Tallahassee's Solar Farms

Both solar farms sit on City of Tallahassee property adjacent to Tallahassee International Airport, according to the city's 2026 Ten Year Site Plan filed with the Florida Public Service Commission.

The airport itself is city-owned and sits at 3300 Capital Circle SW. The City of Tallahassee Utilities solar page describes Solar Farm 1 as 20 megawatts on 120 acres and the second farm as twice as big, 40 megawatts on 240 acres, which together bring the city's total solar power generation to 60 megawatts. The farms are not city-owned power plants in the usual sense: the 2026 Tallahassee plan says the city contracted for 100% of the energy output of both farms through power purchase agreements.

Solar Farm 1 began commercial operation on December 13, 2017, and the larger farm on December 26, 2019, according to the City of Tallahassee's 2020 Ten Year Site Plan.

That filing says the city executed a purchase power agreement on July 24, 2016, with Origis Energy USA, doing business as FL Solar 1, LLC, for 20 MW ac of solar. Solar Farm 1 delivers power to a City-owned distribution facility. The second agreement, also with Origis, doing business as FL Solar 4, LLC, covers a facility the city's filings call Solar Farm 4; it is interconnected with the City-owned 230 kV transmission system, and the 2020 Tallahassee plan called it the world's largest airport-based solar facility.

The two official sources disagree on size, and this page reports both rather than choosing. The 2026 site plan lists 62 MW of total nameplate solar, 20 MW for Solar Farm 1 and 42 MW for Solar Farm 4, while the city's solar page lists 40 MW and a 60 MW total.

Tallahassee Solar is a rate option, not a rooftop installation: subscribers pay 5 cents per kilowatt hour for solar energy in place of the normal fuel charge, fixed until September 30, 2037, per the city's program page.

Residential and small and medium commercial customers chose to have 25, 50 or 100 percent of their monthly electric bill reflect solar. The city's largest electric customers could instead name a fixed number of monthly kilowatt hours designated as solar. The fuel charge recovers the cost of the natural gas burned in the city's power plants, and the Tallahassee page says it currently hovers around 3.5 cents per kWh, so participants initially pay more. The city expects the fuel charge to rise above 5 cents before September 30, 2037, at which point Tallahassee Solar customers would pay less than non-participants.

The power is not delivered separately. The city says solar energy from the airport farms is fed into the Tallahassee electric grid and replaces energy that would otherwise come from its fossil fuel plants. A household subscribed at the 100 percent level keeps an estimated 5.9 tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere each year, which the city compares to planting 2.4 acres of new forest. Subscriptions move with a customer who stays on the City of Tallahassee electric system, transfers go through Customer Service at 850-891-4968, and a customer who leaves the program can do so without penalty but cannot re-enroll.

Every City of Tallahassee residential and commercial electric customer was eligible, including Solar Net-Metering and Nights and Weekends Pricing customers, according to the program page.

Enrollment is now closed. The city says the program is fully subscribed and that it is not planning a waiting list for future projects. The Tallahassee Electric and Gas Utility's 2025 renewable energy and conservation report to the Public Service Commission adds that the program was fully subscribed by 2022 and has nearly 2,000 participating facilities, including all City of Tallahassee-owned buildings.

Eligibility followed the electric provider, not the city limits. The 2026 site plan says the Electric Utility serves approximately 124,000 customers within a 221 square mile service territory around the city. The 2020 plan describes a territorial agreement with Talquin Electric Cooperative under which each utility provides reciprocal retail service to some of the other's customers, so a Leon County address can fall on either system.

The solar farms are a small part of the City of Tallahassee's capacity: the 2026 site plan counts only about 20% of their rated summer capacity as firm, against a total net summer capability of 737 MW as of December 31, 2025.

The same Tallahassee filing says the city's analyses found that an average of approximately 50% of the farms' total rated capacity was available during summer peak and near peak hours, but the city chose the conservative 20% figure for planning. Its summer peak forecast lists 12 MW of solar capacity for every year from 2026 through 2035, and it notes that the city's power supply primarily comes from two natural gas units, Purdom 8 and Hopkins 2.

The plant pages and the site plan also differ on Hopkins: the Hopkins page lists the year built as 1971, while the 2026 Tallahassee plan says the station has been in commercial operation since 1970.

The Tallahassee City Commission's Clean Energy Resolution, 19-R-04, sets a target of 100% net, clean renewable energy no later than 2050, according to the city's clean energy plan page.

Smaller projects continue in the meantime. The 2025 PSC report says the Tallahassee utility began installing a 50 kW floating solar system in 2025 over a treated wastewater holding pond at the City's Southeast Farm wastewater facility, and that its Solar Net Metering program has over 1,470 solar interconnections representing 11.6 MW ac of customer-owned generation, credited at full retail value. The 2026 site plan adds that the City anticipates adding battery energy storage within its 10-year planning horizon.

Last verified: October 18, 2026. This check re-read the Tallahassee Solar program page, the clean energy plan page, the Hopkins, Purdom and airport pages on talgov.com, and the City's 2020 and 2026 Ten Year Site Plans and 2025 renewable energy report on the Florida Public Service Commission site.