This story has been updated to reflect that property owners received crop  compensation payments, and the solar project is expected to be completed in summer of 2026. The Record regrets the error.  

The Warren County Commissioners met with representatives from Invenergy Solar for an update on their project here in the county on Nov. 14. 

The commissioners heard from Project Manager Matt Clausen and Site Manager Luke Williams from Invenergy along with Karl Finke of Andrews Engineering, the local engineer hired by the county to monitor solar projects. 

The proposed area for Invenergy’s solar farm is 4,435 acres, largely located between Highway A and Highway W, according to previous Record reporting. The electrical capacity of the solar farm would be rated at 300 megawatts. According to the Solar Energy Industries Association, 1 megawatt is enough to power more than 100 Missouri homes. 

The solar district is irregularly shaped, made of more than 30 interconnected pieces of property. “Islands” or “peninsulas” of excluded property in the district area show where either Invenergy or the property owners were uninterested in developing.

Clausen and Williams said they expected the project to be completed by summer of 2026 although they acknowledged there was still plenty of work remaining. 

Clausen said in the next couple months they would be sending out crop compensation payments to landowners for land that could not be planted during 2024 growing seasons. They are also in the process of leasing some land back to the landowners. 

Williams provided an update on construction saying they were making progress but there was still lots of work to be done, and residents could expect truck deliveries to ramp up in the coming weeks. 

“Module deliveries will be starting next week,” said Williams. 

The modules are what many would consider solar panels, and Invenergy will deliver hundreds of them over the next year. According to Williams each truck will carry close to 600 modules with multiple trucks arriving at the site per day starting this week. 

“We’ll start with six trucks a day through about mid-December,” said Williams. “We’ll ramp it up to 12 trucks a day and then eventually get into around 15 trucks a day.”

Depending on weather, he said delivery of the panels should be completed some time next May or June. 

He said they will also be starting the delivery of the 78 inverters needed for the project in January. Inverters are used to convert the direct current electricity generated by the solar panels into alternating current electricity that is compatible with public power grids. 

“Inverter deliveries, those are going to be one of our larger items for the site that will be starting in January at a pretty slow pace,” said Williams. “I think we’re going to be at 10 or 15 a month, so that’s major as far as trucks, it’s one truck per inverter, 78 for the whole site.”

The final construction update was that work was going to start on Dec. 1 on the substation for the project. 

Finke said that the project largely seemed to be in order however there had been some damage to Power Line Road from the development. He said he was going to hold off on any repairs to the road until after the heavier deliveries were completed.