Amelia Egan, assistant director of the Pennsylvania Solar Center, told the Munhall Borough Council at a workshop meeting that a ground‑mounted solar array on an unused parcel near the Siemens building could offset the borough's municipal electric use and stabilize future electricity costs. Egan said technical modeling shows the array could be sized to exceed the borough's estimated electric consumption and that a direct‑purchase scenario in the study had a listed installed cost of $884,520.

The study examined multiple procurement paths. Egan described three principal options: a direct municipal purchase (with the borough owning and maintaining the system), a municipal loan to finance ownership, and a power purchase agreement in which a developer owns the system and sells electricity to the borough. She told the council that many school districts and municipalities choose PPAs to avoid operations and maintenance responsibilities and to transfer performance risk to a developer.

Egan said federal policy changes are narrowing a funding window. "There is still, definitely, a window to obtain some of those federal incentives," she said, but added the timeline for capturing the 30% elective direct‑pay credit is constrained: beginning‑of‑construction (defined in the guidance as a 5% payment toward the project) must be in place by July 4, 2026, to preserve the more favorable timeline; projects that miss that milestone must be operational by Dec. 31, 2027, under current guidance.

The presentation included a price and cash‑flow comparison across 25 years. The packet shown to council modeled scenarios that assumed either capture of the federal direct‑pay credit, state incentives including the Act 129 rebate and solar renewable energy credits, or no federal incentives. Egan said a multi‑municipality contracting approach (the "Connect" cohort) has already secured a developer and a 7¢/kWh PPA rate for participating sites and that the cohort has bundled nine municipalities and 17 sites to buy down price.

Council members pressed for details. Egan acknowledged that street lighting was not included in the model because Duquesne Light meters and bills those loads separately; she told the council the study removed street lights from the municipal usage assumptions. She also cautioned that interconnection costs rise if the array is placed away from existing transformers and that carport structures materially raise per‑watt costs compared with ground mounts.

Egan said the Solar Center can help the borough join the Connect cohort quickly if Munhall chooses that path, and that a decision to join would require contracting with a developer and, for an ownership route, a 5% down payment by the timeline noted in the packet. David (borough staff) and other council members requested the full 25‑year cash‑flow analysis and the color site maps Egan referenced; council members also scheduled a site visit to review the parcel.

No formal motion or vote was taken at the workshop. The council asked staff to circulate the full modeling spreadsheets and the Connect cohort documents so members could consider whether to commit to the PPA path or pursue municipal ownership with financing.