Orange County Utilities is celebrating what it calls the largest floating solar panel array in the Southeastern United States, which will generate enough energy to power 179 homes annually.
The enormous cluster of more than 2,000 solar panels now floats on a pond at the county’s Southern Regional Water Supply Facility, just north of the Osceola County line.
That facility supplies water to about 80,000 Orange County residents, according to county officials, who expect the new solar array to reduce the facility’s annual energy costs by 25%.
At a ribbon-cutting celebration Thursday afternoon, Orange County Commissioner and Vice Mayor Nicole Wilson said the project proves that multitasking can be a powerful strategy to help Central Florida become more sustainable and resilient.
“Every time I drive by a retention pond now, it doesn't look like polluted water to me. It looks like potential. It looks like hope,” Wilson said.
The new solar array is one step toward Orange County’s goal to power 100% of its operations with clean, renewable energy by the year 2035.
“It's a 1.2 megawatt array, and it produces 1.9 gigawatt hours of energy annually, which … would be equal to powering 179 homes annually,” said Orange County Chief Sustainability and Resilience Officer Carrie Black.
This particular project will power the water facility, not residential homes. But Black said the county’s working with utility providers to help inform residents about different energy rebate programs that might be available to them, including from the federal government.
Those programs could help reduce household energy burden disparities, Black said. In certain west and southwest Orange County neighborhoods, households face disproportionately high energy costs relative to income, according to a report commissioned last year by Sierra Club Orlando.
“Solar investments in Orange County are always an exciting sight and welcome, especially in the sunshine state,” wrote Raquel Fernández, Sierra Club Field Manager for Florida and Puerto Rico, in an email to WMFE News. “This exciting solar investment should be accompanied with rooftop solar and distributed generation, which has been proven to be a low hanging fruit and more resilient in the face of storms.”
The solar array project reflects a wider national movement toward solar energy, with the Solar Energy Industries Association reporting the U.S. solar market boosted capacity by 51 percent in 2023, compared to 2022.
