Solar Farm in Willow: bright beginnings | Local News Stories

Four partners, Miller, Sam Dennis, Chris Colbert, and Grant Smith formed RIPP to explore common interests, solar energy and good-old fashioned engineering and design. That team and an electrician were out working on the farm on Aug. 18 installing the electrical wires to the panels and MEA’s towers. They recently finished installing 408 heavy panels with heavy machinery and a lot of patience.

“That was actually super rewarding because the foundation was just a real bear to complete,” Miller laughed.

Miller, Colbert and Dennis installed custom-built solar panels on their houses last summer as a “do it yourself project.” Miller and co. eventually asked themselves: “how do we do more solar?”

“We starting kicking around a couple ideas and we were like, ‘well, you know, let’s just do one big system,’” Miller laughed.

This project is more of a passion of love and an intriguing puzzle to crack, according to Miller, with more to come down the road. She’s enjoyed the various overcoming road blocks and challenge, thriving from the mental sweat broke and real sweat accumulated after digging trenches and placing support beams in unexpected places like in the path of a natural stream on the lot.

“We’ve spent a lot of weekends out here!” She said.

There’s a meter poised to start rolling and keeping track of how much energy they can gather from the panels. Miller said there was about 10 percent of work left to do, with all of the most challenging aspects- like installing those panels- behind them. She said each stick of drill pipe was about 300 pounds.

“Sam and I were out here most days, dragging pipe around,” Colbert said.

The solar farm should be complete in couple weeks, according to Miller. She said that they plan on expanding after they get their 100-kilowatt hour solar system up and running. Once it’s fully operational, they will start selling electricity to Matanuska Electric Association. Miller said that MEA is an avid supporter of their project and have been rather encouraging the whole way.

“They met with us several times. We had this brainchild and we were like, ‘well, well we’re thinking about buying 17 acres of land and what do you think?’ Talking through the whole project with us.”

After the meter starts running, the RIPP team will begin brainstorming their next steps, which would likely include expanding their operation on this 17-acre property.

“The cool thing is: when you put solar on your house, they do what’s called net metering, so whatever you pay the retail price- let’s say it’s 18 cents a kilowatt hour- that’s what you get from MEA but we’re actually doing what’s called a wholesale model. That’s where whatever it costs MEA to produce power, that’s what they pay us, so we get like eight and half to nine cents a kilowatt hour. That actually helps when we do bigger project we would do a negotiated rate and it could help suppress energy prices long term [for everyone].” Miller said.

We all use electricity while performing out everyday tasks like heating our homes or cooking with an electrical stove. MEA Electricity is measured and charged by kilowatt hour (kWh). It’s quite similar to how gasoline is measured and charged by the gallon. One kWh is equal to the power consumption of one thousand watts for one hour. What does that mean? Well, for example, with one kilowatt hour, one could: brew 90 cups of coffee, surf the web for five hours, iron 11 shirts, blow dry your hair three times, or bake one birthday cake, according to data from the Ontario, Canada’s government website, related to their long term energy plan from 2013.

The mission for this pilot project was to test building at scale solar and evaluate the costs involved and if they could maintain the solar farm. They also aim to build solar their development skills, test large scale solar array design, and establish relationships with local utility and suppliers as they weigh out the array of possibilities.

Miller’s personal unit is 100^th of the size compared to this huge solar farm. Naturally, a project of this scale required a lot of and a lot of leg work brainwork for this rag tag group of what Miller described as “Engineers and desk jockeys by trade.” Miller laughed and said it was more labor than she was used to.

Initially, Miller was a bit worried about what the surrounding neighbors might think about this gigantic, electrical endeavor, fearing they wouldn’t like it. To the contrary, they were met with a surprising amount of support after a warm welcome.

“It’s exciting, we’re on the home stretch now,” Colbert said.

Located at Mile 64.7 on the Parks Highway, anyone driving by simply can’t misses the solar farm on the on the side of the road. For more information about the solar farm and RIPP, visit their website at: www.renewableIPP.com.