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This is really neat - they are installing a large solar photovoltaic array on the capped landfill, here in Maynard, MA. When it is up and running and connected, it will have a capacity of ~1MW, which is enough to power about 200 homes! It is being installed at zero cost to the town, and we will be paying just 2.5¢ per kWh for the first 10 years, and for 11-20 years, just 7.5¢ per kWh.



I'll post more pictures as thing progress. Very cool...

Is panel maintenance and replacement built into the cost? What is the size (sq. ft.) of the project? Projected total kWh output? Who sweeps the snow off of the panels?

[Mark F. Madura]

No need to clear the snow. The panels heat up and generate electricity when they are covered with snow which eventually melts off.

What generates the heat to melt the snow? Yeah, most PV panels are black. But when covered with 6" (or a foot) of snow, there ain't a lot of sunlight getting through to the panel. The diffraction caused by just a few inches of snow crystals will diminish the effects of sunlight, especially at the low sun angles of winter.

Where are the environmentalists complaining that you're destroying some gopher/insect/ant's home? They've shot down quite a few of these in California - and out in the desert to boot! I'll never understand why they complain about renewable energy not being deployed when they won't ALLOW them to be deployed.

All the maintenance and repair is done by the company who installs the panels. There are no moving parts, and the inverter(s) are the only things that they have to worry about, really.

The sun melts the snow and the glass is slick, and it slides off fairly easily. The open air flow is actually a good thing in the hot weather by keeping the panels cooler, which makes them a little more efficient.

This site is a capped landfill that is required to be open and can't have any trees. We should be covering any and all flat roofs, and put canopy roofs over any and all parking lots - and we will have more electricity than we know what to do with.

The company that is leasing the use of the space is paying for the installment and the maintenance, etc. Wicked Local has this info:



I was not remembering the output correctly - it is less than I thought it is. The total capacity is ~1MW and the site is 14 acres. According to the article, the output is only enough for part (~25%) of the town's buildings. That doesn't sound right though - it should be enough for about 200 homes. If the town buildings are using as much electricity as 800 homes, I'd like to know why it is that much.

I also think that the article badly misstates the total annual output. A 1MW system can put out as much as 12MWh per day, so that would total ~4.3GWh per year. (Maybe my math is off?)

Here's the 210kW solar PV array on the REI parking lot in Framingham:



This array would be enough to provide electricity for about 42 homes.

Okay, I've got a data point - thanks to Joe K. who lives in New Jersey, and has a 9.9kW solar PV system (44 225W Sunpower panels) and in 40 months of operation, he has averaged 750kWh/month, and that averages 75.75kWh per kW of maximum capacity per month.

So, the 1MW system (which is using 240W panels so that means ~4,167 panels in total) would have about 75MWh output per month by this estimate, or about 900MWh per year. So, the number in the 2010 Beacon Villager newspaper was probably correct - except for the units.

The article said 1,125 MW but they had to have meant 1,125 MWh or 1.125GWh.

Hope they captrured the methane from the land fill before putting in the PV array. Hopefully in cogeneration mode ie. combined heat and power, the electricity and waste heat from the gas engine is utilised which maximises efficiency.
Quite common in Europe.

http://green.autoblog.com/2009/06/11/bm ... partanbur/
regrads

John Daglish

Our landfill is apparently not big enough to make methane capture viable. They did explore this - and I think we should definitely do it on all sewage treatment plants, at least.

The panels are all installed now, and the cabling has been started; though it appears they have yet to install the inverters - though maybe, they will use a couple of centralized units?