On June 24 I joined a group of Climate Reality – Central Minnesota Chapter members on a tour of the Xcel Energy Sherco Solar Project. When completed, Sherco 1, 2 and 3 will form one of the largest solar power plants in the United States at 710MWac nameplate generation capacity covering 4680 acres (7.3 sq mi).
Our tour was expertly conducted by Alex Knoll, Manager – Renewables Reliability Engineering. We also heard from operations engineers who are responsible for construction and operation of the solar plant. Operations engineer Luke joined us for the outdoor portion of the tour and facilitated a demonstration of an autonomous drone system used to monitor the solar panel array for hot spots indicating potential maintenance needs.
A couple really cool features of Sherco Solar are that all phases are being planted with pollinator friendly plants, and that there are now about 1400 sheep grazing in Sherco 1.
Thanks to Anna Larsson of Climate Reality – Central Minnesota Chapter for organizing our tour.