Jimmy Carter’s solar farm is still powering his hometown — and his legacy

• Give A Shit About Nature
• April 12, 2026
• Sustainable Living
• 0 Comments

In February 2017, Jimmy Carter stood in a field in Plains, Georgia — the same small town where he was born, where he farmed peanuts, where he would eventually die at 100 years old — and watched a ribbon get cut on a solar farm built on land his family had worked for generations. He was 92. The panels started turning toward the sun. They haven’t stopped since.

Carter passed away on December 29, 2024, peacefully at home in Plains, surrounded by his family. He was the longest-lived president in American history. But the solar farm he leased to SolAmerica Energy in 2017 continues to generate electricity for the town he never left — and has since become a living piece of his environmental legacy in ways even its builders didn’t anticipate.

A 50-year arc toward the sun

Carter’s relationship with solar energy stretches back to the 1970s. During the Arab oil embargo, he made energy independence a centerpiece of his presidency — installing solar panels on the White House roof in 1979 and calling on Americans to embrace clean energy at a time when doing so was politically costly. President Reagan had them removed in 1981. (Those original 32 panels are now split between the Smithsonian Institution, the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, and a solar museum in Dezhou, China.)

The Plains solar farm, built almost four decades later, brought that arc full circle. SolAmerica first approached Carter’s grandson, Georgia state senator Jason Carter, with the idea. When told about it, Jimmy Carter’s response was characteristically direct: “How big? When can we do it?”

“Distributed, clean energy generation is critical to meeting growing energy needs around the world while fighting the effects of climate change. I am encouraged by the tremendous progress that solar and other clean energy solutions have made in recent years and expect those trends to continue.” — Jimmy Carter, at the Plains solar farm opening ceremony, February 2017

The project covered 10 acres of former peanut and soybean fields. Florida-based J&B Solar installed 200 concrete foundations, aluminum racking, and 3,852 polycrystalline panels in a single-axis tracker configuration — meaning the panels rotate throughout the day to follow the sun and maximize output. On a clear day, the array generates 1.3 megawatts of electricity.

SolAmerica signed a 25-year Power Purchase Agreement with Georgia Power running through 2042, with projections of more than 55 million kilowatt-hours of clean energy over the agreement’s lifetime.

In June 2017, SolAmerica also installed 324 solar panels on the roof of the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library in Atlanta, supplying approximately 7% of the library’s electricity from clean energy.

What’s happening on the farm now

The solar farm is fully operational — confirmed by SolAmerica to still be running at its original capacity. But the site has evolved into something beyond a power generation facility.

Researchers from the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences have been using the Plains farm as part of a broader study on biodiversity at solar sites, funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Energy Technology Office. The project — called PV-SMaRT (Photovoltaic Stormwater Management Research and Testing) — studies how solar farms affect stormwater infiltration and runoff across five sites nationwide. Plains is one of them.

UGA entomologists have been planting wildflowers and native grasses among the solar panels to test whether the space beneath and between arrays can support pollinator habitat. Restoring pollinator corridors was a documented priority of Rosalynn Carter, who passed away in November 2023. Researchers selected species that bloom under the panels to maintain full-season flowering without competing with the solar array’s output.

The Carter farm has become a model not just for community solar energy but for what researchers call “agrivoltaics” — the dual use of land for both solar generation and ecological or agricultural purposes.

Carter’s solar legacy, by the numbers

• 1979 — Carter installs 32 solar panels on the White House roof, becoming the first president to embrace solar energy.
• 1981 — President Reagan has the panels removed. Carter continues advocating for renewable energy privately.
• 2017 — The Plains solar farm opens with a 25-year PPA with Georgia Power running through 2042.
• 2017 — 324 solar panels installed on the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, supplying 7% of its electricity.
• 2022 — UGA researchers begin a DOE-funded biodiversity study using the Plains farm as one of five national research sites.
• 2024 — Jimmy Carter dies December 29, at age 100, in Plains, Georgia — the town his solar farm continues to power.

Why it still matters

When Plains residents talk about the solar farm, they tend to say the same thing. As Jan Williams, who used to run the Plains Historic Inn, put it when the farm first opened: “When I told people we were getting solar panels, they said, ‘In Plains?’ They say, ‘Well, that’s because of Jimmy Carter.'”

Carter understood early — long before solar was politically safe or economically obvious — that distributed clean energy was one of the most democratic tools available. Not a utility-scale project requiring billions in capital, but a farmer leasing 10 acres. A community taking partial ownership of its own electricity supply. A peanut farm becoming something new.

The 25-year agreement SolAmerica signed with Georgia Power runs to 2042. By then, the Plains solar farm will have generated more than 55 million kilowatt-hours of clean electricity. Carter won’t see that milestone. But his old farmland will keep turning toward the sun.

Carter once said he hoped Plains would become “self-sufficient someday to a great extent because of the example we’re trying to set here.” That example is still being set — and studied, and built upon — long after he’s gone.