2 Megawatts – Enough to Power 300 Homes
[Correction: The company that installed the solar farm was misidentified. The constructor of this large system was S&C Electric, a leading provider of switching, protection, and control equipment for electric power systems.]
Solar panels installed on houses and barns and free-standing nearby are becoming a common sight in Suffield and elsewhere. These are typically sized in the single- or double-digit range of kilowatts. Now almost complete in town is a two-megawatt installation on idle land west of North Street and south of Halladay Avenue West. By a common equivalency, two megawatts will power about 300 homes – when the sun shines.
Kevin Sullivan, an environmentally sensitive nurseryman of Stafford and 1005 North Street, has leased the western 27 acres of his 51-acre parcel to Lodestar Energy, a company in Avon that has installed a number of such facilities, several in the four-megawatt range. State law exempts solar farms from local control, but Lodestar has discussed their plan with Suffield’s ZPC and has incorporated many beneficial features at ZPC’s request. The Connecticut Siting Council has jurisdiction and has approved.
Lodestar calls this solar farm “Canis Major,” after a constellation in the southern celestial hemisphere. The site was chosen in part because of its easy access to the 13.7-kV 3-phase power line atop the poles on North Street. It will have little visual impact on the community; from two homes at the end of Wendover Road, the panels can be seen through the trees and thicket, several hundred feet away. Ironically, the Tennessee Gas transmission pipeline that crosses Sullivan’s parcel abuts the eastern edge of the Lodestar Energy lease.
The installation, completed in just a few months this fall with overtime effort, was done by C&S Electric, a large, international company whose headquarters are in New Delhi, India. About 10,000 photovoltaic panels “Engineered in Germany,” 1 by 2 meters each, are set at 25 degrees permanent tilt on racks of long rails supported by driven posts. (The repetitive driving noise was somewhat annoying to neighbors for a while.)
Responding to this reporter’s query, Lodestar founder and managing director Jeff Macel said that he expected there would be some sort of payment in lieu of taxes to the town. First Selectman Melissa Mack reported recently that the Town of Suffield is working on an agreement with Lodestar Energy in which the Town buys net metering credits at a discount from Lodestar and uses them at retail value to reduce the Town’s Eversource bill.