Solar
In 2020 the Trustees of the Iowa Great Lakes Sanitary District were looking of cutting the high electrical costs at the Wastewater Treatment Plant. When the last plant update was going on, there was discussions about a wind generator, but that would not work due to the flight path of the Milford Airport. The goal of the solar project was to reduce electrical costs. A group for University of Nebraska, Lincoln had evaluated the power usage at the wastewater plant in 2018/2019. They suggested power generation of some type would help reduce costs as the plant was already very energy efficient.
The Trustees worked with Milford Municipal Utilities to find someone that could assist with the evaluation and planning for a solar project. The Trustees higher Zeigler Caterpillar for the evaluation engineering and design of the system. They determined the size to be 0.5 mega watt system would be allowed based of power used in 2018 and 2019. The project was published for contractors to supply proposals, but only Caterpillar submitted a proposal. The project started in 2020 and the solar array went online in 2021.
On the live solar page, the red line show the power need to run the waste water plant. The green line shows the power produced by the solar array. When there is pink below the red line, the wastewater treatment plant is using power from Alliant Energy. When there is gray under the red line, that is when the solar array is powering the wastewater treatment plant. When there is green above the red line, that is when the Sanitary District is selling power back to Alliant Energy.
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