By Aditya Jain and Vincent Stanton, Jr.
Imagine a project that would produce a new recurring revenue stream for Belmont without any upfront cost, utilizing only town-owned land and buildings, while lowering electricity costs and helping the town achieve its green energy goals. That could be the payoff for installing photovoltaic (PV) panels on town properties.
Suitable town-owned sites include non-historic buildings with large flat rooftops, parking lots, and open ground including the former incinerator site along Concord Avenue. Adding PV arrays on privately owned rooftops and parking lots could significantly expand the network of arrays and improve the economics. The MBTA is another possible partner, as discussed in “Could the Community Path Host a Solar Array?” in the July 2022 BCF Newsletter.
To understand how Belmont-generated green power might help control the cost of electricity, consider that Belmont Light will be implementing a 13% rate increase in January 2023. As Belmont Light Board chair Steve Klionsky explained to the Select Board on December 5, 2022, the increase is largely driven by surging fuel prices. The price of natural gas more than quintupled from a trough around $1.63 per million BTU in June 2020 to a peak around $8.81 in August 2022.
While Belmont Light will have a 100% renewable energy portfolio in 2022—making it a leader among Massachusetts municipal utilities—the contracted green power does not cover peak loads on hot, humid summer days. As Klionsky explained, “Belmont Light seeks to sign contracts for power for 80% of its needs over the course of a year. And then the rest it buys on the spot market.”
That is, during a heat wave, Belmont Light, like all utilities, has to supplement its contracted power purchases, typically made years in advance of consumption, with spot market purchases at much higher prices. It also has to pay the regional electric grid operator, ISO-New England, a capacity charge to build and maintain the gas-fired plants that come on line only at peak demand times. The more energy Belmont Light needs from the grid at peak demand times, the higher the capacity charge.
Local solar power plus battery storage would allow Belmont Light to reduce, or possibly eliminate, the amount of power it must purchase on the spot market during summer heat waves. The fact that peak solar power output coincides with peak Belmont Light demand on long, hot, sunny summer days is fortuitous, but the timing is not perfect. Peak solar electricity generation occurs around noon and declines in the late afternoon, while peak electricity consumption in Belmont occurs around 5 to 7 PM when residents get home and crank up the air conditioning.
Battery storage can bridge that gap. Storing energy for even a few hours and discharging it at peak demand time could make a big difference in the overall cost of electricity for Belmont Light and its customers.
Incentives, incentives, incentives
State and federal incentives help make solar PV project economics work for everybody: developers, electric utilities, municipalities, and their residents. Incentive structures provide both subsidies and the level of certainty required by lenders to finance projects that will generate 25 years of modest cash flows with no obvious way to cash out of the investment. As Everett Tatelbaum, vice president at solar developer Kearsarge Energy and a Belmont resident,explained, the current set of solar incentives in Massachusetts favors the investor-owned utilities (IOUs) National Grid, Eversource and Unitil, over the 40 Massachusetts municipal utilities.
“In a town with a municipal light department, there’s still a sort of fundamental mismatch on the value of a given kilowatt hour of energy . . . versus the value of a kilowatt hour of energy in IOU territory where the state has said: Next door in Watertown, a kilowatt hour of solar might be worth $0.20 if a solar project generates it and sells it back to the grid. But in Belmont, it’s worth probably half that.”
However, Tatelbaum also noted that it is likely that the solar incentives in the 2022 federal Inflation Reduction Act will help the economics of a Belmont PV array.
Several solar developers interviewed for this article, including Tatelbaum, agreed that two keys to an economically attractive project are being large scale and having at least one project element with generating capacity of 1 megawatt (MW) or greater to anchor the economics of smaller project elements.
Under ideal circumstances, ground-mounted solar arrays are the least expensive type of array to build, with costs as low as $1 to $2 per watt of generating capacity. Rooftop PV arrays have an average build-out cost of $1.80 to $2.80/watt, while parking lot canopies (carports) cost about $2.80 to $4/watt. The building cost affects the financial viability of a project.
