Carver town seeks to put solar plant on Route 44 near Boston
By Robert Knox, Boston Globe Correspondent / September 4, 2008
Source. Boston.com
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2008/09/04/
carver_seeks_to_put_solar_plant_on_route_44/
The town of Carver will ask state officials to consider its proposal to install a solar panel array along Route 44 to provide electricity for a town water-supply system. If the plan goes through, it would be the first time a state highway has hosted a solar power installation. A conceptual design calls for a rectangular assembly of solar panels 40 feet high and 325 feet long to be built on an embankment along a piece of the “new” Route 44 built several years ago. The site borders the Cole property in North Carver, which the town bought two years ago for conservation and to provide water for the town’s first municipal water system.
The panels would be visible from the highway, but would be situated well away from the roadway and the shoulder, according to Glen Berkowitz of Beaufort Power LLC, an energy consultant hired by the town to examine its property for renewable energy potential. The newer part of Route 44 is fenced, Berkowitz said, providing security for an installation. Town officials agreed last week to bring the idea to the state Highway Department, the property owner. Residents at a forum at which Berkowitz presented the concept were also enthusiastic, officials said.
“It’s right smack-dab on what the governor wants to do,” said Jack Hunter, the town’s planning and community development director, of the plan to use public land to produce renewable energy. “It would be visible to the public on a daily basis and generate a lot of excitement about alternative power.”
Berkowitz expects state highway officials to be receptive to the idea. “The governor has given them the charge to think of every creative way to combine renewable energy and the highway system,” Berkowitz said last week, after speaking to highway officials about the idea. They also told him Carver’s would be the first proposal for capturing solar energy along a highway to be brought to them, he said.
The roadside panels would produce about 140 kilowatt hours of power every year – equivalent to powering 20 houses – and roughly the amount of power needed to serve the planned municipal water system’s two wells, electric pumps, and water-treatment plant. The cost of the solar power installation would be $900,000, plus $75,000 for new power lines, Berkowitz estimated. At current electricity rates, the town would save $24,000 a year to power its water system, and would also earn $7,000 in credits from the power company.
Berkowitz is also asking the town to consider a second site for a solar panel array along one of the town-operated cranberry bogs on the 242-acre Cole property. A similar-sized solar panel system there would produce an equivalent amount of electricity, which the town could exchange with its electric company for a credit on its own bill.
Both sites are geographically favorable for providing maximum solar energy, Berkowitz said. The east-west direction of the highway and the Cole bog allow for panels to be erected on the north side of an open area facing south. Both sites slope upward close to the ideal inclination of 40 degrees, he said, allowing solar panels to face the sun’s rays directly and collect the most solar energy possible. Open spaces such as roadways and cranberry bogs also mean the sunlight won’t be obstructed. If the project proves viable, it may also pave the way to consider solar power installations along other east-west corridors, Berkowitz said.
One possibility: the Massachusetts Turnpike. Another factor that makes a roadside solar power plant possible is a favorable rate change in power charges contained in the state’s new Green Communities Act, passed in May. The bill requires power companies such as National Grid to give suppliers a better deal for power produced by renewable sources. Before the law’s passage, electric companies subtracted a significant power line distribution fee from the value of the power produced by municipalities and other entities by renewable means.
Guided by the town’s Industrial Development Commission and Green Committee, Carver officials also believe that state grants will be available to help pay start-up costs for the project.
“It’s certainly fair to say that we are encouraging renewable energy projects in a variety of ways,” agreed Robert Keough of the state’s Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs. The Solar Commonwealth program, established in January, reimburses communities for money spent on starting up solar energy projects, Keough said.
The solar energy proposal represents what Hunter called a “180 degree turn” from Berkowitz’s first thoughts on renewable energy at the Cole property – monitoring the site for possible wind power. While the town was interested in a wind feasibility study, erecting a steel wind monitor tower on the Cole property would involve cutting down an acre of trees in a pristine wooded area for an uncertain result. Last week, however, Berkowitz told the town that a wind feasibility study might be possible without cutting trees by using a new device that uses sound waves to measure wind velocity at altitudes of 500 feet from the ground. It is currently being tested at two bogs in Wareham.