2025 Midwest Best Projects
Award of Merit, Energy/Industrial: City of Lebanon, Ohio Solar Project
City of Lebanon, Ohio Solar Project
Lebanon, Ohio
Award of Merit
Submitted by Kokosing Industrial/Kokosing Solar
Owner: City of Lebanon, Ohio
Lead Design Firm, General Contractor: Kokosing Solar
This project transformed 41 acres of city-owned floodplain into Ohio’s largest municipal solar array. Once considered unusable land, these sites now generate clean energy, turning underutilized property into a long-term community asset and a model for other cities.
Construction began in March 2024, with Kokosing Solar self-performing most of the work. The central challenge: designing a system resilient to future flooding.
Using FEMA flood maps, the team engineered a custom racking system tailored to each site’s terrain. Safety was equally innovative. Instead of ladders, Kokosing created mobile scaffold buck carts, which helped reduce fall hazards and worker fatigue.
This proactive solution helped deliver the project without a single recordable safety incident—showcasing how strategic partnerships can power sustainable, safe and resilient infrastructure.
