A Milwaukee landfill solar farm triples to 6.85 megawatts under a program only businesses and cities can join

A Milwaukee landfill solar farm now generates 6.85 megawatts, a measure of how much electricity generating capacity a power plant has, after We Energies finished a 4.6 megawatt expansion this month, tripling the original 2.25 megawatt array built on the site in 2021. We Energies owns the array under Renewable Pathway, a program the Wisconsin Public Service Commission approved as a pilot in 2023 that lets a business or government customer pay to use a share of a utility scale renewable facility instead of building its own generation. The City of Milwaukee is that customer, buying power for its own buildings rather than making a purchase decision an individual homeowner could copy, since the program serves only commercial and industrial rate accounts, not residential ones.

How the Milwaukee landfill solar farm reached 6.85 megawatts

We Energies built the original 2.25 megawatt array on the north side of the landfill in 2021, then finished the 4.6 megawatt expansion this month, bringing the site to 6.85 megawatts total. The array now carries 9,700 solar panels across the 44 acre former landfill at 1600 East College Avenue, southeast of Milwaukee Mitchell International Airport. The City of Milwaukee pays an extra 0.5 cents per kilowatt hour for the power, a net cost of about 84,000 dollars a year against a citywide municipal energy budget of 13.5 million dollars, and receives about 800 dollars an acre in ground lease payments for hosting the array.

How builders covered a landfill that could not be drilled into

The clay cap on the landfill, the sealed layer that keeps buried waste from leaching into the ground, could not be drilled into, so the array could not be anchored into the ground the way a typical solar farm is built. SunVest Solar, the contractor that built the expansion, instead weighted the panels down with a ballasted racking system, holding them in place without piercing the cap beneath them. That detail only turned up by reading the account SunVest itself published of the build, not either news report of the project. Construction also required coordination with the Air National Guard, because the site sits next to the airport.

What the expansion means for climate goals in Milwaukee

With the completion of this project, 80 city buildings are now powered by 100% renewable energy.

Cavalier Johnson, mayor of Milwaukee. Source 2.

Eighty City of Milwaukee buildings, including every library, health center, fire station and police station, now run on 100% renewable electricity, a status the completed expansion helps maintain rather than one this project alone created. The contract for the project also required at least 20% of construction hours to go to unemployed or underemployed Milwaukee residents. The push toward more renewable power traces to Common Council resolution 091066, a 2009 measure from the city lawmaking body that set a goal of generating 25% of electricity in Milwaukee from renewable resources by 2025. Neither source that mentions the goal states whether the city reached it. A newer plan, the Climate and Equity Plan the council built on in June 2023, carries a goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions, the gases that trap heat and warm the planet, 40% by 2030.

How the same utility program is used elsewhere in Wisconsin

Common Council resolution 231608, passed in 2024, approved this expansion alongside a separate Renewable Pathway project in Caledonia, Wisconsin, a 6 megawatt array commissioned in September 2025 that powers 57 municipal buildings there. Both projects run through the same regulator approved mechanism, letting a Wisconsin utility and its government customers add renewable capacity through a subscription instead of a direct purchase of panels.

The cost of not doing anything on climate change, not doing anything on renewable energy, is substantially more than what we're paying.

Erick Shambarger, director of environmental sustainability for the City of Milwaukee. Source 2.