photo by: Josie Heimsoth/Journal-World

The Baldwin City solar field is pictured Thursday, December 19, 2024.

A 4.5-acre plot in Baldwin City has been producing solar power for five years now, and the Baldwin City Council has started discussing plans for another — and potentially bigger — solar farm in the community.

The city had partnered with Evergy to construct its first solar photovoltaic array as a renewable energy solution that requires minimal annual maintenance. It started producing power in 2019, and it can generate 1 megawatt of energy, which is enough to power just over 180 homes. According to Evergy, this is equivalent of saving over 130,000 gallons of fuel annually and has an environmental impact similar to planting over 30,000 trees annually.

“It’s (about) having that extra resource behind our meter, on our side of the grid to where it’s going right to our citizens versus having to transmit it from someplace else,” Baldwin City Mayor Casey Simoneau said. “That was the biggest benefit.”

But that isn’t the only effort the city has made towards a greener future. Baldwin City currently gets approximately 50% of its power from renewable sources – including wind projects, hydroelectric projects and one solar project – and is expecting to increase that amount with an additional solar project.

“For our perspective, it’s to really control our costs to our citizens,” Simoneau said. “Solar is becoming more popular (and) the cost of it (is) decreasing, which is making it more affordable to be able to utilize the technology.”

Baldwin City Administrator Glenn Rodden said in an email to the Journal-World that solar power is cost-effective and it gets the city closer to its goal of 100% renewable energy.

With that in mind, council members met several times toward the end of the year and discussed a new solar project that could produce as much as 3 megawatts. Even though there has been a push toward more solar power in the community, Simoneau said that the project is still in the planning stages, and decisions are subject to change over the upcoming year.

“There’s still discussion on whether we’re going to do two or three or one (megawatts), or you know, whatever we’re going to do,” Simoneau said. “We’re in the infancy stage. We got months to months of discussion regarding what we’re going to do.”

Rodden said via email that a new 3-megawatt solar field would mean that approximately 15% of the city’s annual energy use would be covered by its solar arrays, a big step toward the city’s goal. There have even been conversations about a solar field as high as 5 megawatts, but Simoneau said he was not sure it would reach that size.

“This is obviously a full council decision,” Simoneau said.

In the next year, the council will also determine if this project will be a community or large-scale solar project. A community solar project, like the current 1-megawatt array, is oftentimes smaller in size and owned by the community, while large-scale projects are owned and operated by utility companies and are designed to provide power to larger communities and regions.

“I think some things can change over the conversation that we have as a council,” Simoneau said. “But I do feel that the direction from the council is to have more community solar behind the meter.”

There have also been ideas to incorporate battery storage systems into the mix, which are systems that store energy from renewable sources like wind and solar and then release it when needed. However, Simoneau said costs for implementing this technology have been high right now.

“We’ll continue to watch the technology and see how the technology evolves,” Simoneau said. “When it seems right or palatable for people and the benefits (are) there for our citizens, I see Baldwin City doing some storage in the future.”

While there are a lot of uncertainties moving forward, the Baldwin City council certainly plans to continue figuring out the details over the upcoming year.

“We’re trying to find an affordable resource that is providing power to our community on a consistent basis that we’re not paying for all the extra fees of the transmission (and) everything else that comes encompassed in those contracts,” Simoneau said.

photo by: Josie Heimsoth/Journal-World

The Baldwin City solar field pictured on Thursday, December 19, 2024.