With the recent approval of a service agreement with Red Lion Solar Perry LLC, the City of Perry is looking to offset more electricity use. 

City Administrator Sven Peterson says there are ten city building sites that will be having solar systems installed. Peterson says in the future this will help bring the buildings to operate with no cost. 

“We will actually be buying the kilowatt hours from Red Lion Renewables to offset the electrical use that we’d use from the grid. Eventually, we will buy these systems and we’ll own them and then we will basically have a zero operating cost for those buildings and those solar systems providing the power to those buildings.”

Peterson tells Raccoon Valley Radio some of the buildings include the library, City Hall, Carnegie Library, Towncraft Building, Public Works Buildings, Police Department, among others. Peterson says this, coupled with another project will help offset most of the energy use for city buildings. 

“Between this project and the project we entered into earlier with Alliant Energy with their installation out on the Brownfield.(The) City of Perry should be offsetting almost, or over, or at a 100-percent of our electrical use of all of our city facilities.”

Peterson says Perry would be a net zero energy consumer by producing enough power to run its own buildings. Also, Peterson says over the 30 year lifespan of the solar systems it could bring a potential savings of $4.8-$5 million in savings for taxpayers.