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Solar panels paid for and installed through federal grant money at the Little Rock VA have sat unplugged for years. On Monday, some of Arkansas' congressional delegation called for an investigation to make sure it doesn't happen again.

Both the Little Rock and North Little Rock VA campuses had solar panels installed in 2013. The North Little Rock panels are currently in operation but the panels on the Little Rock campus have yet to be plugged in.

"Our concern is that the project was ill-conceived," said Senator John Boozman Monday from Washington D.C. "The reality is these things just don't make sense. This doesn't happen at TV stations, it doesn't happen in local businesses because you don't do things where you don't look ahead and make sure that all of these kind of components are working before they're installed because you're simply not going to waste money like that."

The VA says it was simply a case of planning the project around unknown variables, including a parking garage designed to go in where the solar panels were installed. According to the Little Rock VA, utility company Entergy was involved in the planning process.

"The Solar Panel project was well underway when the local station was approved for a parking garage in Aug 2012. The full extent of rework for the solar panel project was unclear until a site for the parking garage was selected in July 2013," VA officials told THV11 via email on Monday.

VA officials say they expect to have the solar panels online by fall of this year, at which point the hospital will get about 12 percent of its electricity from solar power saving around $150,000 a year.

But Senator Boozman still wants to know: why not work out all the details before construction began?

"So you put the panels in, you don't use them, and then you come back and take the panels out because you're doing another project?" said Boozman. "None of that really makes sense."

A statement e-mailed from Rep. French Hill's office read as follows:

"Why the VA chose wasting $8 million on a project they knew would eventually have to be relocated and shut down before it started rather than on providing our veterans with timely access to care and benefits is a mystery to me. And, this is just one of 90 similar project across the Nation, which is why Senator Boozman and I have asked the VA Office of the Inspector General to investigate this waste of taxpayer dollars and what we can do to avoid it in the future."

Stay with THV11 and THV11.com for developments in this story.