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Jackson Solar Project Moving Forward

CC0 License

Jackson's town council made way for more solar investment last week, allowing customers to buy into the soon-to-built solar farm. 

The shared solar system would be based out of a farm at Jackson’s wastewater treatment plant. The solar farm, itself, was approved by the town council this past August. The idea is for new customers to buy solar power from a farm, rather than buying panels themselves. 

Johnny Ziem, Jackson’s wastewater plant superintendent, co-developed the idea for a shared solar farm. He said the next step is to solidify new customers.

“We have to figure out who wants to be involved and how much money they’re bringing to the table. And then once we do that, then we’ll have a number,” Ziem said. “We’ll know how much money we have and then we go out and see how big of a system we can build."

He said, initially, he’s only looking for a handful of people so the project isn’t too complicated to get off the ground — in a few years, they can look at expansion.

Ziem explained the more customers the shared system can confirm, the cheaper it will be to build the solar farm itself. Any government agency in Teton County with a certain kind of commercial power qualifies to be a customer — that’s a C2 account with Lower Valley Energy.

Ziem hopes to begin construction in 2018.

Before Wyoming, Cooper McKim has reported for NPR stations in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and South Carolina. He's reported breaking news segments and features for several national NPR news programs. Cooper is the host of the limited podcast series Carbon Valley. Cooper studied Environmental Policy and Music. He's an avid jazz piano player, backpacker, and podcast listener.
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