Greenskies Launches Bay State Landfill Project
Press Release | West Boylston, MA
October 17, 2016
Greenskies Renewable Energy has started to build a 2-megawatt solar array that will be assembled on a capped landfill in West Boylston, Mass.
The ground-mounted array will be the second largest project ever built by Greenskies, the Connecticut-based company with the largest market share of the U.S. solar industry’s commercial and industrial market sector, according to a recent market study. The company’s largest solar project to date was a 5-megawatt solar energy plant built on a 43-acre tract of land in East Lyme, Conn., in 2014.
The West Boylston project will be built in partnership with the West Boylston Municipal Light Plant (WBMLP), a municipally owned and operated utility company. The array will cover about six acres of the landfill site, located off Route 140 at the corner of Temple and Pierce streets, said Michael Daly, a business development manager at Greenskies.
About a dozen community leaders, WBMLP representatives and state and local elected officials, including State Sen. Harriette Chandler, D-Worcester, and State Rep. James O’Day, D-West Boylston, attended the ceremonial kickoff to the project.
The completed array will consist of about 6,500 320-watt solar photovoltaic panels and 26 inverters, Daly said. It will be built using a ballasted racking system that will allow the panels to be installed without penetrating the landfill cap.
The array is expected to produce about 2.7 million kilowatt hours of clean electric energy per year, power that will be distributed to the municipal grid, resulting in a net savings of about $1.8 million for the community over the life of the array, said Jonathan Fitch, general manager of the WBMLP.
“We are proud to be partnering with WBMLP on this initiative,” Daly said. “Jon Fitch and the WBMLP’s board of commissioners have done a great job. They are innovators who are certainly aware of the need to serve the 3,500 residents and businesses of West Boylston with the most dependable and cost-effective power possible.”
The project is expected to be completed by early next January.
Greenskies was the Number One-ranked solar developer in the commercial/industrial niche according to the U.S. PV (photovoltaic) Leaderboard released in June, 2016. The Leaderboard is compiled quarterly by GTM Research, the solar industry’s leading research firm and data tracker.
The company was also ranked as the nation’s Number One solar developer among commercial contractors on Solar Power World’s 2016 Top 500 Solar Contractors list. Solar Power World is the solar industry’s leading business-to-business publication.
Greenskies designs, builds and maintains solar photovoltaic systems for commercial and industrial clients, municipalities and government agencies, educational institutions and utilities throughout the United States.