Tennessee Valley’s biggest solar project to go online

The largest solar project in the Tennessee Valley Authority’s jurisdiction, which includes areas in seven southeastern states, is about to come online.

Efficient Energy of Tennessee has worked hard to build clean energy projects in Tennessee, but has largely concentrated those efforts around Knoxville and the eastern part of the state.

This new project at a warehouse in Jackson, Tenn., marks the company’s move toward bringing clean energy alternatives to the western part of the state, said president Robbie Thomas.

Efficient Energy had the largest existing solar project in Tennessee before this one came online. It is a 1-megawatt facility in Knoxville, Thomas said.

“This one is just slightly larger than the one in Knoxville,” he said.

The project is divided into two sections. The first section of solar panels on the farm feed about 1-megawatt of energy into the grid. The other section feeds about 47 kilowatts directly to the warehouse, which is owned by Meridian Development Partners.

Meridian managing director, Michael Katz, said in a release that the company hopes to learn from this project and use those lessons to breathe life back into abandoned commercial and industrial real estate across the country.

The Jackson project sits on 5.5 acres at an old manufacturing property, Thomas said. It’s fitted with 4,914 Sharp solar panels manufactured in Memphis Tennessee.

“And that local manufacturing was important to us,” Thomas said.

The glass covering the panels was also made in Tennessee and the transformers were produced in Oregon, he said.

The project was made possible, in part, by state and federal solar tax credits and incentives.

But more important than tax incentives was Efficient Energy of Tennessee’s relationship with TVA, a regional utility.

The Tennessee Valley Authority created a program in 2003 called Generation Partners that pays 1,000 to people who install solar projects to offset start-up costs and then 12 cents per kilowatt-hour produced.

The program took off and was flooded with applications in 2010, said Michael Bradley with TVA.

The program has since changed, and projects as big as the Jackson one will no longer be eligible for the generation partners program. But TVA is creating another program to help fund and incentivise larger projects like the one in Jackson, Bradley said.

Image courtesy of Efficient Energy of Tennessee.