On March 28, the University of Maryland Eastern Shore at Princess Anne and SunEdison LLC unveiled a 2.2-megawatt solar farm, at present the state’s largest. While it’s a small array compared to some elsewhere in the country, it’s a big step for the state.

“This is historic for the University of Maryland Eastern Shore,” university President Thelma Thompson said in a press release.

The array is located on 17 acres of land formerly used for agricultural research and now is covered with 7,800 photovoltaic panels. In all, the 2.2 megawatt system will provide about 15 percent of the campus’ electrical need, according to the university.

The farm was installed under a 20-year power-purchase agreement with SunEdison, which will manage and maintain the system. The school will pay a lower rate for the power produced by the array than from the grid. And, under the agreement, the university paid no upfront costs for the array.

It took the state a while to go through the approval process, which required Maryland’s Board of Public Works to approve the project.

“The approval came in August of 2009. We were hoping to have it running at the end of 2010,” said university spokesperson Bill Robinson. “There was a month-long test in February, and it went great,” he said.

The school also has a geothermal heating system in one of its dormitories. Now that the school has powered on the solar array, it has also been approached by at least one wind developer interested in putting wind power on the campus, Robinson said.

SunEdison, a subsidiary of MEMC Electronic Materials (NYSE: WFR) has now installed the largest and second largest arrays in the state, he said. It dwarves the previous record in Maryland, the 1.5-megawatt solar array at a Staples (Nasdaq: SPLS) warehouse in Hagerstown, Md., also installed by SunEdison. SunEdison had no comment on future developments in the state, said company spokesperson Brad Oswald.

Still, at 2.2 megawatts, it’s significantly smaller than solar farms in other states, like the 19-megawatt Greater Sandhill solar power plant in Colorado that was announced this month or the 48-megawatt Copper Mountain array in Nevada.

At this point Maryland’s solar market looks anemic, but it could take off in the future, after all. The state has a goal of installing 1,500 megawatts of solar in the state by 2022.

But it’s got a long way to get there.

Image courtesy of UMES.