A ribbon cutting and dedication at 10 am Thursday morning will mark the comencment of electricity generation from the first major solar project in this area.  Plateau Partnership Solar Park is located on a 6-acre parcel at Plateau Partnership Park, a commercial and industrial development site. Plateau Partnership Park is the product of a historic economic development partnership of Cumberland, Morgan, and Roane Counties in East Tennessee. The solar project will create a major environmental attribute for this industrial complex that is immediately adjacent to Interstate 40. The property is on Pig Path Rd., just off Westel Road, close to a point where the borders of Cumberland, Morgan and Roane County meet.

Restoration Services, headquartered in Oak Ridge and mainly focused on environmental cleanup, teamed up with Vis Solis, Inc. (Latin for “the power of the sun”) to build the solar array. RSI and Vis Solis have three additional one megawatt sites under development in the TVA region in Knox, Putnam and Loudon counties.

The one megawatt solar array was constructed using 3,268 solar modules that provide 305 watts each. The modules will be connected to a single axis tracker to maximize generation.  System generation is expected to be approximately 1,688,384  kilowatt hours per year. That is the equivalent to CO² emissions from 175 homes’ electrical use per year or greenhouse gas emissions from 251 passenger vehicles driven per year.

RSI and Vis Solis have three additional one megawatt sites under development in the TVA region in Knox, Putnam and Loudon counties.

Power from the solar farm will flow into TVA’s grid through an interconnection with Rockwood Electric Utility , and TVA will pay the limited-liability organization that owns the project for the electricity it generates.