Abraham Lincoln Capital Airport in Springfield, Illinois held a ribbon cutting ceremony to celebrate the operational start up of their $6 million installation of solar arrays at the airport. Six arrays spanning across three sites provide electrical power that offsets over 90% of the electrical cost of three airport and three tenant accounts.
Tom Cleveland, president of IPAA, presented Mark Hanna, Springfield Airport Authority Executive Director, with the first-ever Sustainability Award for the solar array operations and energy savings the airport has realized through this endeavor. Also, Zack Kearnan, co-founder of Balance Solar, presented a check for $1,280,000.13, the portion of the project cost that Balance Solar contributed to the project.
Veregy collaborated with Springfield Airport Authority, owner and operator of Abraham Lincoln Capital Airport, to design and build an energy saving project that significantly reduces the airport’s operating budget. Veregy oversaw the construction of the solar array that saves nearly $350,000 annually. The three airport accounts are net metered by a combination of roof and ground mounted solar arrays. The other three ground-mounted arrays provide a net metering solution for Standard Aero, one of the airport’s tenants and generates over 4,000,000 kWh annually. The airport owns the entire system and provides energy to the tenant through a modification to its lease agreement. The savings are equivalent to greenhouse gas emissions from 8 million vehicle miles driven or 7,500 barrels of oil consumed each year. Also, Veregy provides all ongoing monitoring and maintenance for the solar arrays.
Veregy worked extensively to secure the Illinois Block Grant program’s solar renewable energy credits (SRECs) for project funding along with a PPA from Balance Solar that combined, provides $3.5 million to cover over half of the overall project cost.
This project capitalizes on efforts that the airport completed with the FAA previously in anticipation of a solar farm that would have provided power direct into the utility grid. Now those FAA approvals are utilized in a Net Metering solution for increased revenue and budgetary savings. This project is the largest airport owned solar array for Net Metering in the state of Illinois providing an anticipated savings of $14.1M over a 30-year timeframe.
Mark Hanna, Executive Director of the airport, states “This solar project will satisfy our goals and objectives to provide our facility with a significant new revenue source, environmentally friendly and sustainability attributes while deepening our relationships with our tenants and community stakeholders.”
