City of Girard officials cut the ribbon Monday on a new 10-acre solar farm at 108 N. Enterprise Dr.
The idea wasn't an easy sell at first. According to The Morning Sun, Girard Power Plant Supervisor Jess Murphy initially said no to the idea. Murphy later changed his mind about adopting solar, the paper reports. Photographer Aaron Pyle captured the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
Why Girard Needed a New Power Source
The timing wasn't coincidental. Girard's long-term wholesale power purchase agreement with the Grand River Dam Authority, arranged through the Kansas Municipal Energy Agency, was set to expire on April 30, 2026, per the Kansas Municipal Energy Agency. That wholesale deal had already been extended once, in 2005, after an initial 10-year contract signed in 2000, the agency notes. With the clock running out on that arrangement, city leaders had real incentive to lock in a local power source instead of renegotiating from scratch.
City administration had folded solar development into its Comprehensive Plan 2020-2030 back in late 2022, intending to stabilize electric rates and tap into direct-pay federal grant provisions created under the Inflation Reduction Act, according to Hometown Girard. That law allowed municipal governments without tax liability to receive direct cash payments for clean energy construction, giving a small city like Girard a financial path it wouldn't otherwise have had.
The federal pathway is a tax-credit election, not an automatic upfront grant: the IRS says local governments can receive elective payments for qualifying clean-energy investments even when they owe no federal income tax, after required registration and filing. The current clean-electricity investment credit covers qualifying facilities placed in service after Dec. 31, 2024, but federal law enacted in 2025 generally ends the solar credit for facilities placed in service after Dec. 31, 2027, subject to transition rules. Girard’s eligibility turns on project-specific requirements.
A Payment for the Project
In July 2026, the Girard City Council approved an ordinance and a payment to Priority Power.
Project Partners
The Girard solar project involved the City of Girard and Priority Power.
Kansas law gives municipal energy agencies a formal role in public-power projects: it authorizes them to plan, finance, construct, own or otherwise participate in solar and wind facilities, and to enter contracts for power purchases, sales and transmission. The statute permits participation in projects inside or outside Kansas, placing KMEA’s role in Girard’s project within the agency’s legislatively defined powers.
Girard isn't the first in the area to go solar. The Girard-headquartered Heartland Rural Electric Cooperative built a 1-megawatt solar farm nearby in Greenbush back in May 2021 through developer Today's Power Inc., as Fort Scott Biz has reported. That project came under a contract revision allowing electric co-ops to procure up to 15% of peak demand from renewables.
Girard’s project follows an earlier municipal-utility precedent in Kansas City, Kansas. The Board of Public Utilities says its 1-megawatt community solar farm began operating in September 2017, becoming the state’s first municipal-utility solar farm. Customers may lease panels from the centralized array, with the generated energy credited to their monthly bills—an approach that lets residents access a shared solar project without installing rooftop panels.
Crawford County itself has taken a more cautious stance on solar overall. During a May 2025 meeting, county commissioners confirmed that solar projects built within Girard city limits are exempt from the county's commercial solar development moratorium, according to Crawford County Board of Commissioners meeting minutes. While the county restricted rural solar farms elsewhere, incorporated municipalities like Girard retained their own authority over land-use approvals, which is what allowed this project to move forward inside city limits.
Solar Generation
Solar alone can't carry a grid through every emergency.
The scale of Girard's utility helps explain why both investments matter. Federal energy records from 2024 show the City of Girard's municipal electric utility delivers more than 31,000 megawatt-hours of bundled retail power annually to 1,554 customer accounts, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. As a municipally owned utility, Girard independently sets its own local power rates and manages its own distribution network, giving city officials direct control over how new generation sources like the solar farm get folded into daily operations.
