In a surprising development, National Grid, an East Coast regional utility, has gotten a thumbs up from the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities for its five planned solar installations.

The development is only surprising in view of the fact that National Grid recently put the screws to Deepwater Wind, an offshore wind farm planned for Rhode Island, off the coast of Block Island, by refusing to buy the electricity generated.

Negotiations continue, but clearly the developer is asking too much per watt. In addition, recent research shows that deepwater wind facilities (in 100 to 200 feet of water) lose stability, and can cost too much for practical power supply (though Norway’s Hywind is attempting to disprove this).

Aesthetics rule, too, with Deepwater Wind proposing moving its turbines even farther offshore to avoid offending the eyes of coastal Rhode Island residents, as happened with Cape Wind, where Kennedy compound residents have fought long and hard to prevent the facility from emerging from a regulatory hell into a real-world energy solution.

If nothing else, developments prove that solar energy is more readily accepted than wind energy, even though wind is proven more efficient at generating electricity (per dollar spent). In addition, National Grid already has more than 20 years of solar experience, starting with the 1980 installation, in Gardner, Massachusetts, of 30 home-solar arrays, and more recently with a 100-kilowatt installation at Beverly High School, in Beverly, Mass.

National Grid will own the most recent installations, as permitted under Mass. law by the Green Communities Act, which allows utilities to own and operate up to 50 megawatts of solar power. They are located at:

• Victory Road in Dorchester (1.3 megawatts)
• Rover Street in Everett (0.6 megawatts)
• Hilldale Avenue in Haverhill (1 megawatt)
• Railroad Street in Revere (0.7 megawatts)
• Sutton/Northbridge (National Grid’s Distribution Center, 1.2 megawatts)

Rated at 4.8 megawatts total, the solar installation will generate enough electricity to power about 1,000 homes, and prevent about 3,000 tons of carbon dioxide being produced by fossil-fuel generation per year.

Spread over this year and next, four of the solar arrays will be placed at former brownfield sites; i.e., abandoned or under-utilized commercial and industrial sites which may or may not have received some form of environmental remediation. The cost is estimated at $31 million, a price comparable to other 5-megawatt installations across the country. The cost to National Grid ratepayers is estimated at 0.06 cents per month. National Grid serves customers in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York and Rhode Island, and manages the LIPA (Long Island Power Authority) electricity network.