A solar farm near Jefferson.
A solar farm near Jefferson.
JEFFERSON — With several area solar projects underway, Director Matthew Zangl provided updates to the Jefferson County Planning and Zoning Committee Monday morning.
One of those projects is the Sinnissippi Solar Energy Center, a proposed 100-megawatt solar energy project.
Invenergy is planning a solar farm on land in the Town of Watertown near Pipersville and all the way down to I-94 in Farmington.
The company, which already operates several wind and solar facilities in the state with more on the way, recently opened a storefront at 208 E. Main St. in Watertown.
“We are working through the joint development agreement,” Zangl said. “We did meet with the affected towns this month. Our next step is to go through and start providing some comments on the joint development agreement. We’ll get that out to the towns so they can review it, provide their input and then we’ll get it back to Sinnissippi Solar. Ultimately, we’re hoping that we all can have one agreed upon joint development agreement. Our goal is to have that done and completed by the end of next year, 2026.”
Zangl also noted that the project has officially applied with the Public Service Commission.
Before that discussion, Badger State Solar updates were provided. It plans to utilize around 1,200 acres of land west of the City of Jefferson, in the Towns of Jefferson and Oakland.
“If you head out on Highway 18 and you look south, you’ll start to see some progress that they’re making,” Zangl said. “They have the pilings in on a good chunk of their portion. Highway 18 and Perry Road just to us out there, that’s their primary starting point, the first phase of the project that they want to start on and make the most progress there. A lot of the pilings are in.
“I thought it was interesting that they use a different piling system than what they did at Crawfish (River) Solar. With the bedrock and topsoil differences or that they ran into, rather than just piling in an I-beam or H-post, they’re doing more of a screw-type piling that’ll help stabilize it in that higher more PE material, more wetland touch material…But I think it shows that having that same project manager on both projects kind of helped potentially with the project moving forward.”
Next up was the Whitewater Solar Project, east of the city, with connection to the cogeneration plant owned by We Energies.
On Nov. 6, the PSC issued a final decision for this project. Construction of the project is anticipated to begin in April with vegetation removal and localized grading efforts.
Major work directly related to the solar modules is anticipated to begin in June, with the modules completed by the end of spring 2027. The project would be commissioned in summer 2027 and placed in-service by February 2028.
Zangl said that the County is still in the process of finalizing a joint development agreement.
“We haven’t made any progress, but I was able to have a discussion with that project manager,” Zangl said. “They were caught up in some of the purchase agreements for the project, so their attorney and staff time was spent on that aspect of the project, rather than working on the joint development agreement with the municipalities. Now that that purchase agreement is completed, starting in ‘26, they said they’re going to circle back and work on the joint development agreement with us. Hopefully by next month’s meeting, we’ll have a better update on that joint development agreement.
“The other aspect of it is, it looks like that project will push back a little bit more. As part of the sale of the project, it’ll be sold to a utility. Whenever a utility purchases something, they need approval through the PSC and that process generally takes about a year. Rather than starting construction in 2026, it’ll probably be construction ‘27 once they have the utility receive their approval from the PSC. We have a little bit more time working on a joint development agreement to push the project back, potentially a year before it is under construction.”
The final point of discussion was the Rock Lake Solar project, located in Waterloo and developed by OneEnergy Renewables with Westphal & Company. The project occupies a highly visible location just north of Interstate 94, near the Lake Mills exit, making it a prominent example of regional clean energy development.
“Rock Lake Solar, just north of Lake Mills, we did the final inspection a couple of weeks ago and everything looked as expected up there,” Zangl said. “We’ve had good experiences with (OneEnergy).”
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