Iowa’s 650-member Farmers Electric Cooperative is earning recognition in a Solar Electric Power Association case study for its efforts to meet growing local demand for renewables while making 20% of its members solar owners.
“Since 2008, the utility has helped put solar on local schools, launched a feed-in tariff, and built a community solar garden,” Fierce Energy reports. “Farmers also recently powered up Iowa’s largest commercial solar project, an 800-kilowatt array financed through one of the state’s first power-purchase agreements.”
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“The technology is coming. You’re either going to embrace it, or a third party is going to come in and serve that load,” said Farmers’ General Manager Warren McKenna, SEPA’s 2014 Utility CEO of the Year.
