Tthe city of Knoxville plans to install a solar photovoltaic energy system to the roof of its convention center.

These EECBG grants, authorized in Title V, Subtitle E of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA) and signed into Public Law (PL 110-140) on December 19, 2007, were only recently funded thanks to ARRA, which became law in 2009 under President Barack Obama. The total amount funded under the EECBG program, $2.7 billion, provides grants to state and local government, Indian tribes, and territories within the contiguous U.S. of A to develop projects that improve energy efficiency and reduce the use of fossil fuels. Many of the latter rely on solar energy.

For the city of Knoxville, the $250,000 awarded will help reduce the amount of electricity delivered by the Knoxville Utilities Board, or KUB, the city’s electricity supplier. KUB, a purely local public utility, gets its electricity from the Tennessee Valley Authority, or TVA, whose generation mix is 62 percent coal, with only 0.02 percent of its electricity from renewable technologies like solar and wind, though it does get 4 percent from hydroelectric power.

On Feb. 5, the city issued a request for bidders who would be willing to both do the work designing and building the solar system, and financing the $750,000 balance still needed to complete a $1 million solar project, which is the city’s goal. Any award would be based not on the lowest bidder, but the one most qualified to handle all the myriad aspects of the project.

The city expects to have all bidder solicitations in place by March 5, and to award the contract by March 19. Once Knoxville City Council approval is obtained, likely this summer, Knoxville Sustainability Program Manager Susanna Bass expects the installation, comprised of about 500 solar panels delivering 100 kilowatts – or enough electricity to power about 15 average American homes – to be completed and delivering energy by 2012. The installation also needs to obtain environmental approvals.

As officials note, the city could simply have gone ahead with a solar energy system costing no more than the original allocation, or $250,000, but that would have provided a much smaller installation (and fewer “green” kilowatts) than would be possible through a power purchase agreement, or PPA.

Whatever size system is installed, however, it will become part of TVA’s Generation Partners Program, which aims to improve the utility’s carbon footprint. All the power available under the Generation Partners Program is fed into Eastern Interconnect portion of the U.S. utility grid.

The benefit for the participating solar company that agrees to take on the project is a wide array of renewable energy incentives, as both grants and tax credits, from local, regional and federal resources, and a premium price paid for the clean, renewable solar energy that is $0.12 cents above TVA’s prevailing rate.