Clock's ticking on Memphis solar farm project at Agricenter

Agricenter International wants to build a four-acre solar farm but must settle issues with a prospective lender by a drop-dead deadline Tuesday.
The 4,000 solar panels for the 1 megawatt array would sit on a hillside just west of Ducks Unlimited and generate enough power for 200 homes or 20 businesses.
But the $3.5 million-$4 million project hangs in the balance over the next four days as Agricenter tries to iron out issues that have surfaced with the financing company.
"We've hit a bump in the road and are trying to get it resolved," Agricenter president John Charles Wilson said Friday.
The deadline is not the lender's but the Tennessee Valley Authority's. The project's feasibility counts on a TVA program that pays a premium of 12 cents per kilowatt hour for solar power.
Because TVA has been losing $5 million annually on the program, the agency cut the size of eligible projects first to 200 kilowatts and then to 50 kilowatts.
The reduction effectively limits participants to residential and small-business customers.
But the 1 megawatt Agricenter project, in the works for about a year and a half, got an extension from TVA. The extension period ends Tuesday, Wilson confirmed.
All the design, engineering and permits for the project have been accomplished, said David Weiler, marketing and sales director for Nashville-based Lightwave Solar Electric. The company would serve essentially as the general contractor for the construction and maintenance.
For perspective, the Agricenter project would be one-fifth the size of the 5-megawatt West Tennessee Solar Farm being built 40 miles up I-40 in Haywood County.
But still, the Agricenter array would generate about $360,000 worth of electricity a year to sell to Memphis Light Gas & Water Division, Weiler said.
The lender would reap the proceeds the first 10 years while Agricenter used the solar array as an educational tool for schoolchildren and the public, he said.
But after a decade, the Agricenter would collect the revenue from a system that should last 40 years, Weiler said.
The solar project would be unique in Tennessee because it would have "single access tracking," Weiler said.
That means the panels would be mounted on motorized tracks that slowly move them so they point toward the sun throughout the day: East in the morning, straight up at noon and west in the late afternoon.
Tracking the sun makes the system more efficient.
The panels would be purchased from Memphis' own Sharp Manufacturing Co., which is offering them at a substantial discount, Weiler said.
But it's a complex project.
"I would say it's a toss of the coin whether it will happen," Weiler said of the project.
"But not from lack of effort from Agricenter or Shelby County or Sharp or a lot of other people.''

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