You always remember your first… solar energy plant. And in the case of the people of Pittsfield in western Massachusetts, they will remember the roughly $10-million, eight-acre, 6,500 solar-panel power plant that is now the largest of its kind in New England. It is both the first plant in Pittsfield and first plant in all of western Massachusetts.
The Pittsfield, Mass. solar plant will serve 300 residences by the end of the 2010.
According to CBS 3 in Springfield, Massachusetts, the plant will go live at the end of the 2010 calendar year. At 1.8 megawatts (MW) of solar generating capacity, the plant will serve 300 homes in the service area of the Western Massachusetts Electric Company (WMECO).
It was built on marginal land at an abandoned brownfield. Area workers, along with local contractors in western Massachusetts, built the entire plant over the course of four months. Here’s Massachusetts Senator and Pittsfield native Benjamin Downing’s statement from the newly constructed solar site:
“We’re standing on a site that was dumped on with PCBs for the last quarter century and for the next quarter century it’s going to produce clean local renewable energy. That’s exactly the kind of thing we ought to be doing.”
Aside from the benefits associated with clean, predictably priced power, Pittsfield will receive an additional $150,000 in tax revenue each year.
