The fields in back of the Concord Transfer Station where a 6.7-megawatt DC solar array on the Old Turnpike Road site near the city transfer station. (Photo by Geoff Forester/Concord Monitor)
Concord may finally be joining the list of places putting solar farms atop their closed landfills.
The final city permission for a 6.7-megawatt DC solar array on Old Turnpike Road near the city transfer station is expected to come from the Planning Board this month. If all goes well, by next spring the array will be generating enough electricity on a sunny day to power roughly 6,000 homes.
Concord is leasing 17 acres to Kearsarge Power, which will place roughly 11,000 panels there. The site has three-phase power, necessary for such an array, but Unitil needs to move one line and do some upgrades to a substation.
Most of the electricity generated by the panels will be bought by the city. “We’re talking to several other municipalities who want the remainder of the power,” said Andrew Bernstein, managing partner for Kearsarge Power, which will build and operate the array.
Finding customers to sign long-term contracts to buy electricity, known in the industry as offtakers, is required for large solar arrays to operate under net-metering laws in New Hampshire. Bernstein said getting offtakers and getting an interconnection to the power grid are the two biggest obstacles to multi-megawatt solar arrays in New Hampshire.
Landfills that have been shut and covered over with a plastic cap and soil are considered prime territory for solar farms because protecting the cap means nothing heavy can be built on them and they have no trees to block sunlight. Manchester has a 3.3-megawatt array atop its closed landfill alongside I-293, Somersworth is building a 2.6-megawatt array on its landfill, and Derry has just approved a 2-megawatt system atop its. Dunbarton installed a solar array on its landfill in 2022 and Bow and Hudson are in the process of doing this, as well.
New Hampshire has more than 250 closed landfills, according to the NH Department of Environmental Services, although many would not be suitable for solar arrays.
One national study from the Rocky Mountain Institute estimated that solar on closed landfills around the country could generate 60,000 megawatts of electricity at peak, more than twice as much electricity as all six New England states use at once.
