ANN ARBOR TOWNSHIP — On Tuesday, officials from DTE, Domino’s Farms and Ann Arbor Township showcased what they touted as the state’s largest solar array— until they build a bigger one.

End-to-end, the panels could cover an area slightly larger than the University of Michigan’s football field. Even larger projects are planned to open both this year and the next.

The array, which is just off M-14, has more than 4,000 panels angled to catch the sun’s rays and turn that energy into about 1.1 megawatts, enough to power nearly 200 homes.

“It’s part of DTE’s broader strategy to diversify over time to a greener, cleaner, renewable energy portfolio,” David Harwood, DTE’s director of renewable energy told The Detroit Free Press. “I’m also glad— as much as we’re here today to celebrate this project— that we’re not done.”

The project at Domino’s Farms— as well as other planned ones— highlights DTE’s desire to generate more solar energy, which, for many years, was thought to be too expensive and inefficient to be viable on a large scale.

The move to renewable energy sources on a larger scale in Michigan has picked up in the past five years because renewable energy is clean and helps power companies meet regulatory restrictions on emissions; and because the cost to generate it has come down.

DTE Energy said the second solar array could be as much as 50 times larger than the one at Domino’s Farms. It likely would be built in southeast Michigan and could be operational as soon as the end of next year.