Largest Missouri Power Utility Going With Solar Energy

Ameren Corporation, the holding company for AmerenEnergy and Ameren UE, announced Monday, Dec. 1, that it plans to install solar energy systems at its headquarters in St. Louis and, eventually, another in Illinois.

Operating as Ameren UE, the company is one of the nation’s largest utilities, with 16,600 megawatts of generation and 2.4 million electric customers in Missouri and Illinois. AmerenEnergy is the risk management and energy marketing arm of the company. As a utility, Ameren also provides gas services, but its generation mix of 84 percent coal – and its status as the 5th largest coal consumer in the United States – creates a very bleak picture for the future of air quality in the region.

The initial solar installations will be either roof- or ground-mounted arrays, the company says, and range between 25 and 550 kilowatts. This is far from a large investment, particularly for a company the size of Ameren, but executives say the arrays will include cutting-edge solar technologies which will be used to evaluate solar’s enrichment value, at least in corporate terms.

Installation is slated for the fall of 2010 – again, nothing to write home about (many projects are up and running within three months of the announcement) – but a company spokesperson did say that, once the systems go online, Ameren will provide a range of information (available via the Internet) about its findings, which should help potential solar energy customers in Ameren’s service territory evaluate next steps.

AmerenUE will also be offering customers a rebate of $2 per watt (up to 25 kilowatts), or a maximum of $50,000 for solar electric systems installed after Jan. 1 of next year.

Ameren’s cautious venture in solar energy is reportedly a response to the state’s renewable energy mandate, Prop C, passed in 2008, which calls for utilities to use renewable energy for at least 15 percent of their generation mix by 2021 (with solar at least 2 percent of that renewable mix).

This will be quite a stretch for the company, which currently has only 2 percent vested in renewables, namely hydro, but the solar energy installation will, according to Ameren President Thomas Voss, help the company learn how to achieve the mandate.

Voss, who thinks that Missouri is not a very good geographic location for either solar or wind, apparently doesn’t realize that the wind-class values found in the northwestern part of the state (Class 3+) are fully as good as anything Minnesota – currently classed the “wind power capital” of the nation – can offer.

Solar insolation values are even higher, ranging up to 4.5 (on a scale of 2.0 to 6.5 in the continental U.S.). This is far greater than New Jersey (3.5), which currently challenges California for the role as the nation’s solar capital, based solely on installed solar power (2009).

Ameren, which was eyeing a new nuclear power plant until state regulators failed to nix a 1976 provision that prevented them from assessing ratepayers for the plant before it started producing energy, is at least exploring its renewable options. But this latest foray into solar energy is so cautious it’s like damning the technology with faint praise.