Centre County’s Board of Commissioners on Tuesday approved an agreement for the construction and operation of what will be the third solar array providing energy and cost savings for county government buildings.
The new approximately 1 megawatt facility will be located next to the existing solar field that powers the Centre County Correctional Facility in Benner Township and will be used to offset all electricity costs at the Willowbank Building in Bellefonte through a mechanism known as virtual net metering.
“If you build a solar array, that energy can be virtual metered to another facility owned by the same entity within a two-mile radius,” County Administrator John Franek said. “The Willowbank building is within a two-mile radius of the correctional facility. The intent is because phase one solar up there completely supplies all the power needs of the correctional facility, this second array will be virtual net metered and will power the Willowbank building.”
Under the agreement approved on Tuesday, Centre County Solar Partners Phase 3, LLC will be responsible for constructing, installing, operating, maintaining, replacing and repairing the new array.
The county’s annual service payments will be between $129,000 and $136,916 for years 1 to 5, with no advance payment required. In the sixth year, the county will have the option to purchase the system for an early termination fee of $1,350,890.
It will eliminate the county’s roughly $8,000 monthly electricity bill, and has initial anticipated savings over the long term of $5 million, according to Franek.
“Nationally, electricity costs are up 37% percent since 2020, with no break, by the looks of it,” Board of Commissioners Chair Mark Higgins said. “It might just keep going up and up. This would allow us to fix our electric costs for as much as 40 years.”
The contract for the new array is similar to the one for the correctional facility, which was Centre County Government’s first solar energy system and went into service in 2020. The county exercised an option to acquire it outright from Centre County Solar Partners in 2025.
Higgins and Franek said the correctional facility array has had positive cash flow every year. County officials said in 2025 that it generates more than $100,000 annually from the sale of credits while zeroing out the jail’s traditional grid costs, which prior to 2020 topped $115,000 per year.
The county’s second solar energy system is a rooftop array on the new Community Services Building, which opened last year in the former Centre Crest in Bellefonte.
The newest array is expected to go online in early 2028, and commissioners cited the long-term stability for energy costs in approving the the third phase of Centre County government’s solar infrastructure.
“I think this is a tremendous investment in order to buffer the county from future cost increases with electricity,” Commissioner Amber Concepcion said. “And the fact that it saved us money from the very beginning is an extremely valuable component of the way that the financial piece of this is structured. We just know that with that there’s going to be more and more draws on our electric grid in Pennsylvania, and we need to think about ways to add more power generation into the system and for the county to eventually own most of its own power generation. This, I think, really future proofs the county from future unpredictable electricity rates.”
Centre County was among 10 governmental entities that signed on to the Solar Power Purchase Agreement, which would have provided electricity at fixed rates to the participating organizations from a solar facility constructed by developer Prospect 14. Following years of work on the agreement, however, the project collapsed in February after Prospect 14 representatives said it was no longer financially feasible as structured largely due to the demise of federal tax credits for solar projects in 2025.
After reimbursements from the developer, Centre County had a net loss of about $6,000 on the effort, but Higgins said in March that in the process the county was able to work with an energy provider affiliated project on reduced electricity rates that have saved about $65,000 to date.
Commissioners also said at the time that the county would continue to work on opportunities for long-term energy savings.
