Individual households, businesses, nonprofits, schools, and local governments can install solar energy to serve their facilities. According to the 2021 Focus on Energy Rooftop Solar Potential Study, there are more installed rooftop solar in Dane County than anywhere else in Wisconsin.
Residential Systems
More than 4,150 rooftop and ground-mounted solar arrays serve households in Dane County. These systems generate about 37,218,000 kWh of electricity annually, about 2% of the residential electric usage here in Dane County.
In 2021, a Madison resident created a map of the solar installations within the City of Madison.
We also have data for some of the other cities and villages in Dane County.
As more local governments earn the SolSmart designation and publish local installation totals, we'll expand this tracking.
Commercial/Governmental Systems
Numerous businesses, nonprofits, and local government units have installed solar arrays on their facilities. Currently, these entities have more than 420 solar arrays that generate about 35,288,000 kWh per year. That is less than 1% of the electricity businesses, nonprofits, and local governments use. See our clean energy map for more details on these arrays.
In addition, some local entities have partnered with utilities to buy power or renewable energy credits (RECs) from a utility solar project. The customer-utility partnerships represent about 82,000,750 kWh annually, about 2% of the electricity non-residential customers use in Dane County. There are currently six such projects in Dane County:
Middleton Airport – Moray Field (6 MW) is the array for MGE’s Shared Solar offering, where individual and business customers can sign up to purchase solar power and multiple entities where the entities buy the power from the solar array.
Hermsdorf Solar Fields (8 MW) is an MGE project in partnership with the City of Madison and the Madison Metropolitan School District through a Renewable Energy Rider agreement.
MGE's Tyto Solar is a 6-megawatt (MW) solar project in Fitchburg, Wisconsin. It serves all MGE electric customers with locally generated and is expected to generate enough electricity to power about 1,400 households annually.
Yahara Solar (17 MW) is a partnership between Dane County and Alliant Energy and SunVest, where Dane County receives the Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) associated with the solar array instead of rent on the land.
O’Brien Solar Fields (22 MW) is another MGE project, this one delivers renewable energy to large energy users through a Renewable Energy Rider agreement. The entities participating in O'Brien Solar Fields include UW-Madison.
Dane County Airport Solar (10 MW) is a solar partnership between MGE and Dane County at the Dane County Regional Airport. Dane County purchases the power through a Renewable Energy Rider agreement with MGE.
Koshkonong Solar Energy Center will be a 300-megawatt (MW) photovoltaic solar electric generation facility and 165-megawatt battery energy storage system in the Towns of Christiana and Deerfield. Find out more about the Koshkonong Solar Project here. This is the first utility-scale solar farm located in Dane County.
Utilities that serve Dane County also access electricity from other utility-scale solar farms outside of Dane County. Specifically:
