Illinois Solar Tour - Central Sites

Champaign

Scott Willenbrock

Recording from 9/26/20 Live Zoom Tour

System: 69 roof-mounted panels, newly installed back up batteries

Annual Production: >14MWh

Why I went solar: A professor of physics at University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana, Scott decided to go solar because of climate change. "We owe it to our children to transition to a sustainable future."

Champaign

Andy Robinson

Link to Video

System: 36 roof-mounted panels

Annual Production: 8600kWh

Why I went solar: I’ve wanted solar for years, but it had to become an affordable investment for my wife. My kids were old enough to understand that our house and car “don’t make smoke” now.

Urbana

Marya Ryan and Pete Resnick

Link to Video

System: 27 roof-mounted panels, back up battery

Annual Production: 7500kWh

Why I went solar: We installed our system not only to "do the right thing" for renewable energy, but also to provide backup power for a home office, and to play with the latest technology. It had the added bonus of providing some shading, and therefore reducing the heat load, on a south facing roof right over the home office. Our final installation of panels were put in to take advantage of the Grow Solar / Solar Urbana-Champaign program.

Mahomet

Phil Geil

Powerpoint

System: 96 ground-mounted panels

Annual Production: 28.6MWh

Why I went solar: It was the thing to do, going along with our energy conserving house self-built in 1983. The PV size is needed to heat water for our animals in the winter, exhaust greenhouses in summer; excess credited by Ameren in the summer. System currently consists of 96 panels (21.7 kW), ground mounted, self-installed in 3 sections, retilted 4x/yr to optimum tilt, plus 10 kW turbine. Note the solar is essentially maintenance free, wind is several hundred $/year. Production of 2012 installed 8 kW array has been 13% greater than estimated for equivalent power 30° constant tilt ground mount and 33% greater than a 14° tilt roof mount.