University of Illinois Facilities and Services

CHAMPAIGN, IL – The Solar Farm resumed full electricity production Thursday, January 25, after repairs to the site’s three inverters were completed. Inverters change direct current to alternating current to prepare energy for delivery to the campus electrical grid. The installation went offline October 29, 2017, after a malfunction of the array’s on-site electrical system.

Under a 10-year power purchase agreement with Phoenix Solar South Farms LLC, the company is responsible for the operation and maintenance expenses for the array until December 2025. Because campus pays only for the energy the system produces, there was no expense to the university while the Solar Farm was offline.

Since establishing commercial operations in December 2015, the 5.87MWdc/4.68MWac Solar Farm has produced more than 14,100 megawatt hours (MWh) of renewable electricity, or enough energy to power approximately 1,300 typical U.S. homes. The Solar Farm’s annual generation represents nearly 2 percent of the anticipated campus electrical demand.

The Solar Farm’s current and historical energy production data is available at http://go.illinois.edu/solar.

Solar Farm News Release PDF

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Facilities & Services (F&S), at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, provides all physical plant, operational, and essential services for sustaining an environment that fosters the research, teaching, and public engagement activities. F&S supports the university’s education, research, and outreach missions by improving the physical condition of the facilities and grounds through construction and building maintenance activities, providing utilities production and distribution, implementing energy conservation initiatives, and increasing customer satisfaction by delivering quality services in a responsive, reliable, and customer-focused manner. www.fs.illinois.edu