St. Joseph Solar
The White Construction team, in partnership with Indiana Michigan Power (IM), completed the St. Joseph Solar Farm. The 20-megawatt AC solar energy facility, enough to generate clean energy for 2,700 local homes, consists of 57,000 solar panels on 10,000 posts in 740 rows. This is equivalent to covering 30 football fields.
“This used to be farmed by the St. Joe brothers that produced food for the campus, and now it’s producing energy for the campus," said University of Notre Dame President Rev. John I. Jenkins. The university is currently working towards minimizing their carbon footprint through sustainability initiatives, including purchasing 40% of the power from the project.
When the project was first announced in 2019, it was scheduled to begin in 2020. In the midst of an unpredictable year, both the I&M and White Construction team worked together to ensure that the project was a success. "Between the I&M team and the White team, it’s been great," said Toby Thomas, President and Chief Operating Officer at I&M. "Obviously the pandemic hit, but the team made the proper adjustments so that we could still get this facility online even through a global pandemic.”
The White Construction team also relied on the company's new fleet of Vemeer PD-10 pile drivers outfitted with the Tremble Groundworks system. This equipment negates the need for painstakingly repetitive surveying and driving nails, stringing lines and ensures perfect pile placement in all directions. Despite having to drive longer and heavier 18 foot piles, the team was averaging a post every 30 seconds, with as many as 250 to 300 posts driven per machine, per day using a two person crew per machine. “Considering all those facts, we did some very fast times,” noted Electrical Construction Manager Rory Rossini.
As Lisa Barton, COO at AEP, stated, "St. Joseph Solar Farm ensures the ability to a cleaner and brighter future for our communities." The project not only assists in multiple sustainability efforts, but it also reduces the carbon footprint throughout the community by essentially taking 2,600 cars off the road and keeping 30,000 tons of carbon monoxide from going into the air.
Congratulations, White Construction, for your hard work on this project. With over 100 workers and 75,000 work-hours on the job, your commitment to safety, accuracy and top-tier work is certainly why the project ran successfully.
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