Solar facility proposed for town of Lansing would be operational by 2028

A global utility and power-generation company is proposing a 60-megawatt solar facility at the site of the former Milliken Station in the town of Lansing that would be operational by 2028.

The 400-acre project, presented by a representative of AES Clean Energy to the Lansing Town Board at its Sept. 18 meeting, would join a host of other solar energy generation sites in the town and provide enough electricity to power around 10,500 homes annually. AES is headquartered in Virginia and operated the former Milliken coal-burning plant from 1999 until its closure in 2019.

The presentation can be viewed in its entirety here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tgkkgz1E4AE.

“This project will be submitted to the state, likely for a permit, in early 2025 and will not be coming to construction until sometime late 2026 or early 2027,” said Jack Donelan, a development manager at AES. “We are very much still in the early phases of development, but we’ve made a lot of progress.”

Donelan said the project will utilize the infrastructure at the derelict Milliken plant and has the potential to reduce residents’ electricity bills.

“We’re utilizing the existing substation at Milliken station to interconnect the project, and it will interconnect to 115-kilovolt power lines,” Donelan said. “So this is a transmission project, as opposed to a distributed energy scale project.”

A transmission project that utilizes power lines takes the electricity from where it is produced to where it needs to be. The project is also a utility-scale project, which entails companies selling the power they generate directly into the electric grid.

AES owns a host of solar projects of different scales throughout the U.S., with almost 70 of them operating in New York.

“Most of these projects are small, community scale-size projects,” Donelan said. “This project that we’re talking about is the utility scale, and AES has a lot of success in New York in the past few years. We’ve been successful in winning awards for power contracts from the New York State Energy Research Development Authority (NYSERDA), and we look forward to submitting this project to NYSERDA next year.”

Donelan said that the company is not looking to request any special waivers to the town’s local zoning law. 

“All the engineering so far has been done in accordance with the Lansing town laws regarding solar,” he noted.

AES, Donelan said, is also looking to make room for agrivoltaic projects at the site. He noted that the company is setting aside around 40 acres of the project’s total footprint to study how crops grow, depending on positioning and height of the solar energy hardware used for the project. Agrivoltaics is the dual use of land for solar energy production and agriculture.

“Basically, [we’ll be] determining how much light is needed underneath the solar panel to grow crops, as well as seeing how those types of crops actually lead to greater production of solar,” Donelan said. “So, it’s a great benefit for both solar developers and farmers who are interested in growing crops under land that is becoming solar. I see a really positive benefit here.”

Regarding economic benefits, Donelan said Tompkins County’s Industrial Development Agency, the body tasked with negotiating tax and economic development agreements with private investment, will likely want to see more progress on the project before discussing economic incentives and potential benefits for residents. Donelan said that the company has experience negotiating host community benefit agreements with municipalities in New York.

The next steps include an open house at the town hall on Oct. 2 from 5 to 7 p.m., where community residents can learn more about the project. Input will be considered before AES submits the project application to state officials in January.

Lansing at Large appears every week in Tompkins Weekly. Send story ideas to editorial@vizellamedia.com. Contact Eddie Velazquez at edvel37@gmail.com or on X (formerly Twitter) @ezvelazquez.

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Author Kathy MacMillan will host an American Sign Language (ASL) lesson at the Lansing Community Library Oct. 19 at 10 a.m. MacMillan’s lesson will focus on the basics of ASL as taught through tales of falling leaves, squirrels, pumpkins and other fall staples.