Belmont’s potential 1 MW+ arrays
Incinerator site
The biggest town-owned parcel for solar development has already been designated for that purpose by the Select Board. It’s the former incinerator site on Concord Avenue, which occupies 25 acres along Beaver Brook and is suitable for a ground-mounted PV array.
According to a March 2017 report by consultant CDM Smith, which studied possible uses of the site for the town, “ . . . historically landfilled portions comprise three areas (A, B, and C) totaling approximately 17 acres . . . The remaining 8 acres of the site are predominantly wetlands . . . ” The CDM report indicates that Area C could be developed now, with no limitations, while Area A could be developed for solar PV subject to MassDEP approval of the existing clay cap. Those two areas comprise 7 developable acres.
Belmont Director of Community Development Glenn Clancy confirmed in December 2022 that the the focus of current efforts is the capping of Area B. Thus planning for an array on Areas A and C (pending Mass Department of Environmental Protection approval) could begin now.
The former incinerator site areas. Graphic: Vincent Stanton, Jr.
According to a 2013 National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) study, a standard ground-mounted 1 MW array requires 5.5 acres. However, that study mostly included arrays with panel efficiencies of 10% to 16%, and the fraction of land occupied by PV panels in the studied properties ranged from 13% to 92%. With panel efficiencies exceeding 22% in 2022, more recent sources suggest that 4 to 4.5 acres is adequate. A recent 100 MW PV development in Texas that is placing panels on the ground flush against each other, stabilized by cables attached to the panels, expects to produce 1 MW on less than 2.5 acres. Utilizing the developable plateaus of incinerator site Areas A and C (7 acres) should allow construction of a 1.6 MW or larger array. Possible future expansion to Area B (10 acres), after capping, could potentially add another 2+ MW.
Cambridge Reservoir
A second opportunity for ground-mounted solar is the former Cambridge Reservoir, located between Cushing, Oakley, and Payson Roads. The 11.75 acre site is owned by Cambridge, which over 20 years ago replaced the reservoir with two large below-ground water storage tanks covered by a flat, grassy field surrounded by the rim of the former reservoir. In 2011, the Cambridge Water Board hired consultant CDM to perform a feasibility study of a PV array at the reservoir, but project evaluation seems to have stalled there. The feasibility study may have discovered significant obstacles.
The flat area above the water tanks comprises 250,000 sq. ft. (5.74 acres), about half the total site area. A low-angled PV array limited to the flat area would accommodate an arracy of approximately ~1.35 MW array.
The Cambridge Reservoir; area of inner flat plain (yellow dashed line) calculated in GoogleEarth Pro (upper right
corner): 250,055 square feet. Graphic: Vincent Stanton, Jr.
An alternate design would be to exploit the angle of the sun by adding panels on the northern and eastern ends of the sloping bowl to better capture sun rays from the south and west. This arrangement would not be visible from abutting properties. It would cover about 305,000 feet and might produce 1.65 MW. Since late afternoon is closest to peak demand time on hot summer days, the panels angled toward the setting sun would facilitate electricity generation when it is most valuable. This project would require the cooperation of Cambridge, but that seems plausible; Cambridge is served by Eversource, but Belmont Light is better situated to buy electricity from an array in town. Cambridge pays Belmont an annual payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) for the property.
A third property that could be explored—also not under Belmont’s control—is a large, underutilized parking lot on the McLean property adjacent to Belmont conservation land.
The new Belmont Middle and High School, when complete, will have the largest roof of any town-owned building. A 1.3 MW rooftop PV array is planned. However, that project has been designed to address the electricity requirements of the building, not as a facility that could improve Belmont Light’s economics by shaving peak energy costs as described above. That decision could be revisited, particularly since the school array will produce maximum energy during summer vacation.
