March 2, 2016 | By Barbara Vergetis Lundin

America's Dairyland is seeing an influx of solar power.

Credit: Bob Nichols, USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service/Wikimedia Commons

Dairyland Power Cooperative has finalized agreements with two developers to purchase more than 15 MW of renewable energy from multiple new utility-scale photovoltaic solar facilities in Wisconsin.

"Dairyland is a cooperative dedicated to providing safe, reliable and sustainable energy. As Dairyland celebrates our 75th anniversary this year, we are excited to announce very significant solar generation plans that far surpass current solar resources in the state," said Barbara Nick, president and CEO of Dairyland Power Cooperative. "Dairyland's leadership role with renewable energy projects supports our strategic direction to diversify generation resources. This announcement follows a very robust and competitive RFP process that will provide a win-win for our membership and the environment."

At this point, Dairyland has power purchase agreements in place with two solar developers -- groSolar and SoCore Energy -- for 12 new solar facilities to be sited in Wisconsin. Dairyland is also continuing negotiations for additional solar resources in its service territory, with further project announcements anticipated in the near future.

The solar installations will range between .5 MW to 2.5 MW in scale. These facilities will be tracking systems which follow the path of the sun to increase energy production.

As a cooperative initiative, the solar facilities will be built in the service areas of Dairyland's member electric cooperatives, leveraging the benefits of diversified weather, distributed grid infrastructure impacts and locally-based renewable energy.

The first projects are expected to become operational this summer, with others coming online into the fall.

The cooperatives that will see projects in their service areas include Price Electric Cooperative, Richland Electric Cooperative, St. Croix Electric Cooperative, Jump River Electric Cooperative, Oakdale Electric Cooperative, Dunn Energy Cooperative, Taylor Electric Cooperative, Vernon Electric Cooperative, Eau Claire Energy Cooperative, Scenic Rivers Energy Cooperative, and Riverland Energy Cooperative.

Although these projects constitute Dairyland's largest solar investments to date, Dairyland also purchases energy from major solar installations (Westby, Wisconsin; Oronoco, Minnesota; and Galena, Illinois) and supports 10 member cooperative community solar installations -- with more planned. In addition, there are 700 consumer-owned distributed generation solar installations located in Dairyland's service area.

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