With the opening of a 3.5 megawatt solar panel facility, North Adams now expects to be 100 percent solar powered. The thousands of panels supplementing the electricity for the municipal and school buildings reside on a capped landfill about a mile from the city center. The city agreed to a twenty year purchasing agreement with Syncarpha Capital, a New York based private equity firm that deals heavily with solar energy systems.
“This development makes sense on so many levels: cost savings, renewable energy, adapative reuse of a capped landfill, and most importantly creating a mindset and infrastructure that will allow us to pursue other green initiatives,” Albombright said.
Thanks to the launch of a new solar power facility in early September, the smallest city in Massachusetts is now producing more solar power than the entire state did in 2007.
The facility feeds electricity into the power grid, which is purchased back by the city at a reduced rate. It is expected to generate 4.3 megawatt-hours of energy annually.