Potential sub-1 MW municipal arrays: rooftops
The Chenery School also has a flat rooftop. A 78-panel, 29.6 KW array was installed on a small sloping part of the roof in late 2021, funded by Belmont Light and by an incentive payment to Belmont by Direct Energy Solar of $28,000. The flat part of the Chenery roof, about 65,000 sq. ft. clear of utility vents, is open for a potential solar array.
The Chenery School was not designed for a PV array, so an engineering study would be required to determine what the roof could support. Newer technologies like flexible, lightweight, adhesive-backed thin film solar may be an alternative to conventional panels. They adhere to membrane roofs and can weigh as little as 7 oz per sq. ft. The main disadvantage is lower efficiency, generally in the 8% to 11% range. However, at least one thin film technology, copper gallium indium diselenide (CIGS), offers efficiencies comparable to silicon panels (about 20%), albeit at a higher cost.
The Wellington School’s roof is about 40,000 sq. ft.. In 2013, the Belmont School Department contracted for a 500+ panel, 111.65 KW solar PV array on the Wellington School roof, following review and approval by the Planning Board. Neighbor concerns about noise were addressed by arranging to locate six inverters in the basement. However, when the chosen solar contractor, Broadway Electric, went out of business in spring 2014, then-superintendent Kingston decided to pull the plug on what was—as a one-off project—an economically borderline proposition.
The 2014 contract was for an array serving the school’s electric needs, but that could be reconsidered since a collection of projects with Belmont Light as electricity buyer may be more economically attractive.
The flat Winn Brook School roof is nearly the same size as the Wellington roof. As with the Chenery School, an engineering study of roof capacity would have to be performed to understand what is possible, and thin film technology may be the best alternative for solar power production. The flat part of the Butler School roof falls in the same category.
Adding up town-owned ground, roof, and parking lot arrays yields an estimated 6.47 MW of electric generating capacity.
Moving beyond school department buildings, the next largest assemblage of town-owned flat roofs is in the Department of Public Works yard, where 10 flat and angled building roofs provide about 90,000 sq. ft. of potentially usable surface. Again, thin film solar may well be the best option for buildings not designed to support solar panels.
The new library will have a solar roof. However, as with the Middle and High School, it will power the library, not the grid.
Potential sub-1 MW arrays: parking lots
Although parking lot PV arrays are more expensive to build than other arrays because the taller support beams carry heavier loads, many nearby municipalities have installed them. Watertown, Cambridge, Lexington, Waltham, and many other local communities have large carport PV arrays, including some on public lots. Unique advantages of carports include shading cars during hot summer days, preventing snow and ice accumulation and saving plowing costs during winter, and potentially recharging electric cars while owners work or shop during peak electricity generating periods (an additional source of revenue).
The largest Belmont-owned parking lot will be the new middle-high school lot, which is actually a collection of parking areas spread across campus that take up about 98,000 sq. ft. One parking zone is pushed back against the Fitchburg Line, where a fence-mounted PV array along the train line could complement a carport over the adjacent parking lot. Collectively, they encompass about 300,000 sq. ft. Assuming 10 watts per square foot that area could support about 3 MW of PV arrays.
Adding up town-owned ground, roof, and parking lot arrays yields an estimated 6.47 MW of electric generating capacity. That likely constitutes an economically viable scale, and does not include Area B of the incinerator site, potentially worth another 2.35 MW, or the expanded Cambridge Reservoir array on part of the inner sloped areas, worth another 0.3 MW. Those two elements would push the total over 9 MW. This total also doesn’t include the planned behind-the-meter projects that are not intended to feed into the electric grid on the middle-high school roof, the library roof, and the small array installed on the Chenery School roof last year.
Private solar arrays
There are far more commercial than municipal flat roofs and parking lots in Belmont. Nonprofits, particularly churches, also own large parking lots. In most cases the economics of a one-off project on a modest-sized commercial building or parking lot are not compelling.
