Centre County’s long-planned solar project falls apart after 6 years in the works

A major solar project that involves 10 Centre County entities and had been in the works for six years has fallen apart, with termination agreements set to be signed by the end of March.

The 10 participating members of the Centre County Solar Group, which was formed last fall to oversee the Solar Power Purchase Agreement, will soon receive termination agreements for the project, the solar group said during a meeting Friday morning at State College Area School District’s Panorama Village Building.

Changes at the federal level were cited as the reason for the termination agreements, but longtime opponents of the project that has been mired in controversy pointed to transparency, legal and management concerns.

Once termination agreements are approved by each entity at their respective March meetings, it will signify the official end of the SPPA.

The participating entities that signed 15-year contracts with solar developer Prospect 14 last June are State College Borough, College, Ferguson and Patton townships, the State College Area School District, the Centre Region Council of Governments, State College Borough Water Authority, College Township Water Authority, Centre County Government and the Centre Hall Potter Joint Authority.

SCASD Finance and Operations Officer and solar group coordinator Randy Brown told the CDT after the meeting that the school district and other entities will look at finding alternative ways of purchasing energy.

“We are disappointed that it had to end this way,” Brown said. “However, things happen, and projects take a different turn from time to time.”

How did federal changes impact the SPPA?

The distribution of the termination agreements follows a long line of controversy involving the project, including timeline delays during the COVID-19 pandemic, the surpassing of a legal fee limit in September 2024 and more.

But according to Prospect 14 and several current and former solar group members, the biggest roadblock in the project proved to be the Trump administration’s One Big Beautiful Bill.

Prospect 14 told the solar group in October that some of the policy changes included in the OBBB, like the expiration of tax credits and large tariff hikes, made the project difficult to finance, although no action to amend the entities’ contracts was suggested then.

After around a month and a half of cost evaluations, Prospect 14 returned to the solar group in December and requested that the entities’ contracts be renegotiated in a fashion that would make the project financially viable for them, but would end up eliminating all cost saving for the entities. In fact, local entities would have ended up paying about $650,000.

Despite trying to adjust the contracts’ length, power pricing and more, no adjustments were able to satisfy both party’s wishes. As part of the termination, Prospect 14 will reimburse $135,000 to the group, which is to be distributed among the 10 entities by their share of energy received to help cover the cost of unwinding the agreement.

“While the result is not what [the solar group] had hoped for, the way our respective communities came together over the last six years is an example of how valuable intergovernmental collaboration can be,” Brown said Friday, reading from an official solar group statement. “No doubt, the relationships and connections that have been made will continue and make our collective work better in the future.”

Dispute over who’s to blame for project’s failure

Those in attendance at Friday’s meeting included members of the public and an array of former and current local government officials from across the Centre Region and beyond, including five who spoke in opposition to the agreement, and two who defended it.

Some of those in opposition to the SPPA placed the blame on the working group members. Centre County Republican Committee Chair Michelle Schellberg called the failure of the agreement “unacceptable,” and said that it raised “serious concerns” about performance, transparency and fiscal stewardship.

Ron Servello, a Halfmoon Township supervisor and longtime opponent of the SPPA, agreed.

“They had lots of warnings and a lot of red flags, and they chose to ignore all those,” Servello told the media after the meeting. “A lot of people, including myself, tried to give them information from professionals in the field, and they chose to ignore that as well. ... I want to see accountability for this. I want to see financial accountability and legal accountability.”

Josh Portney, a former State College Borough Council member who has also been vocal about his SPPA concerns, said the solar group failed to properly share all the project’s risks, and recommended that each entity pursue its own solar arrays.

Peter Buck, a professor in Penn State’s Department of Energy and Mineral Engineering and an original SPPA working group member, defended the project. Had it been successful, it would’ve saved the entities “well in excess of a million dollars,” avoided significant yearly carbon dioxide emissions and would’ve helped meet various climate goals, he said.

“It took the full power of the federal government attacking clean energy in the United States to kill this project,” Buck said. “This project was perfectly viable until the One Big, Beautiful Bill passed, and that is a fact. There’s no way around that. We would not be sitting in this room were it not for that bill.”

Buck was joined by Ferguson Township Supervisor Omari Patterson, who shared his disappointment that the project flopped, along with his disappointment in “thinly veiled ‘I told you so’s’” from Schellberg, Servello and Portney.

In a talking point sheet from Prospect 14 that was distributed Friday, the developer wrote that the SPPA’s failure was not due to “project-related deficiencies” or “a lack of effort by either party.”

“Prospect 14 lost or canceled a substantial number of projects across its portfolio in 2025,” the sheet reads. “Many counterparties faced similar budgetary pressures and institutional constraints, leading to delays, renegotiations or terminations industry-wide.”

This story was originally published February 27, 2026 at 4:10 PM.