SunEdison, Inc. (NYSE: SUNE) has signed an agreement to develop a 2.6 megawatt solar power plant on a 12 acre ‘brownfield’ site in Winchendon, Massachusetts.
The previously unusable old landfill will soon be saving Winchendon up to $8 million on electricity over the duration of a 20 year power purchase agreement (solar PPA). The clean power facility will avoid 1,805 tons of carbon dioxide annually.
“This is a great opportunity for Winchendon to take an underutilized piece of land and turn it into a clean, reliable source of energy,” says Town Manager Jim Kreidler, “We’re excited to be working with SunEdison to make this project a reality, and with SunEdison’s fixed-price power purchase agreement we will save the town around $400,000 in the first year alone!”
The town will also receive incremental lease revenue from SunEdison.
The facility will be developed with support of preferred incentives for brownfield projects available under Massachusetts’ Solar Renewable Energy Certificates (SREC II) program. The support is intended to recognize, and help overcome, the disincentives to appropriate reuse or redevelopment that may result from the presence of oil or hazardous materials on such sites.
This won’t be the first old landfill SunEdison has constructed a solar farm on – last year the company completed construction of a 1.8 megawatt facility on a remediated EPA Superfund site in New Bedford, Massachusetts.
In other SunEdison news, the company and its yieldco, TerraForm Power, Inc. (NASDAQ: TERP), announced earlier this week the two have closed financing of a 97 megawatt portfolio of solar projects PV in the UK connected to the grid during the first three months of this year.
Comprising eight large-scale solar farms across England and Wales with capacities ranging from 6 – 19MW, the facilities have combined capacity enough to meet the power needs of nearly 30,000 households.
SunEdison states the UK will continue to be a key market for the company.
” Since entering the UK market, we have been able to connect over 375 MW in just 12 months,” said Jose Perez, SunEdison’s President of EMEA and Latin America. ” The total installed capacity of our projects in the UK powers the equivalent of more than 110,000 local homes per year.”
During this period, the company has raised £287.3 million for project financing and has transferred 238 MW of capacity to TerraForm Power’s operating portfolio.