When asked whether the town could help by providing a template for interested private and nonprofit property owners to participate in a town-driven solar PV project, Tatelbaum said developers would be interested “. . . if somebody did the legwork to put together a proposal that said there are these 20 sites and they will use a single negotiated lease so that the sponsor, or the developer, isn’t necessarily trying to negotiate 20 different leases with 20 different building owners.” Tatelbaum also said that Belmont Light would be the obvious electricity buyer and should be involved in any discussion about the best arrangement.
The town’s payoff might include a PILOT from the developer reflecting the larger scale and enhanced economics of the project. Private and nonprofit property owners would receive annual lease payments for use of their property and could also receive discounted electricity prices.
As an example of what might be possible with commercial and nonprofit partners, a part of Pleasant Street has 22 flat roofs and four parking lots. In aggregate, the building roofs cover 270,416 sq. ft. and the parking lots 126,830 sq. ft.. The nearly 400,000 sq. ft. surface area could contain about 4 MW electric generating capacity.
The area, in sq. ft., of 22 flat roofs (white type) and 4 parking lots (yellow type) flanking Brighton Street is displayed. In aggregate the building roofs cover 270,416 sq. ft. and the parking lots 126,830 sq. ft. Graphic: Vincent Stanton, Jr.
Several other areas in Belmont with large commercial parking lots and flat-roofed buildings, such as Pleasant Street from Snake Hill Road to Trapelo Road. The potential electric generating capacity in Belmont likely exceeds what Belmont Light could absorb. Belmont Light’s 2020-2025 Strategic Plan notes that peak demand in 2019 was 32.2 MW on July 21.
Technological advances
For the last 70 years, silicon has been the mainstay technology for solar panels. That has already changed in the last two decades. A wide variety of non-silicon materials are now used in thin film solar arrays, albeit most of them less efficient than silicon.
A new technology based on a family of compounds called perovskites is now on the threshold of wide commercial application, and several companies are already making commercial panels. Initial implementations of the technology place a perovskite layer over a silicon layer. The perovskites can be tuned to absorb light at wavelengths not efficiently converted to electricity by silicon panels, making the composite panels up to 28% efficient.
Solar PV technology, after several decades of continuous but slow improvement, appears poised for a leap in the next decade. Higher efficiency panels will dramatically improve project economics. Similar improvements are being made in battery technology.
However, the long, hard part of establishing a Belmont PV array is not buying and installing panels or batteries, but getting the rules, permitting, community acceptance, and economics right. Since that process could take years, now is the right time to evaluate and plan a Belmont solar project.
By the time the town figures out what it wants to do, the technology is likely to be notably better than today, and project economics will improve. As David Beavers, Belmont Light vice chair, remarked, “You’re not, in a year or two, going to put solar on all those buildings. That’s just not feasible . . . I think this is a long-term strategy and I think you’re asking the right questions and getting the ball rolling.”
Economic models
The details of state and federal incentives for solar electricity and battery storage are important determinants of project viability. They are fiendishly complex, and subject to continuous change, which makes a comprehensive evaluation of project economics well beyond the scope of this article. Economic models that have been implemented in surrounding communities include, at the most simple level:
- The utility (Belmont Light, in our case) owns the PV arrays and buys the electricity, paying the town for use of its property via a lease, and possibly also providing a discounted electricity price. Belmont Light Board vice-chair Beavers noted that, speaking for himself, this arrangement would come with some risk for Belmont Light, as it would have to significantly expand its scope of activity, and likely its headcount.
- A developer owns the PV arrays and sells the electricity to Belmont Light. The developer signs a lease agreement with the town for use of its property, generating one income stream, and may makes a contractual PILOT to the town, or sells the town discounted electricity.
- The town owns the arrays, uses them to power its buildings, and sells excess electricity to Belmont Light.
Getting the ball rolling
Municipal solar would be a town-driven project. While Belmont Light is a key player, the town needs to figure out what works best for Belmont before it is ready for a substantive conversation with Belmont Light.
