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Community Solar Project Delayed

Bob Allen

Utility leaders in Traverse City will delay the expansion of a community solar project until summer 2015, as a number of solar panels already installed at Cherryland Electric Cooperative remain unsold.

Tim Arends, of Traverse City Light & Power, says the original plan was to build more arrays on the city power grid this summer. That won’t happen.

Arends says he’s not convinced they’ve done enough marketing for the project. He wants to reach out to more customers.

“I think there’s more interest out there that what we’ve seen, so we are going to keep it in the capital plan,” he says. “But we are delaying the project, putting it in the fiscal year 2015-2016.”

The SUN Alliance was launched last April. It’s the first of its kind in Michigan. It allows customers of the two Traverse-area utilities to buy a share in a solar panel project, for about 400 dollars.