As the growing season winds down and harvest season cranks up, it is also a change of pace for Midwest. Fall brings a return to building projects that we are unable to do during busy summer months and doing more inspections and maintenance on our system. It also means beginning to look towards next year by preparing budgets and forecasts.
This winter will bring a new project to Midwest’s service territory as we are nearing the construction phase of our solar generation and battery storage facilities. We have begun receiving materials that will be used for these projects. At the end of September, the four batteries were delivered, with the three that could be placed on site now sitting at their locations. And around the same time several dozen lengths of steel pipe were delivered. Those pipes will be cut to length, placed in the ground vertically and filled with concrete to serve as the foundation upon which the solar arrays will be constructed. And in the coming weeks the solar panels will be arriving, though they will be stored off-site until ready to be installed. Construction timelines are still being finalized but we expect construction to begin later this fall and be completed next spring.
Midwest is undertaking these projects as a way to help keep our costs as low as possible. By building our own generation and storage facilities, we will be able to produce some of our own power more inexpensively than we are able to purchase it. It will not be a large percentage of our overall power needs – roughly 2.5-3.0% of our annual energy consumption – but, during non-irrigating months it could be close to 25% of our power requirements on a given day. And we will use the batteries in a similar fashion to our current load control program on irrigation wells. When we shut wells off, we save on demand charges, and those savings are passed back to the irrigators who signed up to be controlled. With the batteries, we will look to achieve similar demand savings by discharging the batteries to lower our demand costs. Those savings will be shared by all of Midwest’s members.
These projects are interesting because they are a new way for Midwest to fulfill our mission to provide reliable power in a cost-effective manner. It is a fairly small portion of our annual energy needs, but the savings will add up to millions of dollars over the life of the projects.
Jayson Bishop
*Midwest Electric is an equal opportunity provider and employer.*