The Select Board could ask the Energy Committee, or a new committee with membership drawn from the Energy Committee, the Vision 21 Committee, and possibly the Belmont Light Board, to explore the feasibility of a collection of PV arrays on town property.
Consulting with solar developers, particularly those with extensive experience working with municipal partners, would be an essential part of understanding what makes sense in the present environment. Kearsarge Energy, for example, has completed over 30 solar PV projects with public entities in Massachusetts, including cities, towns, school departments, housing authorities, water authorities, and three Massachusetts municipal electric companies.
There is extensive expertise in and near Belmont that should enable the town to perform a thorough evaluation of its solar power options.
Municipal solar development in other Massachusetts towns
Consider the scale of solar development in Beverly, Massachusetts, which is now completing its third major PV project in the last decade. The new project will add 4.36 megawatts (MW) of generating capacity on municipal building roofs and parking lots, bringing Beverly’s total to 11.86 MW of municipally-developed solar electricity, enough to power 14.3% of all households in Beverly (2,372 of 16,568, at 5 kW per house). Revenue from those three big municipal projects will exceed $6 million (see table; the economics for one of the arrays are not public). Municipal projects have been complemented by a roster of smaller private rooftop PV projects in Beverly, including the Montserrat College of Art (244 KW) and the Beverly Athletic Club (128 KW).
Beverly (22.59 square miles) is about 4.8 times larger than Belmont. However, Belmont owns enough land, buildings, and parking lots to accomplish a project of at least half that scale, given the right incentives.
Importantly, Beverly is served by National Grid, an investor-owned utility eligible for subsidies under the current state solar incentive program that are not available to municipal electric utilities. Concord, which is powered by a municipal utility, may be a more relevant example. The town has completed two large ground mounted arrays: a 5.6 MW installation on a contaminated former industrial site, and a 1.7 MW array on a former landfill, plus a school rooftop array which adds 48 KW. Electricity produced by those facilities, plus three arrays on commercial buildings (another 0.44 MW), is all sold to Concord Municipal Light (7.8 MW total). In Lexington, five schools, the library, and a town composting facility are covered with PV arrays, along with a 2.2 MW array on a former landfill.
Aditya Jain is a first-year student at Columbia University and a Belmont High School alumnus. Vincent Stanton, Jr. is a Belmont Citizens Forum board member, though the views expressed here are his own.
Bonus material
Belmont municipal PV array opportunities |
||||
| Location | Type of installation | Available area (sq. ft.) | Estimated generating capacity (MW) | Comments |
| Former Incinerator site (Areas A + C only) | Ground mounted | 312,500 | 1.6 | Need MassDEP OK on Area A |
| Cambridge Reservoir | Ground mounted | 250,000 | 1.35 | Need Cambridge agreement |
| Chenery School | Roof mounted | 65 | 0.2 | Need School Department OK |
| Wellington School | Roof mounted | 40,000 | 0.13 | Need School Department OK |
| Winnbrook School | Roof mounted | 40,000 | 0.13 | Need School Department OK |
| Butler School | Roof mounted | 17,000 | 0.06 | Need School Department OK |
| DPW Yard buildings | Roof mounted | 90,000 | 0.27 | Total of 10 buildings |
| Police Station & BMLD building | Roof mounted | 10,000 | 0.03 | Exclude areas visible from Concord Ave (historic) |
| Middle-High School parking lot | Carport | 98,000 | 0.94 | Need School Department OK |
| Claflin parking lot | Carport | 63,000 | 0.6 | Could be augmented by combining it with adjacent private lot (26K sq. ft.) |
| Belmont Village parking lot | Carport | 35,000 | 0.31 | Planned future development could include rooftop solar |
| Town Yard parking lots | Carport | 34,000 | 0.3 | Excludes central work area |
| Chenery School parking lot | Carport | 32,000 | 0.28 | Partly shaded |
| Police Station parking lot | Carport | 14,000 | 0.1 | Partly shaded |
| Church Street parking lot | Carport | 13,000 | 0.1 | |
