OSCEOLA COUNTY, Fla. — One of the largest municipal-backed solar projects in the country has been up and running in St. Cloud for one year.

Kelly Trace owns Headquarters Coworking, a building in downtown Kissimmee that rents out spaces to small businesses. It's been receiving power from a local solar farm for a year now. 

The energy comes from the Harmony Solar Energy Center in St. Cloud, one of the farms in Central Florida that went online in June of last year. It’s all part of the Florida Municipal Solar Project.

“The goal here is to continue to reduce our emissions footprint but it is also the goal of our cities to be low cost electric providers, because in Florida we use so much electricity, that you want to be low cost," said Jacob Williams, general manager and CEO of Florida Municipal Power Agency. "And these solar projects aren’t quite as low cost as our gas units, but they are getting close.” 

“We don’t actually have to install solar panels in our building, we can take advantage of being powered by solar without having that infrastructure cost and putting something on our roof, which is super cool,” Trace said.  

These solar sites have reduced carbon emissions equivalent to taking more than 57,000 cars off the road annually.

The Florida Municipal Solar Project plans to add three more solar farms in late 2023, to power about 75,000 homes.