On Tuesday, August 13th the third solar garden part of the Solar*Connect Community program through Excel Energy had its ribbon cutting ceremony. Arch Electric was responsible for the wire installation, communications programming, and system optimization and commissioning of this project.

Construction on the third and final community solar garden in the Solar*Connect Community program is complete in Ashland, WI.

Solar*Connect Community, run by Xcel Energy, is the largest community solar program in Wisconsin with three 1-megawatt locally sourced gardens. The Eau Claire garden was completed in 2017, the La Crosse garden opened in 2018 and Ashland’s opened Tuesday.

Customers can participate in the Community program with a one-time fee, to receive a credit on their monthly electric bill based on the combined solar energy produced by all three gardens in the program.

The solar gardens comprised of over 3,000 solar panels combining to produce one megawatt. They benefit communities by producing clean, local and affordable energy.

“One megawatt of energy could power about 225 average residential homes in Ashland. It also reduces carbon, obviously, with clean renewable energy. So it does the clean work of about 13,000 trees a year, and has the equivalency of taking about 112 cars off the road for a year,” said the President of Xcel Energy in Wisconsin and Michigan Mark Stoering.

Additionally, the gardens provide community members without the means to install their own solar panels (old roofs, roofs facing the wrong direction, excessive shade, etc.) the opportunity to participate in clean energy initiatives.

Stoering also expressed Xcel Energy’s goals to provide all of their customers with carbon free electricity by 2050, with hopes to go coal free by 2030.