Cleveland Puts Solar on Two Closed Landfills and the Larger Rating Is Still 5 to 7 MW
- Microgrids News On-Site Generation & Microgrids
Marin Holt
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- 7 minutes read
- Bradbury landfill array: 2 MW
- Kolthoff landfill array: 5 to 7 MW
- Combined project cost: $20 million
- EPA coalition grant, 2024: $129 million
Cleveland will build solar on two closed municipal landfills. The Mayor’s Office of Sustainability, the Department of Public Utilities and the Department of Port Control announced the projects on September 28, 2026. The larger array goes on the Kolthoff Drive landfill, south of the Cleveland Hopkins International Airport runways. Its output will run airport operations. A 2 MW array goes on the former Bradbury landfill near West 11th Street and Spring Road. That power feeds Cleveland Public Power customers. The city puts the combined cost near $20 million.
The two sites
Enerlogics Networks, Energy Independent Solutions and Prairie Wind Group are developing both projects. Cleveland Public Power already runs a 4 MW array on a capped landfill in Brooklyn, Ohio. That site sits just outside the city limits. The utility has built this kind of project before.
Mayor Justin M. Bibb framed the projects as a use for dead land. “This project allows us to put underused land back to work by generating energy locally,” Bibb said in a statement.
The Kolthoff number is not settled
Published capacity for the Kolthoff site does not agree. Solar Power World reports the project at 7 MW. WOIO covered the same announcement the same day and put it at 5 to 7 MW. The city procurement record shows why a range is plausible. The Mayor’s Office of Sustainability ran a Request for Proposals for a design and build contractor. Proposals were due April 10, 2026. The city attached a Phase II property assessment for the Kolthoff Road landfill site. A closed landfill gets characterized before anyone fixes an array layout on it.
Where the money comes from
Both arrays sit inside a regional program paid for by the Environmental Protection Agency’s Climate Pollution Reduction Grants. A coalition of Cuyahoga County, the City of Cleveland and the City of Painesville won a $129 million EPA grant in 2024. It funds renewable energy across Northeast Ohio. The award covers solar and battery storage, restoration of about 400 acres of polluted land, and clean energy workforce training. The full program targets roughly 53 MW of solar. The two landfill arrays account for a small share of that.
Why It Matters
Closed landfills are cheap land with a grid connection nearby and no competing use. That is why municipal utilities keep returning to them. The useful detail here is the pairing of load and site. Kolthoff sits beside an airport with a large, steady, around-the-clock electrical load. That proximity is worth more than the nameplate rating. For other city utilities, the sequence to copy is the one Cleveland followed. Characterize the cap first, then size the array. The number to watch is the Kolthoff rating, because the two published figures still differ by 2 MW.
Critical Perspective
The city puts the two arrays near $20 million. It has not published a firm rating for the larger one. Cleveland Public Power already runs a 4 MW array on a capped landfill in Brooklyn, Ohio. The operating precedent exists, but the disclosed numbers here stop at the announcement. The program targets roughly 53 MW of solar and a 20 MW battery tied to the Painesville coal closure. These two arrays are a modest slice of a $129 million grant. If the Phase II assessment on the Kolthoff cap trims the buildable area, which budget absorbs the gap?
Sources
- Solar Power World, Cleveland to install solar on two city-owned landfills, September 28, 2026
- WOIO Cleveland 19, Two old Cleveland landfills getting new powerful lives, September 28, 2026
- City of Cleveland Mayor’s Office of Sustainability, RFP Addendum 2, Design/Build Contractor for Cleveland Solar Energy Projects
