Council reviews floating-solar lease proposal for wastewater lagoons; staff recommends moving to council
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Summary
Director Jeff Taylor presented a lease proposal with TPSR/Third Pillar Solar to install floating solar arrays on wastewater lagoons and export power to Ameren; staff said the lease could produce roughly $130,000 annually based on a 13.7 MW estimate and recommended forwarding it to council. Vendor and staff answered questions on sludge, maintenance, decommissioning security and revenue allocation.
The City Council session considered a proposal to lease city wastewater lagoons for floating solar arrays and voted to advance the matter to the next council meeting for further review.
Jeff Taylor, the city’s director, described the site as overflow lagoons used during heavy rain events rather than sludge-storage ponds and said plant operators raised no operational concerns about floating solar. The company identified in the resolution, TPSR Illinois Solar 5 LLC (Third Pillar Solar), proposed a development-period payment and an ongoing annual payment once operational. The company offered a $10,000-per-year payment during the design/permit phase; staff presented a projected annual payment of roughly $130,000 based on the vendor’s estimated 13.7-megawatt buildout.
Vendor representatives reviewed project details: arrays would float on lagoon surfaces, inverters and transformers could sit onshore (on the west side of Reeder Road) or on a floating platform, and the array would interconnect to Ameren’s transmission line. The company said it would secure funds to remove equipment at the end of life and would cover any incremental property-tax assessment arising from the lease. The company also described twice-yearly site inspections, remote performance monitoring, and ad-hoc post-storm visits as the primary maintenance approach.
Council members asked about sludge accumulation in the lagoons and whether panels would impair maintenance. Jeff said a recent survey showed the sludge blanket is not currently extensive enough to require dredging and that sludge-management ponds had been eliminated earlier through other plant upgrades. He also said lease revenue would flow into the sewer fund and could help offset plant electric costs.
Because some of the presenter’s numeric remarks in the meeting transcript were inconsistent (a per-kilowatt figure was transcribed as "$9,500 per kilowatt per year" while the vendor’s stated total revenue aligns with about $9.50 per kilowatt per year), the city staff presentation and this article use the reported total revenue ($130,000 annually) and the stated capacity (about 13.7 MW) as the reliable figures and correct the per-kilowatt rate to approximately $9.50 per kW per year based on those totals. The proposal was moved forward to the next city council meeting for formal consideration.