| Winbrook School parking lot | Carport | 10,000 | 0.07 | |
| TOTAL | 6.47 | |||
| Roof areas were calculated from Google Earth. Projected electricity generation is a crude estimate based on similar projects. Low density or low efficiency panels were assumed for most school roofs. Note that the table does not include Area B (10 acres) of the former incinerator site, which requires a cap, nor the new middle-high school or library roofs, which will both operate behind the meter (powering the school and library). | ||||
Beverly municipal solar PV projects |
|||||||
| Revenue and savings over 20 years | |||||||
| Year | Site characteristics | # of panels | power output | Lease payment | Revenue via PILOT | electricity savings | Project developer (selected via RFP) |
| 2019-23 | 4 buildings, 2 parking lots | 4.36 MW | $255 | $1.082 million | $937,000.00 | Kearsarge Energy | |
| 2019-21 | 14.36 acre capped landfill (former dump) | 13,608 | 4.9 MW | $2.7 million | $1.225 million | BlueWave | |
| 2014 | 9.5 acres of town land near Beverly airport | 8,388 | 2.6 MW | Borrego Solar | |||
| TOTAL: | Note revenues are spread over 20 years | 11.86 MW | $2.7 million | $2.307 million | $937,000.00 | ||
| Note that payments in lieu of taxes (PILOT) are contractual, as are lease payments, while projected electricity cost savings are based on estimated future electricity prices, and could differ significantly from actual results. Financing details from the 2014 project are not available so the $5.944 million total revenue/savings number is an underestimate. | |||||||
A short history of Massachusetts solar incentives
The current SMART program succeeded an earlier state incentive program based on Solar Renewable Energy Credits (SRECs), which was renewed by the legislature with more funding in a second version (SREC II). The SREC programs provided homeowners—whether in IOU or municipal electric territory—with one salable credit (an SREC) for every megawatt-hour of solar energy produced by their array. Several Massachusetts municipal utilities completed solar projects under the SREC I and II programs, including Concord, Reading, and Chicopee. However, the customer subsidy in the SREC programs proved unwieldy: customers sell their SRECs to utilities—municipal or IOU—via a market-determined (i.e., variable) price. The utilities need the SRECs to meet state-mandated renewable energy portfolio standards. But the unpredictable price of SRECs made it difficult for homeowners to estimate how much of a subsidy they might ultimately receive after installing a PV system. In the SMART program the market-based variable subsidy has been replaced with a fixed subsidy.
Next-generation solar PV: Perovskites
Silicon-based technology for converting solar irradiation to electricity was developed in the 1950s and has evolved over seven decades to become the dominant platform today. The top-10 commercial PV panels in 2022—all silicon-based—convert between 22% and 22.8% of the sun’s energy to electricity, up from 15% to 17% 10 years ago. The next wave of improvement in solar PV technology is widely expected to arise from a new family of compounds called perovskites, only shown in 2006 capable of converting light to electricity . The rate of progress since then has been meteoric, though challenges with stability are still a problem. However, in June a group of Princeton researchers reported a technological improvement projected to extend perovskite life cycle to 30 years.
Some key advantages of perovskites include:
- Low cost of production: manufacturable at room temperature from abundant materials and tolerant of impurities
- Compatible with many substrates, including flexible or fixed panels
- Lightweight, due to the thin layer of perovskites required
- Highly tunable to different wavelengths of light
- Relatively transparent, so that several layers of perovskites (e.g., optimized for different light wavelengths) can be assembled on top of each other. Perovskites can also be layered over silicon, and if tuned to capture wavelengths not effectively captured by silicon, produce additive results.
At least one company, Oxford PV, will be manufacturing silicon-perovskite hybrid panels at industrial scale in 2023, and South Korean company Qcells is working with a European consortium to scale up manufacturing of its hybrid panels.
