By Bill Raack, St. Louis Public Radio

St. Louis, MO – Ameren says it plans to install a solar energy system at its St. Louis headquarters next year.

It's part of the utility's effort to learn more about using the sun to create electricity. Proposition C -- approved by Missouri voters last year -- requires utilities to use solar, wind and water for 15-percent of its electricity production by 2021.

Ameren president Thomas Voss says the solar demonstration project will help it learn how to achieve that.

"Missouri is really not a good spot for renewable. It have very little wind resources and it's not considered a very good state for solar, either. We want to find that out. We want to experience that ourselves and find out how good it is or how bad it is," Voss said at a news conference Tuesday.

Voss says Ameren will share the results of its solar energy experiments with customers who may want to install their own systems at their homes or businesses.

"We can learn about the efficiencies of it, what's the reliability of it, how much of the time of the year will it be on, what are the maintenance issues related to it. There's just all those factors that we haven't had any experience with yet."

Another solar demonstration project will be developed at one of Ameren's sites in Illinois, which hasn't been determined yet.

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