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6.5 MW Solar Array In Brimfield, Mass., Repurposes Tornado-Damaged Land

In June 2011, a deadly tornado ripped through central Massachusetts, carving a path of destruction through Springfield and towns to the East. In Brimfield, the storm made a ruin of facilities owned by the Springfield Boys & Girls Club.

Soltas Holdings, the solar power development business owned by GameChange Racking CEO Andrew Worden, acquired the 300 acres and repurposed them for a 6.25 MW solar project.

“A local contact introduced us to the boys club, and we bought the land,” Worden says. “After the tornado damage, the road-front land was just really trashed, and the land was a really good value.”

The land consisted of three parcels fronted by main road, of which two were suitable for solar arrays. The third parcel consisted mainly of wetlands and was left undeveloped. The usable parcels sloped up to a plateau. However, the land was quite rocky - typical for New England - and thus unsuitable for a post-driven ground-mount system.

For this reason, Worden says his team elected to use GameChanger’s Pour-In-Place ballasted ground-mount system. Combined, the two arrays consist of 5,500 seven-foot Styrofoam leave-behind forms. Supports placed in each form support the rails, which, in turn, support 23,000 Canadian Solar panels. Concrete poured into the forms provides the ballast and ground support. Inverters are Solectria XT transformerless units.

“Interconnect was actually really easy because the tornado took all the original wires down,” Worden says. “National Grid had gone in there and put in brand-new wires that had much more capacity.”

The project, which has recently been sold, has a number of off-takers, including the Greater Lowell Vocational Technical High School, in Tyngsborough. The protect was one of the last to qualify under Massachusetts’ original solar renewable energy certificate (SREC) program. The commonwealth has since launched a revised SREC II program.

Worden says the solar project has turned a local disaster into a benefit for Brimfield, which had been receiving only a couple thousand dollars a year in taxes from the land when it was owned by a nonprofit organization.

“All of a sudden, we’re paying $87,000 in taxes a year,” Worden says. “It’s like the town getting one-and-a-half policemen.” R

- Michael Puttré

 

AES Selling Solar Biz
To SunEdison

AES Corp. has agreed to sell its 50% stake in Silver Ridge Power LLC (SRP), a joint venture with Riverstone Holdings LLC, to SunEdison Inc. Under the agreement, AES will sell its interest in solar photovoltaic projects in operation and under development in Europe, India and the U.S. for an equity purchase price of $165 million.

Through its ownership in the SRP, SunEdison will own 50% of a 336 MW portfolio of operating solar power plants, including the 266 MW Mount Signal solar project in California. The stake also confers a 40% interest in the 150 MW Tenaska Imperial Solar Energy Center West solar power facility to be completed in 2016. Tenaska has secured $450 million in commercial financing for the project.

In addition, AES will receive approximately $50 million in proceeds from Google’s tax equity investment in the Mount Signal project, which achieved commercial operation in April.

SunEdison also has an option to acquire AES’ 50% ownership in 130 MW of solar PV projects in Italy for an additional $42 million by August 2015. This agreement does not include the sale of AES’ 50% stake in the remaining 55 MW of solar PV projects in Puerto Rico and Spain.

Following the acquisition, the remaining 50% of SRP will continue to be held by an affiliate of Riverstone. After closing, Riverstone and SunEdison expect the joint venture to contribute the Mt. Signal project to SunEdison’s yieldco subsidiary.

SunEdison also expects to acquire Riverstone’s share of SRP’s interest in Tenaska Imperial Solar Energy Center West and to contribute this to its yieldco in 2016.

 

Caribbean Utility Pilots Grid-Tied Solar

Turks and Caicos-based Fortis TCI Ltd., owner of the islands’ electric utility, recently installed a 35.25 kW solar photovoltaic system on the company’s headquarters in Providenciales. The pilot project could serve as a model for solar development in the Caribbean, where the economics of renewable energy seem extremely promising.

Last year, developer Urban Green Energy (UGE), working with local partner Urban Green Environmental, won a contract to design and build the system, along with attending monitoring and evaluation systems and services. Now running for three months, the Fortis installation consists of 141 Hyundai monocrystalline PV modules on a Schletter roof-mount system. Power One supplied the inverters.

