Wichita area gains its first solar power plant

The first utility-scale solar energy farm in the Wichita area — and second-largest in the state — was dedicated Tuesday.

The Prairie Sky Solar Farm sits on eight acres of former farm ground northeast of Andover. It is owned by KEPCo, a utility cooperative based in Topeka.

Gov. Sam Brownback, company and local officials, and neighbors marked the opening of the 1-megawatt facility in a chilly ceremony.

The co-op built the facility as a way to diversify its energy sources and because it’s slightly cheaper than the average cost for it to buy power wholesale from other utilities, said Mark Barbee, vice president of engineering and the project’s manager.

KEPCo is owned by 19 rural electrical co-ops covering about half of Kansas, including Sedgwick County Electric Co-op, Butler Rural Electric Co-op and Sumner-Cowley Electrical Co-op. Its purpose is to generate electricity for its members.

It owns a piece of the Wolf Creek nuclear plant and a coal plant in Missouri, and buys hydroelectric power from around the central and western U.S.

Prairie Sky is small as a power source for utilities, he said, but it was something the members wanted to be able to offer their customers. The electricity will be fed into the grid of member Butler Rural Electrical Co-op.

The state-of-the-art farm cost about $2.5 million.

The price of solar panels has come down so dramatically in the last five years that it is only slightly more expensive than the lowest cost sources, such as natural gas and coal, Barbee said.

Even if federal tax supports are removed by the Trump administration, solar makes sense, he said.

“You have to plan for 30 years down the line,” he said. “And in our view the need for carbon reductions will not go away, so we see this as a key part of our portfolio long term.”

Brownback said the state has seen remarkable advances in the amount of renewable energy that it produces. It now generates 30 percent of its energy from wind, he said, after $10 billion in investment, mostly since 2010.

But Kansas also has plenty of sun, he said, along with continued interest in additional wind power. He said that by the end of his term in 2019, he sees up to 50 percent of the state’s energy coming from renewable sources.

“We’re a wheat state, we’re a basketball state, we’re a barbecue state, and we’re going to be a renewable state,” Brownback said.

This story was originally published March 14, 2017 at 6:42 PM with the headline "Wichita area gains its first solar power plant."