The Iowa City Municipal Airport is set to receive $442,800 in federal funding to install a new solar panel system on airport grounds.

The funding was announced Friday by the city of Iowa City, which said the funding was awarded by the Federal Aviation Administration under the bipartisan infrastructure law passed by Congress in November 2021.

Airport Manager Michael Tharp said the funding will help install 300 solar panels, which will reduce its electric utility costs by about half. The airport expects to have bids for the project starting in March, and a contract in April with construction to follow.

According to the city, energy generated by the panels will be used to help power the runway, terminal and building lighting. Tharp said the ground-mounted system will be installed in a green space on the northern part of the airport.

“This is something that the airport has wanted to do for a number of years now — we didn’t have the financing to be able to do it,” Tharp said. “The funding in the bill gave us essentially the financing to be able to pull it off.”

He said the airport already receives some funding under the law, which it has used to complete a study examining space needs for the terminal building.

Additional funding is expected to be received in the future, which will go toward this project. Tharp said the airport will apply for the funding in April, after it goes through the bidding process and determines a cost.

The $442,800 solar project award is based on an estimate by airport design consultant company Crawford, Murphy & Tilly. Tharp said the airport asked the design consultants go through a preliminary study to determine how much energy the solar panels needed to produce.

The installation is part of a two-phase project at the airport involving the switch to solar energy. The airport is in phase one with this initial funding, but phase two will see the installation of more solar panels. The second phase would involve panels powering the airport’s maintenance shop.