The temperature gauge on my car reads a frosty -16C (3F) as I pull off the highway and onto the side road next to the Willow solar farm, about 50 miles north of Anchorage, Alaska. The panels, ice-covered behemoths that rise starkly against the still-dark sky, are incongruous sight in the snowy landscape. And considering that the sun is just peeking over the mountains at 9:00am, it also feels like a highly impractical venture. Standing in the middle of the farm, freezing cold, slipping on the ice, it is not what you expect when visiting the largest and newest solar farm in the state.

In northerly regions like Alaska, where daylight hours are minimal for a good portion of the year, the use of solar power seems improbable, if not impossible. Nearly 85% of land in the state has at least some level of permafrost and even in the southern regions, winter months receive minimal daylight. But this solar farm in Willow, is one of those proving that solar can work even in the most unexpected cold and northerly climates.

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Sited a few hundred miles south of the Arctic Circle, the Willow farm gets less than six hours of daylight during the winter months. In January, the Alaskan solar company Renewable IPP switched this 10-acre farm on, making it the largest in the state. Its output is expected to be 1.35 megawatt hours per year – enough to provide power for about 120 average homes year-round. The farm is made up of 11 rows of panels, nine 133 kW rows and two smaller 70kW rows that were the farm’s pilot project.