APS Solar plant built near Phoenix landfill

The City of Phoenix has teamed up with Arizona Public Service to put a solar plant in a most unlikely place.

It's next to where the city dumped its trash west of the valley off State Route 85.

Tens of thousands of solar panels are being installed.

As we all know there are some 300 days of sun a year in the Valley of the Sun, it is a prime place for solar projects.

Workers are seen installing 50,400 solar panels on the property. The panels soak in the sunlight and transfer that power of the sun into electricity.

"The facility is an APS solar plant in partnership with the City of Phoenix, it is ten mega-watts, enough to provide energy for 2,500 APS customers," said Jenna Shaver with APS.

APS was hoping to finish construction earlier, but labor trouble at ports in California slowed down delivery of crucial materials.

Now the utility hopes to have the project completed by late May.

What makes this solar plant distinctive is not that it's built on a patch of pristine desert, but instead on land next to the place the City of Phoenix dumps its trash.

"So this land is very close to a landfill in Buckeye, and solar plants are in the middle of the desert, and what better use of land than to provide clean energy for customers," said Shaver.

The facility is one of the nine solar facilities APS uses around Arizona. The utility says solar is a big part of its energy mix.

"In total we have 875 megawatts of solar energy on our grid to serve our customers, that means a quarter of a million APS customers across the state," she said.

Solar plants are a natural fit in the valley of the sun. The new plant is more evidence that solar power is here to stay.