Jack Alvey, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the Indiana Municipal Power Agency (IMPA), recently approached the Rensselaer City Council to receive approve for a new solar farm to be constructed in the Rensselaer area. He said this was covering one of the preliminary steps for creating the farm as an economic revitalization area and requesting a tax abatement, as was done for the city’s previous solar farm.

“You guys were one of our founding members here in Rensselaer, in the ’82/’83 time period,” Alvey said to the Council. “In 2014, we put in three demonstration solar park projects, and Rensselaer was one of our three demonstration projects that year.”

The company has continued with those projects each year. Several more locations for new solar farms are planned for 2018, one of which is Rensselaer. It will be 26 acres east of North Mckinley Avenue, and north of East Merritt Street. It was noted that this will be four times the size of the previous farm.

“It will be coming directly into your electric system,” Alvey said. “Everything should be consumed here in Rensselaer. We are here tonight to cover the first step to request the creation of the economic revitalization area and request the tax abatement as we did with our first park that we did in 2013/14.”

The new farm is also unique in that its panels should collect solar energy more efficiently.

“The panels will move throughout the day,” “They’ll start facing to the East, in the morning. And then, as the sun moves across the sky during the day, the panels track the sun and end up at the West. So…we get a little bit more efficiency — probably we gain three-to-four percent of efficiency or generation on that, over a year’s time period.”

Source: Rensselaer Republican, www.newsbug.info/rensselaer_republican