Ameren Missouri hopes to bring 250 megawatts of solar power online by 2028, enough to power roughly 44,000 homes.
After approval last week by the Missouri Public Service Commission (PSC), the energy provider will move forward with building the 1,160-acre solar farm on land it already owns beside the Callaway County Nuclear Energy Facility.
The facility will mark the largest solar farm in Missouri, but concerns were raised last week over who would foot the bill for the project.
The facility is being built, at least in part, to supply energy to large-load consumers, mainly data centers, according to Ameren’s 2025 Integrated Resource Plan annual update, which the company submitted to the PSC in October after making its plans to build the facility public.
“The rapid growth of data centers — driven by AI model training, hyperscale cloud expansion, and digital infrastructure — is fundamentally reshaping traditional load forecast approaches for many utilities across the U.S.,” Ameren wrote in the appendix of its integrated plan update.
“Ameren Missouri filed its change in its ‘preferred resource plan’ in February 2025, which included 1,500 Megawatts of large load addition by 2032, and another 1,000 Megawatts by 2040,” it added.
The Office of Public Counsel, which serves as Missourians’ legal representation in utility issues, did not make a formal complaint against the project last week. However, the office submitted a filing stating that large-load consumers, which it believes are the main customers of the solar farm, should pay for the entirety of the cost after Ameren completes the project.
Information on the number of data centers in Missouri varies, as different watchdog organizations define the term differently. The majority of the centers, and especially large-load ones, cluster around the St. Louis and Kansas City metro areas. The AAIM (Anticipate Adapt Integrate Manage) Data Center in Mexico is the only currently operating large-load center in Mid-Missouri, requiring about 15 megawatts of energy, according to the U.S. Data Center Market Map.
Google and Amazon data centers are both planned to go up in New Florence, according to the information.
The actual split of power consumption, and who will foot the bill, will be decided at a later date during a rate case, said Sarah Fontaine, director of strategic communications at the PSC. Ameren expects to see significant federal tax credits on the project, anticipating eligibility for a 100 percent production tax credit and 30 percent investment tax credit through the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, according to previous Fulton Sun reporting.
Dan Stroh, senior renewable development manager at Ameren Missouri, said those credits would equate to about a 40-percent discount for rate-payers when Ameren looks to recoup its investment after the facility is completed. The cost for the solar facility is not publicly available.
“This renewable energy center, just like all of our power plants, exists to supply energy for all of our customers,” Stroh said Tuesday.
Stroh added that Ameren has bigger solar plans in the future, as the company hopes to have a “balanced energy mix” by 2030. That mix would see about a third of its energy generation come from renewable sources, like wind and solar, a third from nuclear generation and a third from natural gas.
“Our integrated resource plan points to the long-term planning that we have when we look far out in the future … supporting Ameren’s balanced energy mix for reliability and predictable operating,” Stroh said.
Building the facility will create about 300 construction jobs, with additional long-term positions at the new facility once it begins operation. Stroh said Ameren and Callaway County government continue to have positive relationships. Public Service commissioners remarked last week on the lack of people speaking against the project during the public comment period in Callaway County.
PSC Chairwoman Kayla Hahn said last week that “generally, Missouri needs more generation,” before voting to approve the project.
Hahn added that the increase in generation was necessary to both replace aging infrastructure and “to meet the emerging demand and position Missouri as a competitor for economic development projects.”
As Ameren looks to build out its renewable portfolio and grow its grid to accommodate data centers, Fontaine said the PSC doesn’t favor specific forms of generation, but that it would likely favor projects with quick turnaround times that require fewer easements and hoops to jump through.
A major decision in Ameren’s approval, Fontaine and Hahn said, was its ability to be on the grid by 2028 and the fact that it will be built on land Ameren already owns.
“They definitely take into consideration all of the different forms that are out there, just because one of the things that we’re looking at right now is there’s a need for, you know, an increase that can happen fairly quickly,” Fontaine said last week.
“I think they value all of the different types of generation, so I don’t know that it’s necessarily a priority. It’s just a matter of ‘What can we get online when we need it?'”
Matthew McFarland is the Energy and Agriculture reporter for the News Tribune. He mainly writes about the Missouri Public Service Commission, utility and energy providers and rural issues impacting Missouri farmers and ranchers. He is a Senior at the University of Missouri School of Journalism and is pursuing a bachelor’s degree in print and digital journalism. He has previously covered news and sports at the Columbia Missourian, the Missouri Times and the Sandusky Register in Sandusky, Ohio. He can be reached by email: [email protected] or by phone: 660-570-1551.
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