One of North America’s first single axis tracker-ballasted systems diversifies energy campus.

Alliant Energy was ready to take the next step in modernizing their Beloit, Wisconsin, energy campus, and began investigating the potential to add a nominal 2.25 megawatt solar facility. With our team already working alongside Alliant as owner’s engineer for a new natural gas combined cycle plant on the site, they turned to us to serve as consulting engineer for the Rock River Solar project. 

We supported development and execution for the project — North America’s first single axis tracker-ballasted system on a capped 17-acre coal combustion residual landfill. Our role included four main angles that put our team’s diverse expertise to work: 

• Supporting a request for proposal (RFP) process
• Integrating the new facility with the existing power generation facilities
• Integrating solar power generation
• Permitting/design considerations associated with capped landfills

Alongside Alliant, we worked to develop the RFP documents including technical requirements, and select a developer to install and operate the project. The unique nature of the project required proper definition and scoping given planned installation on the capped landfill and electrical interconnection to the auxiliary system of the existing plant on site. 

Now the largest utility-grade solar plant in Wisconsin, Rock River Solar project used innovative thinking to bring renewable energy to Alliant’s Beloit campus.