Amazon and partners cut ribbon on Madison County solar project featuring thousands of panels

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WSYX) — Community and business leaders cut the ribbon on a field of thousands of solar panels in Madison County, with more on the way.

Amazon is the energy buyer responsible for the project, which will use more than a million panels to power its facilities, although the energy generated will not be used exclusively for Amazon’s cloud services and data centers in Ohio.

The goal of this project is to generate the same amount of electricity that Amazon uses and send it to the power grid.

“We just look at our utilization, right? We can look at it and say we have invested in 100% renewable energy offsets for AWS data centers in central Ohio,” Merle Madrid, public policy manager for Amazon Web Services, said.

The ribbon was cut on Wednesday, but the installation of the panels has been ongoing for some time. EDF Renewables and Enbridge, which developed the solar field, say it will help meet energy demand in central Ohio, which could double by 2028. They call it one of the largest utility-scale solar projects east of the Mississippi River.

This is remarkable considering many communities in Ohio have repeatedly rejected solar energy projects. Opposition exists even several kilometers away from the project.

David Dhume was a county commissioner when the project was proposed and remembers the opposition at the time.

“It overwhelmed some people in general. Not so much property owners who want to lease their land,” the former county commissioner said. “I guess it was the outside community that really didn’t want to see the landscape change.

“It’s important to build local community support,” Tony Long of the Ohio Chamber of Commerce told WSYX. “But in my opinion, it’s just educating local communities and it’s up to local communities to make the assessment.”

The project assumes that when completed, almost 118,000 homes will be powered by 749 MWdc/577 MWac. The solar field will be approximately 4,000 to 4,500 acres in size and will consist of a total of 1.4 million panels and 159 inverters.

Sean Meade rents property for a solar farm. He says his in-laws’ family has used the land to grow corn and soybeans for generations. Now it has solar panels.

Meade says the reluctance is understandable, but his father-in-law couldn’t pass up the opportunity when Solar came calling.

He said it would not only help his family, but also the county and the schools.

“I hope the school will benefit greatly. I hope the county will benefit greatly. I love farming, but I also know it’s a good investment in the community and it was the right decision on his part.”

The project is expected to be completed by the end of the year.