An aerial view of a 22-acre community solar farm owned by Nexamp on Wednesday, Oct. 22, 2026, near Utica. Located behind the Senica Manor subdivision, south of U.S. Route 6, the solar farm is within La Salle’s district and is expected to generate enough electricity to power about 1,000 homes once completed. (Scott Anderson)
A field that sat unused south of Route 6 is on its way to becoming a community solar farm, and if the timeline holds, it will start sending power to the grid late next summer.
Utica Solar is a 6.7-megawatt project being built, owned and operated by Nexamp, a company founded in 2007 by two U.S. Army Veterans. The company is headquartered in Boston, runs a second headquarters in Chicago and has about 60 active projects in Illinois. The site, just west of Route 178, is about 28 acres of fenced farmland that will hold just over 10,000 American-made solar panels mounted on tracking systems that follow the sun through the day.
“This is for us a little bit on the larger side,” said Keith Hevenor, communication manager at Nexamp. “Most of our projects probably are more in the three to five megawatt range.”
Construction began at the start of June, and Nexamp is targeting permission to operate from Ameren by Sept. 1, 2027. The project was years in the making before that. The company leases rather than buys its sites, typically under 25 to 30-year agreements with landowners, and looks for land near electrical infrastructure where panels can connect to the grid.
Like other community solar farms, Utica Solar will not send power directly to subscribers’ homes. It feeds the grid, and Ameren pays Nexamp for that power in the form of bill credits, which Nexamp then shares with subscribers at a discount. In Illinois, that discount is 15%.
Hevenor used a household that uses $100 of electricity a month as an example: the subscriber would receive about $100 in credits to offset their Ameren bill, then be billed $85 by Nexamp, reflecting the $15 discount. Credits are annualized, since panels generate more power in long summer days than short winter ones.
“There’s no other fee. There’s no enrollment fee. There’s no setup fee. There’s nothing,” Hevenor said. “The only thing you’re paying for is the credits that you earn that go toward offsetting your utility bill.”
Subscriptions are month-to-month, with no cancellation fee and no credit check, and subscribers don’t have to live near Utica. Anyone in Ameren’s service territory can subscribe. A project of this size could support about 1,000 residential subscribers, though a portion of Utica Solar’s capacity is committed to anchor customers.
The build itself is being done by local contractors, providing typically 40 to 50 jobs over a 12 to 18-month construction window. Once the farm goes live, no one will work on site regularly. Nexamp contracts with local electricians as needed and local landscaping companies for mowing and snow plowing.
The project also will generate tax revenue for the village of Utica. Because the solar farm changes the land’s tax classification from agricultural to commercial, Nexamp pays commercial property taxes on the site.
Nexamp establishes a decommissioning bond at the start of every project, with money set aside to cover removing and recycling equipment when the farm reaches the end of its life. Steel poles are driven into the ground, along with one or two 10-by-10 concrete pads for transformers and inverters, and a fence.
Hevenor said the land could essentially be returned to farmland once the project ends, and the lease can be renewed by both sides or the land returned to its owner.
As for the timeline, Hevenor said there is little that could delay the project at this stage. The schedule could slip potentially 30 to 60 days depending on Ameren’s interconnection queue, with testing expected over the summer.
“I can’t say the schedule wouldn’t change at all, but I can say that it’s rare that it changes significantly at this stage,” he said.
Emily Beebe is a reporter for Shaw Local News Network

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