Iowa City Municipal Airport receives $442k grant for solar panel project

The Iowa City Municipal Airport received a $442,800 grant from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to help fund the cost of a solar panel project slated to begin this summer. The funding award was announced by the U.S. Department of Transportation's Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Jan. 30, as part of a $245.9 million in Airport Infrastructure Grants. This is the first solar project for the airport, and will help offset the cost of the electrical energy required to operate the runway, terminal, and building lighting. The goal is to run these areas 100% on solar power, said Michael Tharp, airport manager, and the project will operate in two phases. “Because of the nature of how things are charged, we should reduce our direct utility billing by about half (in the first phase),” said Mr. Tharp. In the first phase, the panels will be ground-mounted and installed north of the terminal area, near the Care Ambulance building.

Phase two will install approximately 150 solar panels near what Mr. Tharp refers to as the populated hangar, which includes the maintenance shop and the university research lab buildings. “The bipartisan infrastructure law had a five year allocation to airports, so each year Iowa City gets roughly about $300,000. We've used one year of our allocations to do a space study on our terminal building and pretty much the rest of the funding from the bipartisan infrastructure law is going to go into the solar power project,” said Mr. Tharp. The FAA provides 90% of the cost, with the remaining 10% left to the airport to raise funding, which is already provided for in its budget. The airport hired consulting firm Crawford, Murphy & Tilly, Inc., which has previously worked on a solar project at the Quad Cities International Airport. “We hope to go through the public hearing process and release the bids in March, and hopefully accept and award a bid in April,” said Mr. Tharp, with installation beginning this summer. The airport has been in existence since the early 1900s, and the terminal was built in 1953. According to its website, the airport oversees 36,000 flight operations a year, and generates $24 million into the local economy.