Johnson County solar array plans scaled down

JOHNSON COUNTY - Discussions with MidAmerican Energy over the Power Purchase Agreement tied to Johnson County's future solar array have forced officials to scale down the project's size and energy production.

Josh Busard, Johnson County assistant planner, said the project - originally planned to be a roof-mounted, 140 kilowatt-hour array - now looks to be a ground-mounted, roughly 85 kWh project.

Plans are still moving forward to enter into a Power Purchase Agreement with North Liberty's Moxie Solar to construct the solar panels, which will power the roughly $3.6 million Secondary Roads Facility at 4810 Melrose Ave.

'We're still hopeful, the county still is intending to move forward with the project with Moxie. We're excited about it, we think it's going to be a good project,” Busard said. 'It just looks like the scope of the project is going to change some.”

Looking to add sustainability features to the new Secondary Roads Facility after the original was destroyed by fire, county officials last year began drafting a PPA with Moxie Solar - which basically would have the solar company construct and own the array, while the county buys the electricity and takes advantage of tax credits otherwise unavailable to local municipalities.

However, interpretations of MidAmerican Energy's rules have changed the game plan.

Jason Hall, CEO of Moxie Solar, said typically, customers of MidAmerican Energy can bank extra energy produced for future use. That energy is monitored and available back to the original system on days when solar panels underperform, such as at night or in cloudy weather.

With the PPA, Moxie Solar would be a third-party owner of the solar system and not a MidAmerican customer, so MidAmerican Energy won't allow the solar array to send extra energy produced back into the grid.

'Anything that's produced has to stay on site,” Hall said, adding that the issue comes back to a larger conversation taking place statewide between solar companies and utility providers. 'As far as working with MidAmerican with this one specific project, we pretty much have to do what they say.”

Reducing the size of the project ensures that the array doesn't produce more energy than the county needs, but also means the county will be more reliant on the utility company to fill any gap in electricity produced.

A smaller system likely will reduce the county's cost per kWh, the original 10-year PPA would have had the county paying Moxie Solar $. 0975 per kilowatt-hour for the first year, with the rate increasing by 3 percent annually, but official estimates have not been fleshed out.

'Ultimately the cost is going to be less because we're going to have a smaller array,” he said.

Busard said county staff are redrafting an amended PPA for the smaller solar array, which still is planned for construction this year.

'Hopefully it should be up and producing electricity by this summer, (the Johnson County Board of Supervisors) want to see this move forward quickly,” he said.