UIUC adds solar farm to South Farms
Sol Systems project will triple university’s renewable energy, while adding habitat for bees, pollinators
The University of Illinois’s new solar farm will build on this complex constructed in 2015. (UIUC/Facilities and Services)
By Ted Cox
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is adding a new solar farm to its South Farms.
The university’s Prairieland Energy announced a 20-year power pact earlier this month with Sol Systems to construct a 12-megawatt solar farm near the Swine Research Center in what’s known as the South Farms, land south of the main campus devoted to agriculture.
According to a news release put out by Sol Systems, once completed it will produce 20,000 megawatt-hours of solar power a year, tripling UIUC’s renewable energy. An earlier solar farm completed four years ago was expected to supply about 8 megawatt-hours of energy a year, which was then about 2 percent of the energy needs for the total campus.
The new solar farm is expected to save the university $300,000 the first year and $5 million over the 20-year deal.
Chancellor Robert Jones said it would help fulfill the university’s commitment under the 2015 Illinois Climate Action Plan to produce at least 25,000 MWh of solar energy a year on the campus.
“We are very excited that this project is moving us quickly towards our iCAP goals for on-campus solar-energy generation in such a cost-effective and collaborative manner,” Jones said.
The Champaign News-Gazette’s Julie Wurth and The Daily Illini’s Clare Budin first reported on the pact.
Sol Customer Solutions, a joint venture between Sol Systems and Capital Dynamics, will design, build, operate, finance, and maintain the solar farm.
Andrew Gilligan, vice president of Sol Customer Solutions, touted other gains to be had as well.
“This project is noteworthy,” he said, “not only due to the considerable savings and how significantly it advances the overall sustainability goals for the university, but also because it was designed to provide habitat for wildlife.”
Following through on the Bee Campus USA designation the state’s flagship public university has already earned, the solar farm will include a “pollinator habitat,” to be planted in the areas under the panels “to enhance ecosystems for local and migratory birds and insects, including bees and butterflies,” according to the Sol news release.
UIUC’s Facilities and Services unit has also designed a “pollinator-focused landscape” at the southern edge of the new solar farm “so that the site will qualify for the pollinator-friendly solar site designation in Illinois.”
Earlier this year, state agriculture groups including the Illinois Farm Bureau joined in releasing an ambitious 20-year plan to promote and sustain the population of insect pollinators essential to the industry — with a focus on the monarch butterfly. Monarchs have been declining in population, threatening crops and other plants in need of pollinators, but the Trump administration has put off a determination on whether they qualify for protection as an endangered species until this time next year, after the general election.