Ameren breaks ground on new solar energy facility in the Peoria area

Ameren Illinois officially broke ground Thursday on a new solar energy facility, the company’s third attempt in Illinois to provide such forms of energy in equity-eligible areas.

The Peoria Solar Energy Center will join a pair of similar facilities in East St. Louis in providing solar power to provide equity in transitioning to clean energy, according to Ameren. The site, located on a 37-acre plot of farmland off Prichard Road, was purchased by the company in 2023. It will contain 4,850 solar panels capable of producing 2.5 megawatts of energy as part of a $20 million project. The company hopes to have it up and running in the third quarter of 2026.

While not the biggest or most powerful solar facility in Illinois, the company is hopeful that the new site will help in addressing the increased demand for electricity in areas like Peoria. Lenny Singh, president of Ameren Illinois, said that due to that increase in electricity demand, the company needed to build up new ways of producing energy as fast as possible.

“In the last decade, electricity demand was flat,” Singh said. “Today, tremendous economic development and expanding energy use is driven by the growth in manufacturing, industrial business needs and rapidly emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence that drive the need for data center expansion, leading to significant growth in electricity demand.

“Now more than ever, more energy needs to be generated and connected to the grid as fast as possible so that it can be delivered to residents and businesses and support economic development in communities such as Peoria.”

The new facility was aided in its conception by the Illinois General Assembly passing the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act in 2021, allowing Ameren to build the new solar energy plots and helping it provide the infrastructure to facilitate clean energy in central and southern Illinois.

Singh said the CEJA allows the company to pursue projects such as this in order to better serve its customers.

”CEJA enabled us to invest in our electric system to serve the 1.2 million customers across 45,000 square miles and roughly 1,200 communities in central and southern Illinois,” Singh said. “Transitioning our energy systems to accommodate clean energy requires intricate planning, engineering and coordination across our entire service territory. Not a small task, but our team is up for it.”

The facility will utilize its solar panels to automatically rotate with the sun in order to maximize the energy produced at the site. That energy will be stored in six battery modules and cabinets, with the aim of keeping the electric and natural gas delivery systems reliable for Peoria-area customers.

Patrick Smith, senior vice president of operations and technical services for Ameren, said that the facility will help keep the energy grid reliable through changing and evolving weather conditions, such as extreme heat, cold and high winds.

“The extreme weather events, like the polar vortex, the stuff that’s happened in Texas, the extreme heat that we’re getting a sense of now, the increased demand for energy with the data centers and the like and the supply constraints that we’re facing now in our state make this so vital to find new ways to deliver new energy to our customers,” Smith said.

Smith noted that the solar panels would fill just over six football fields, tracking the sun from when it rises to when it sets in order to maximize the company’s investment in the technology. More than 420 homes and businesses will be powered through the new solar energy center, while also serving as a testing ground for new battery storage software that could be scaled up in the future.

“This site will have a 1.5 MW AC lithium-ion system to test how battery energy storage can be deployed to manage electricity across our distribution system and the capacity that we need to service our customers,” Smith said. “In recent days, it’s been extremely hot. Everyone’s turning their air conditioners on, everyone’s using more energy.

“At those times, when capacity goes off the grid, we’re trying to figure out when the sun doesn’t always shine and the wind doesn’t always blow, how to capture that energy and use it when you have peak demand times when everyone’s coming home, especially in the winter time towards the evening when the usage is up.”

The system is designed to do something that Smith referred to as “peak shaving,” which allows it to address reliability issues that can be associated with generating renewable energy. He said that the technology is a way to keep energy reliable even when weather makes it difficult to produce solar or wind power.

“We’re committed to keeping your energy reliable through these types of investments,” Smith said. “With every kilowatt we’re adding in capacity to the grid, we’re helping keep costs affordable. This is our mission and this is what the Peoria solar energy field is all about.”

Singh said that the site will play a role in economic development in Peoria County, with 50 new jobs being added to the mix along with adding more resources for affordable energy.

“More resources onto the grid allows more energy to be available to supply growing demand as economic development takes place across the state,” Singh said.

He noted that while it was only an incremental step toward the state’s goal of 100% clean energy by 2050, it may help serve as a model for other sites in the near future.

“It’s a small part of what Peoria residents use, enough to power about 420 homes,” Singh said. “It’s incremental to what’s needed, but lots more of these types of projects are needed on the grid to be able to add more capacity, more energy to the grid. Ultimately, when supply and demand crosses, the more supply than you have demand, that’s when prices will go down.”

Singh is sensitive to the impact that high energy costs have on Ameren’s customers, saying that his company shares the frustration that they have toward the increased costs of keeping the lights on.

“We understand what customers are facing,” Singh said. “We’re just as frustrated as customers about the energy crisis and the volatility we see. Ameren doesn’t generate power – the state procures it through the Illinois Power Agency and we pass it on to customers with no markup. We do offer assistance in the way customers manage their bill, whether it’s payment assistance, grants, level payments, etc.

“We empathize and really understand what customers are facing and we want to offer help where we can help.”

Even so, he feels that more projects such as this new solar plot will help in providing relief to frustrated customers across Illinois.

“More projects like these, more development of renewables, nuclear, energy in general across the state will be a way to solve for those issues in the long run,” Singh said.

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