Pittsfield, Massachusetts, at the far western edge of the state of Massachusetts, doesn’t appear to have a lot to recommend it for cutting-edge technology other than its designation as the Berkshire County seat (and the fact that it is the largest city in that county).
Until you consider the fact that, in 2008, Country Home Magazine ranked it No. 24 on a list of “green” cities east of the Mississippi.
That green profile is about to become hugely more relevant with the Wednesday announcement by regional utility Western Massachusetts Electric Co., or WMECO, that Pittsfield is the first site chosen for WMECO’s eventual installation of up to 50 megawatts of solar capacity, with an initial installation of 1.8 megawatts.
The Pittsfield solar array will, when completed, be the largest in New England, and WMECO is the first utility in the state to be approved for utility-scale solar projects by the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities, which has authorized WMECO for an initial 6 megawatts.
For WMECO, it represents the final step in a settlement reached in 2009 with the state attorney general’s office that allowed the utility to recoup costs for energy efficiency initiatives under what is called an EERF (energy efficiency reconciling factor) tariff.
The Pittsfield installation also reflects the state’s renewable energy goal, which aims (under an initiative called the Green Communities Act) to install 250 megawatts of solar energy by 2017.
In addition, the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources (DOER) recently announced the implementation of a solar carve out as part of the state’s renewable portfolio standard, or RPS, which establishes a requirement of 25 megawatts of solar electricity for 2010.
WMECO, which is currently evaluating 25 other public and private sites for further construction (of at least 1 megawatt by 2012), is planning to put the Pittsfield array on six acres it owns on Silver Lake Boulevard, with a small spillover onto two adjacent acres in Wm. Stanley Business Park.
The land straddles a WMECO substation that will provide handy access to the utility grid, and the city was glad to sell the utility the remaining two acres in the business park, which are of little value since they lie along the edge of the brownfield remediation GE is undertaking on adjacent land.
Pittsfield’s 1.8 megawatts will produce enough power to serve nearly 2,000 homes, at a cost of about $10 million, according to WMECO spokeswoman Sandra Ahearn. Sixteen solar firms have been qualified as bidders on the project, which WMECO expects to complete by fall.
The Pittsfield solar array will prevent about 2,260 metric tons of carbon dioxide from being produced by WMECO, whose generation mix is largely nuclear and natural gas. This is the equivalent of taking 433 cars off the road or removing 294 homes from WMECO‘s service territory.