This field along U.S. Highway 30 outside La Grande will be home to Oregon Trail Electric Cooperative’s 500-panel community solar project. The project is slated to be operational by fall.

LA GRANDE — Oregon Trail Electric Cooperative’s already mostly carbon-free power supply is about to get a little greener.

The Baker City-based cooperative will begin work this fall on a 500-panel community solar project near the cooperative’s Gekeler Lane substation outside La Grande. Construction on the project is expected to take just one month to complete and put into service, according to the cooperative, which serves about 23,000 customers in four Eastern Oregon counties.

“Our highest priority is to serve our membership, so we put together this project,” Charlie Tracy, the cooperative’s director of engineering, said. “It’s on property here in Union County. It’s in La Grande. So we’re excited about it. That’s also the district where we’ve seen the most interest, so we’re excited to be able to have it be local and have a member be able to drive by the place that they know that their power is coming from.”

This is the utility’s first solar project.

“You can’t really say you’re an expert in solar farms until you build one, right? So a big part of it is to gain expertise and become experts in the changing landscape,” Tracy said. “In another year, we’ll really know quite a lot about it. This is part of that learning process.”

Oregon Trail members will have the option of helping finance the project by buying subscriptions. When the solar project begins generating clean energy, members will start receiving a credit on their utility bill for their portion of the electricity generated.

“We meter it just like we would a house or a load, and then we divide the output, so the energy that’s generated within a given month, we divide it up into portions,” Tracy said. “Those portions are sold to a member as a subscription. So essentially, they pre-purchase the output of the array and that output is then applied to their bill to subtract off, essentially, their usage.”

Subscriptions, which are on a first-come, first-served basis, will cost $250 per share and are available to anyone living or doing business in the OTEC service area, which includes Baker, Union, Grant and Harney counties.

“We broke it up into what we think are affordable, small portions because one of the things we’ve heard from members is roof-top solar has an extremely high upfront cost,” Tracy said. “What the community solar project brings to people is the ability to buy into it at smaller increments — $250 per portion.”

The 500 panels will generate approximately 200 kilowatts of electricity that will be distributed along OTEC’s system.

“We’re hoping that if shares sell quickly that we can expand it,” Tracy said. “Ultimately, we’d like to have one in each of our service territories.”

The subscription will be good for 20 years and can be moved around within the cooperative’s service territory or can be gifted to someone.

“Let’s say you move out of territory, you can gift it to your friend, neighbor or kids,” Joseph Hathaway, the cooperative’s communications manager, said. “That share will still continue up until 20 years.”

Tracy said members will see no increase in their monthly bill to pay for the cost of the solar farm, because the costs are covered by the members who purchase subscriptions.

More than 94% of the power Oregon Trail Electric Cooperative receives from Bonneville Power Administration is carbon-free, with about 85% of it being from hydroelectric.

“We’ve got a phenomenal, enviable power supply, as good or better than anywhere in the world in terms of its low environmental impact and climate change carbon impact,” Tracy said. “So we feel really good about that and really positive about it. But beyond that, we’re working on this project to supply an even more local and even more renewable power supply that a lot of our members have asked for.”

Hathaway said the solar project came from some of the surveying the cooperative has done over the years.

“I think the last survey we saw, it was around 20% said that they would like to have that solar option,” he said.

For more information on the Oregon Trail Electric Cooperative’s solar farm, visit the cooperative’s website at otec.coop.