MidAmerican Energy Eyes 300-acre Solar Project In Eastern Mills County

MidAmerican Energy is developing plans to build its first Mills County solar project on a site between Hastings and Emerson.

“We are looking at a proposed 50-megawatt array,” MidAmerican Energy Media Relations Manager Geoff Greenwood said Friday. “The project is expected to take up about 300 acres. I don’t know, yet, how many solar panels would comprise that project.”

Greenwood said MidAmerican has land under contract to purchase for the site.

“We’re looking likely at 2024 or 2025 for the project,” he said.  “We’re working with the county and we’ve obviously shared our plans with the county and we are looking forward to proceeding with this project.”

The Mills County project is one of several renewable energy projects MidAmerican is involved in, Greenwood said.

“We’re looking at wind and solar throughout the state,” he said. “We started building solar projects this last year and put a number of projects in service this year. So, this is really our first full year of providing solar energy to our customers.

“We have six projects that we’ve placed in service this year.”

Greenwood noted that the size of the MidAmerican solar projects in Iowa range from 3 megawatts to 100 megawatts.

The solar project proposed for Mills County would be constructed near existing transmission lines.

“It’s connected to the grid and it certainly generates energy when the sun is shining and will even generate some energy when it’s a bit cloudy,” Greenwood said.

Matt Ott and Sarah Houlihan, representatives of Mid-American Energy, were in attendance at last week’s meeting of the Mills County Planning and Zoning Commission and answered questions from commission and Mills County Board of Adjustment members regarding existing solar projects the company has in Iowa and their intentions in Mills County.