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City unveils solar field on a former landfill
City unveils solar field on a former landfill
Listen to this articleThe city of Rochester unveiled its new solar field Wednesday, Oct. 25, a project that capped a former landfill and promises to supply 2.6 megawatts of power.
Mayor Lovely Warren, other city officials and developers of the solar energy project held a ceremonial ribbon-cutting at the former Emerson Street Landfill, which backs up to a playing field at Edison Technical High School. The field contains 7,800 solar panels that “will help reduce our carbon footprint by 2,300 tons a year,” Warren said, noting that’s the equivalent of taking 500 cars off the road.
The solar panels will help the city meet its climate action plan of reducing carbon emissions by 20 percent by 2020 and by 40 percent by 2030, Warren said.
“Climate change is real. We all know that,” Warren said.
The project is expected to start generating electricity in about two weeks, when final transmission details are cleared.
The city is partnering with AES Distributed Energy of Colorado, which owns and will operate the solar panels and will sell all of the power they produce to the city for at least the next 25 years. The city won’t necessarily use the power, which will be fed into the power grid, but will get credit for it on its electricity bills for City Hall and a service center on Mt. Read Boulevard. The city also retains ownership of the land.
The project was developed and built by Solar Liberty of Buffalo, whose vice president, Nathan Rizzo, estimated the cost at $4 million to $4.5 million. He said the field is one of the largest solar projects on a landfill in the state and that he hopes it will be the first of many.
Warren noted that the city saved $4 million by using iron slag from the excavation of the Port of Rochester to provide a footing underneath the 8-acre solar array. The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority also contributed to the project.
NYSERDA’s Houtan Moaveni, assistant director of the state’s solar initiatives, said “This is a great project, so let’s do more of them.”
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