastrow said he has heard Invenergy is also working in the Jefferson area with farmers in that part of Jefferson County.
“They are offering some fairly fantastic prices for using the land,” Zastrow said. “So I am going to give them a phone call and have them stop by, so I can get all the details from them and not from rumors. I intend to call today and set up an appointment.”
Zastrow said he is aware of neighbors of people who have already signed on with Invenergy who are concerned because they have a home next to locations where the solar panels might be placed and wonder about what this could do to their home values.
“They moved here to look at alfalfa, corn and cattle. The cattle are gone, but now they could be staring at these panels and solar panels are not all that conducive to making you feel good,” Zastrow said. He added he senses many public forums and hearings on the panels approaching in the coming months. “The neighbors are becoming excited — and not in a positive way.”
At this point, Zastrow said, it is his understanding Invenergy is offering “a price that is very tempting.” He said this is about $1,000 per acre, per year over the course of 25- to 40-year contracts.
“You can collect that money without working the land, and worrying about weather and the other factors farmers have to take into account,” he said. “But I am a farmer and I will never put solar panels on my land. That stuff belongs on land that is sparsely populated and less valuable out in Arizona and Utah. It makes sense out there. That land is not really used for something else and very few people live near the panels there. I prefer to use our land for what it was intended — farming.”
Zastrow seems to have an open mind about the panels, in general, at this early point in the Invenergy plans, but said he already sees downsides to them.
“Until I talk with them about the details I’m not sure,” he said. “Our county agent is concerned about it and said anyone going into this should do it with an attorney and get a contingency fund for their removal if that becomes necessary. There will be cement abutments under these and wires under the ground. It isn’t just a matter of setting the panels on top of the land. It would be a very expensive reclamation project if they are not successful. Would they be abandoned or replaced? There are so many uncertainties of putting these things out on our good land. I need more information to make a decision on this.”