Sonic Drive-In of Iola is going solar. Crews from CDL Electric are in the final stages of installing 142 solar panels on the roofs of the restaurant’s stalls. All told, the project will be capable of producing just over 58 kilowatts, enough to offset 35% of the restaurant’s electrical use.
“We’re taking advantage of some federal tax incentives for the project,” said owner Jeff Ports, who also owns Sonic Drive-In locations in Chanute and Independence. “We’re really excited about the project.”
Solar panels at the Chanute and Independence locations have already been installed, said Ports, and the Chanute system is already producing electricity.
Sonic Drive-In was awarded $97,500 in grant funding last year from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The grants were part of the Rural Energy for America Program, or REAP, which provides grants and loan guarantees to rural small businesses and farmers to install renewal energy systems and efficiency improvements. 
SINCE 2014, REAP has awarded an estimated $1.2 billion in grants and around $2.5 billion in loan guarantees for solar in rural America. About 70% of those funds went to solar projects. More than 19,000 energy efficiency projects received assistance, according to the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.
REAP, however, has largely ended. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said last month her department will cease to deploy programs that fund solar or wind energy projects on active farmland and all projects that use foreign components. Rollins also announced that ground-mounted projects over 50 kilowatts or on cropland will no longer receive loan guarantees, a blow to farmers who depend on the guarantees to help finance the projects.
Ports said he expects Iola’s solar array to be online in the next 30 days. CDL employee Doyan Greenfield, who is based in Joplin, Mo. and has over ten years of experience installing solar panels, said his crew will likely be finished by the end of the week.
“These solar panels have a life expectancy of about 40 years,” noted Ports. “And with the federal incentives, we plan to recover the system cost in about three years.”
The solar project in Iola does not include a battery for electrical storage, said Ports, but that was by design. “Most of the time the sun is up, we’re open. So we’re using the electricity as quickly as the panels produce it.”
Ports has owned the Iola, Chanute and Independence Sonic Drive-In locations for about the last five years. A Chanute resident, he is also a real estate agent. Between the restaurants and other properties, Ports said that the Iola project will be his fifth solar installation — and likely his last.