According to Jay Bennett, president and project manager of Urban Green Environmental, the system is currently the largest commercial solar installation in the Turks and Caicos, as well as the only one that is grid connected. He points out imported diesel-fuel supplies the vast majority of grid electricity for the islands, which form a self-governing territory of Great Britain. Nevertheless, Bennett says renewable energy for the Turks and Caicos is a matter of when, not if.

“Because it is such a new area for the Turks and Caicos, we have been spending a lot of time working with the planning department to establish appropriate guidelines,” Bennett says. “We are still trying to define the parameters through the government agencies. The government has just issued a draft renewable energy policy, which they have been working on for the last three years. Maybe by the end of the year the legislation will be enacted.”

In addition to working out tax policies and grid connection issues, Bennett says one of the key requirements for renewable energy installations is that they survive exposure to hurricane conditions. For example, the Fortis project was designed to survive sustained winds of 150 mph, with gusts up to 200 mph.

Ryan Gilchrist, assistant director of business development at UGE, says the Turks and Caicos have very strong wind and solar resources. They also have very high electricity rates. “When we run our economic model for different regions, the Caribbean - and the Turks and Caicos, especially - has some of the strongest payback that we have seen,” he says.

Gilchrist and Bennett agree that wind and solar both will feature strongly in the renewable energy strategy of the Turks and Caicos. Moreover, energy storage is also likely to prove popular for commercial and residential customers alike.

“I consider the optimal solution to be a combination of the wind-solar hybrid solution, and also a combination of grid plus backup storage,” Bennett says. “That’s the ideal system here, and that’s the way I think most of our clients are looking.”

- Michael Puttré

 

OCI Gets $40M Loan
For Alamo 4

OCI Solar Power LLC has signed a $40 million loan agreement with the North American Development Bank for the construction of the 39.6 MW Alamo 4 solar park in Brackettville, Texas. The power generated by the project will be purchased by CPS Energy of San Antonio.

Alamo 4 will feature polycrystalline PV modules mounted on a dual-axis tracking system, and it is being constructed on two contiguous parcels of land totaling 633 acres. The solar park will be interconnected through an existing transmission line to the Brackettville substation located adjacent to the northwest corner of the site.

OCI Solar is engineering and building the project and will operate it when complete. Construction has already begun, and the solar park is expected to go online in October.

Last year, the company completed its 41 MW Alamo 1 project and began construction on the 4.4 MW Alamo 2 facility. Both are located in San Antonio.

 

Vista Deploys 118 kW Rooftop Array In S.F.

Vista Solar has completed a 118 kW solar power system for DPR Construction, a San Francisco-based builder.

The system employs SunPower X21/345 solar panels on Silverback Solar racking. Vista Solar installed Solar Edge inverters with DC optimizers on each panel to produce as much power as possible on the constrained rooftop, even when other panels on the roof are shaded by the adjacent buildings.

The system is expected to generate at least 158 MWh of electricity per year, helping DPR meet 100% of the building’s annual electricity needs.

“While we regularly build much larger projects, the challenge of finding solutions for the site constraints and being able to take part in a net-zero retrofit, right in our backyard, made this an inspiring project to work on,” says Sam Kim, Vista Solar sales engineer.

 

SunPower To Build
50 MW Plant For Xcel

Xcel Energy and SunPower Corp. have signed a power purchase agreement to build a 50 MW solar photovoltaic power plant in Colorado’s San Luis Valley. Construction of the solar power plant is contingent on the project securing all required permits, interconnection rights and financing.

At the 320-acre site, SunPower intends to design and build its Oasis power plant system. Oasis is an integrated, modular solar power block design that SunPower says is engineered for rapid and cost-effective deployment of utility-scale PV systems. The company expects to start construction in 2015 and to achieve full commercial operation by the end of 2016.

SunPower has constructed two solar power plants in the San Luis Valley that currently generate power for Xcel. The 19 MW Greater Sandhill plant has been operating since 2010, and the 30 MW San Luis Valley Solar Ranch began delivering energy in 2011. S