In attendance at the April 28 groundbreaking ceremony were Mayor Bill Hennessy, Director of the Missouri Division of Engery Llona Weiss, and Robert S. Kenny, the chairman of the Missouri Public Service Commission.
Ameren Missouri, which started out in Maryland Heights in 1913 with a hydroelectric energy center, is the company behind the new project. It established a landfill gas-to-energy plant here in 2012.
Ameren's president and CEO Michael Moehn was excited to get construction started. He said:
"The solar energy center we are starting to build in O'Fallon today represents the kind of cleaner energy resource many of our customers have asked us to build to provide them with energy, and we are proud to be taking this historic step to do just that. We are working to diversify our mix of generation sources and transition to cleaner and renewable energy sources.”
With solar energy becoming increasingly present in the U.S. due to its green focus, companies that produce it could benefit from using a brochure printer to make pamphlets about saving energy and how solar panels work.