Monroeville Floats 9,222 Solar Modules on 12 Acres of Its Drinking Water Reservoir
- Microgrids News On-Site Generation & Microgrids
Marin Holt
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- 6 minutes read
- 6 MW floating solar array energized on the Village of Monroeville, Ohio drinking water reservoir
- 9,222 modules on three floating islands covering 12 acres of water, sparing more than 30 acres of land
- Output above 7,500 MWh a year, enough for roughly 700 homes, fed to the village distribution grid
- Gardner Capital owns the system under a long-term PPA; Appalachian Renewable Power was the contractor
- Largest floating array in Ohio; the state's three D3Energy projects total close to 10 MW
D3Energy has energized a 6 MW floating solar array on the drinking water reservoir of Monroeville, Ohio, a village of 1,300 people in Huron County. Gardner Capital owns the system and sells the output to the village under a long-term power purchase agreement. The array is the largest floating installation in Ohio and one of the five largest in the United States.
What Is Being Built
The system carries 9,222 modules on three floating islands, mounted on Ciel & Terre Hydrelio structures. It covers 12 acres of a reservoir the village already owned. Output runs above 7,500 MWh a year, enough for roughly 700 homes, and feeds the village distribution grid directly rather than a transmission interconnection.
Ohio-based Appalachian Renewable Power built the array. The same three parties delivered the Del-Co Water floating array in Delaware, Ohio in 2023. Monroeville is D3Energy’s third Ohio project, after Del-Co Water and the City of Lima array on Twin Lakes Reservoir. Together the three total close to 10 MW of operating floating solar, all of it on water the host utilities already owned.
Why It Matters
The siting math is the point. Floating the array on 12 acres of water spares more than 30 acres of land. A ground-mounted system of the same size would have taken that ground. That matters in Ohio specifically. Roughly a third of the state’s 88 counties have restricted utility-scale solar since a 2021 law handed them that power, and township votes keep coming. A reservoir the village already controls sits outside that fight.
Monroeville now runs the floating array alongside a 4 MW ground-mounted system it has operated since 2017. For a village of 1,300, that is about 13 times as much solar per resident as the rest of Ohio. Utilities that own reservoirs, water districts and municipal systems hold the same asset Monroeville used. The acreage is already fenced, already permitted, and already wired to a distribution feeder.
Critical Perspective
The schedule slipped and nobody has said why. The American Public Power Association reported construction starting in August 2025, with the system expected to go live in early 2026. It energized in late September 2026. Floating arrays add work that ground-mount crews never face, including anchoring, ballast and over-water electrical terminations. None of the announcements say which of those cost the time.
The per-resident statistic also deserves a harder look. Thirteen times the state average sounds commanding until the denominator turns out to be 1,300 people. A single 6 MW array would do the same work in any small village. Monroeville does not own the asset either. Gardner Capital owns it and sells the output back under a PPA whose price nobody has published, which is the number that decides whether this was a good deal for the village.
Sources
- pv magazine USA
- Solar Power World
- American Public Power Association
- ARP Solar (contractor)
- D3Energy via PR Newswire
