MONROEVILLE, Ohio - September 29, 2026 - In a corner of Huron County where farmland stretches to the horizon and utility-scale solar projects have repeatedly been voted down, a village of roughly 1,300 residents has quietly built one of the largest floating solar arrays in the United States. The system, energized earlier this month by Florida-based developer D3Energy, floats on 12 acres of the village's existing drinking water reservoir and feeds electricity directly into Monroeville's distribution grid.
The array comprises 9,222 solar modules mounted on three floating islands, generating more than 7,500 megawatt-hours annually-enough to power roughly 700 homes and more than double the village's clean energy capacity. It is the largest floating solar installation in Ohio and ranks among the five largest operating systems of its kind in the country.
The project's significance extends well beyond its generating capacity. It represents a deliberate strategy to sidestep the land-use conflicts that have stalled renewable energy development across much of rural Ohio. Since a 2021 state law granted counties the authority to restrict utility-scale solar, roughly one-third of Ohio's 88 counties have done so, with township votes repeatedly blocking projects. Monroeville chose a different path.
"Solar needs space, and in farm country there's no such thing as spare ground," said Stetson Tchividjian, Managing Director of D3Energy. "Monroeville had water sitting right there doing one job. Now it does two".
By siting the array on water the village already owned, the project avoided the roughly 30 acres of farmland that a ground-mounted system of equivalent size would have required. The installation also delivers secondary environmental benefits: the shade cast by the panels reduces reservoir evaporation and helps control seasonal algae growth, addressing two operational challenges that municipal water utilities routinely face.
The technical design reflects the particular demands of deploying photovoltaics on a working drinking water reservoir. The modules sit on hollow high-density polyethylene floats, assembled onshore and pushed onto the water in sections. Mooring lines, deliberately slack, allow the array to rise and fall with the reservoir's water level rather than resisting it. Cables run back to shore through floating conduit to an inverter station on land. Sitting above water also keeps the panels cooler, a factor that studies suggest can improve silicon efficiency by roughly 5 to 15 percent.
Under a long-term power purchase agreement, the Village of Monroeville buys electricity from project owner Gardner Capital, with Ohio-based contractor Appalachian Renewable Power handling engineering and construction. The village already operates a 4-megawatt ground-mounted array that has been running since 2017. Between the two installations, Monroeville now has roughly 13 times as much solar per resident as the rest of Ohio-one of the highest per-capita concentrations in the state.
The Monroeville project is D3Energy's third floating solar installation in Ohio, following a 1.5-megawatt array for Del-Co Water in Delaware and a 2-megawatt system on the City of Lima's Twin Lakes Reservoir completed earlier this year. Together, the three projects give Ohio nearly 10 megawatts of operating floating solar capacity, all of it on water the host utilities already owned-more than any other state in the Midwest.
The Lima project offers a useful benchmark for the economic case. That 2-megawatt system cost $5.3 million, with a $2.4 million Department of Energy grant and $889,000 in direct-pay tax credits through the Inflation Reduction Act's Direct Pay program offsetting roughly half the cost. The city projects nearly $10 million in lifetime electricity savings for its water treatment plant. Floating solar typically carries a 10 to 15 percent upfront cost premium over land-based systems, but the avoided land acquisition and long-term operational savings can tilt the economics in its favor, particularly for municipal water utilities with existing reservoirs.
The broader potential is substantial. Research from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory indicates that federally controlled reservoirs alone could host between 861 and 1,042 gigawatts of floating solar capacity-roughly half the solar generation needed to fully decarbonize the U.S. power grid by 2050.
"None of this happens without Monroeville's forward-thinking leadership," Tchividjian said. "Monroeville has long been a leader in the energy space, and with this project, they'll be utilizing more green energy than many larger counties and cities across the country".
For a village of 1,300 people, the array on the reservoir is both a practical energy investment and a statement about what rural communities can accomplish when they look at the infrastructure they already have-and see something more.
About D3Energy
D3Energy is a Florida-based developer specializing in floating solar photovoltaic systems, with multiple operational projects across the United States.
About the Village of Monroeville
The Village of Monroeville is a public power community in Huron County, Ohio, serving approximately 1,300 residents.
