Eldorado group leaders be a part of Yuri Horwitz, CEO of Sol Programs, to chop the ribbon on the 342 MW Eldorado Photo voltaic Venture in Saline County, IL.
Sol Programs has introduced completion of the corporate’s largest venture up to now — the 342-MWDC Eldorado Photo voltaic venture in southeast Illinois — inbuilt partnership with Nextracker and SOLV Power.
The operation of this venture additionally launches long-term partnerships with the American Farmland Belief (AFT) to pair utility-scale photo voltaic with row-crop agriculture (Kernza), developed by Kansas-based non-profit The Land Institute, and a long-term group advantages program with funding commitments made to Eldorado Excessive Faculty, Meals Works of Southern Illinois and a number of other different local people organizations that advance Sol’s mission to convey financial and environmental advantages to the communities inside which it really works.
“Creating vitality infrastructure with impression is our north star,” mentioned Yuri Horwitz, CEO of Sol Programs. “Eldorado exhibits what that imaginative and prescient appears to be like like in observe: delivering dependable clear energy, forging sturdy group partnerships, and now proving that agrivoltaics can transfer from idea to crops. From Day 1, Nextracker and SOLV leaned in to assist us make this innovation actual. Collectively, we’re constructing a replicable mannequin for a way utility-scale photo voltaic, agriculture and schooling don’t simply coexist — they thrive aspect by aspect.”
CEO of Nextracker, Dan Shugar, indicators a Nextracker tracker show on the ribbon chopping of the Eldorado Photo voltaic Venture in Saline County, Illinois.
The partnership with AFT creates a research-driven agrivoltaics program that may plant Kernza, a perennial grain, beneath a portion of the photo voltaic venture — among the many first efforts to pursue row-crop agrivoltaics at this scale in america. The funding commitments to local people organizations construct on earlier group impression applications established by way of the Energy Buy and Neighborhood Funding Settlement, first established in 2020 between Sol Programs and Microsoft.
Nextracker’s high-performance monitoring programs and SOLV’s development experience will underpin long-term reliability and discipline adaptability for agronomic trials. Constructing on findings from Sol Programs’ prior collaborations with the College of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and AFT, the agrivoltaics program in Eldorado is designed to:
- Set up pollinator habitat at scale to assist biodiversity and crop productiveness;
- Enhance soil well being with native and perennial plantings and adaptive administration; and
- Check row-crop efficiency beneath panels, starting with Kernza planting in Fall 2025.
Information merchandise from about Sol Programs
