ROCHESTER, N.Y. — New York State had more than 268,000 solar projects last year, with Monroe County home to more than 2,800 of those projects, according to data from NYSERDA. What happens with all of the energy those solar arrays produce?

A viewer, Lisa, writes: “With the number of solar farms taking up alarming amounts of land, where is all that energy going? … Is any of that energy going toward the surge in electrical need for data centers, etc?”

Solar Liberty maintains a 7,800-panel array on Lexington Avenue in Rochester. It’s one of dozens of large-scale solar projects popping up in the Finger Lakes region, including developments News10NBC has reported on in Livingston County and Genesee County.

“There’s so much coming on-line right now with these larger arrays,” said Rob Gauchat, vice president of sales and marketing at Solar Liberty.

News10NBC’s Emily Putnam asked Gauchat how that energy gets routed and where it goes. “This energy is essentially purchased by the utility, and then it’s typically going to be used in the local area, but it’s not segmented specifically to a certain building,” Gauchat said.

Once the power is harnessed, it all goes to the same pool of energy, which is distributed by utilities.

“Unless it’s tied directly into a building, let’s say it’s next to a data center and it was tied into a data center, then you know exactly where it’s going,” Gauchat said. “But when it just feeds the grid directly it gets mixed in with electrons from all other types of sources, too, and could be a gas plant or whatever, but it becomes what you call brown power because it gets mixed in together.”

RG&E says 7% of its power comes from solar, compared to 59% from natural gas and 24% from nuclear. The utility has options to get a break on your bill if you use solar panels. You can read more about that here.

If you have a question you’d like answered, send an email to goodquestion@whec.com.

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