A Community Partnership Powered by Solar
Wilson College and Chambersburg Electric Utility partner to advance sustainability and reliability goals through a utility-scale solar project.
Chambersburg and Wilson College Video
Public Power Partnership Benefits Local College and Community
For more than 150 years, Wilson College has been a fixture in the Borough of Chambersburg, helping to educate generations of students in south-central Pennsylvania. Founded in 1869 to provide educational opportunities for women, and then later becoming a coed institution, the college today serves more than 2,000 students and continues to play an important role in the economic, cultural and civic life of the borough.
Like many institutions of higher learning, Wilson College has long prioritized sustainability. College leaders explored the possibility of developing solar generation on campus; however, the cost of building and operating a large-scale solar project presented a significant challenge.
Fortunately, for Wilson College, their campus resides within the borders of a public power community where the electric utility was already working toward a solution.
While Wilson College was exploring solar options, the Borough of Chambersburg was developing its own plans for a utility-scale project designed to benefit its entire customer base, including community institutions like Wilson.
After years of work, the Borough of Chambersburg Electric Utility unveiled its 15-megawatt (MW), utility-scale solar array in 2021 and began providing its full output to the borough’s electric system in 2022. At that time, the project produced enough electricity to meet about 10 percent of the community’s annual electric demand.
For Wesley Fugate, who became President of Wilson College in 2020, the project immediately stood out as an example of how a community-focused public power utility can help local institutions achieve goals that might otherwise be out of reach.
“Because there is such a passion for ensuring that we are sustainable, the fact that the borough was so bold to say that ‘we want a significant portion of the electric power that we provide to come from solar,’ has been a game changer for us,” Fugate said. “It has been amazing for us to be able to rely on a community partner to do that work with us because it is not an inexpensive endeavor. The fact that the borough has been so committed to it has been really beneficial to us as an institution to allow our resources to go to other sustainability goals.”
According to Jeff Heverley, Director of Electric Utilities for the Borough of Chambersburg, the project succeeded because it aligned the goals of both partners. Wilson College sought greater access to renewable energy, while Chambersburg wanted to strengthen its power supply portfolio and meet customer reliability expectations. As Pennsylvania’s largest municipal electric utility, Chambersburg was able to develop a project that benefited both organizations and supported the community’s future.
“Wilson College looked into putting in solar as part of their sustainability goals and initiatives, but for one reason or another, it just never quite worked out for them doing it themselves,” Heverley said. “Concurrently, the borough was also looking into doing our own wholesale-level solar installation. That project is now complete, and we have been receiving the full output of that 15-MW solar installation here outside of Chambersburg, so that now benefits our whole power supply pool, with Wilson [College] included.”
Fugate believes the relationship that Wilson enjoys with its hometown utility is something special that many colleges can never experience.
“When I was interviewing for the position at Wilson College, one of the first thing that was commented to me was ‘hey, the borough owns all the utilities — they actually operate all of the utilities themselves,’ and at that point, I didn’t really understand what that meant to the benefit of the college,” Fugate said. “What I have come to understand is that means you have got local people who care deeply about ensuring that our business — the business of educating students — happens flawlessly. That is a really special relationship that I do not think every campus gets to have.”
From his role at the college, Fugate has experienced firsthand that public power’s local ownership keeps utilities invested in their communities, meaning that Public Power Is Community Focused.
Watch the video above to learn more about the Chambersburg Electric Utility and its relationship with Wilson College.
About the Campaign
Throughout 2026, AMP is featuring AMP Member utilities and the benefits of public power by spotlighting the relationship between the utilities and their communities through the Public Power Is Community Focused multimedia campaign. The campaign includes videos, stories, social media posts and graphics aimed at raising awareness of the value and impact of public power. The campaign highlights community benefits, such as reliability, local control and reinvestment by showing real stories of how public power supports education, businesses and community groups.