Thin film flexible solar panels
For older roofs, silicon panels, and the racking systems on which they are typically mounted, may not be possible due to weight (2 to 4 pounds per sq. ft.), roof penetrations or aesthetic considerations. A variety of thin film technologies have been developed over the past two decades, the lightest (per watt generated) and most efficient being CIGS, according to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. CIGS films weigh 10% to 20% as much as a rack-mounted panel system (typically 0.4 lbs./sq. ft.). The efficiency of commercial products ranges from 10% to 17.5%, while research implementations of CIGS technology have reached 23% efficiency.
Companies making CIGS film for roof application include MiaSole (California) with its 17.5% efficient FLEX modules; SunFlare (California) with its Flex-60 film designed for membrane roofs; Ascent Solar Technologies (Colorado) which concentrates on aerospace applications; and Flisom (Switzerland) with its 10% to 14% efficient eFlex line.
Notes
Solar PV on municipal buildings and parking lots
2016 MAPC study Massachusetts Municipal utility regulatory and economic environment with respect to green energy initiatives
https://www.mapc.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/MAPC_MLPWhitePaper_Jul2016.pdf
Beverly
Description of solar PV projects in Beverly on city website:
https://beverlyma.gov/713/COMING-SOON-43-MW-solar-project-on-City-
Belmont
Belmont Select Board selects town owned solar + battery system for former incinerator site at its March 19, 2019 meeting. (Incinerator use discussion and vote: 1:42:00 – 1:56:28.)
https://archive.org/details/snafuinfinityBOS_031819
Belmont consultant firm CDM Smith final report on possible uses of former incinerator site (see pages 1-1 and 1-5)
Belmont Light Board minutes of September 16, 2000, citing need to cap entire incinerator site (see page 3)
https://www.belmontlight.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/2020-09-16-LBAC-Minutes.pdf
Minutes of the March 19, 2019, Select Board meeting (see page 7 for incinerator site discussion).
Chenery Middle School is first Belmont town building to go solar
Tzouvelis, Joanna K. Belmont Citizen-Herald, December 13, 2021
Belmont Light 2020–2025 Strategic Plan
https://www.belmontlight.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Strategic-Plan-Final-Draft.pdf
Solar panel technology
Standard silicon panels
The most efficient solar panels in 2022 and their characteristics
Svarc, Jason. Most efficient solar panels 2022. Clean Energy Reviews. December 5, 2022
https://www.cleanenergyreviews.info/blog/most-efficient-solar-panels
Thin film solar
Types of thin-film solar panels. EnergySage
https://news.energysage.com/types-of-thin-film-solar-panels/
Perovskites
Princeton researchers develop perovskite technology with estimated 30- year life
Once seen as fleeting, a new solar tech shines on and on. Scott Lyon, June 16, 2022
https://engineering.princeton.edu/news/2022/06/13/loo-30-year-perovskite-solar-cell
Natural gas prices as a driver of Massachusetts electricity prices
Henry Hub Natural Gas spot price, dollars per million British Thermal Units (BTU), from the US Energy Information Administration website:
https://www.eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/rngwhhdm.htm
Natural gas prices drive Massachusetts utility bills higher
Crimaldi, Laura, and Jon Chesto. Eversource seeks 43 percent rate hike for eastern Mass. electric customers. Boston Globe (Online); 19 Nov 2022.
Land requirements for solar farms
Office of Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, U.S. Department of Energy – 2013 report on “Land-Use Requirements for Solar Power Plants in the United States” by Sean Ong et al.
https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy13osti/56290.pdf
MassDEP Wetlands Program Policy 17-1: Photovoltaic System Solar Array Review
The Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (MassDEP) strongly encourages the use of upland properties for locating ground-mounted photovoltaic systems (PVS). Placement of PVSs within jurisdictional wetlands is highly discouraged. Placement of PVSs within wetland buffer zones may be permissible with proper oversight of the issues discussed in this policy and proper authorization through the permitting process of the Wetland Protection Act.
Cost of solar array build outs
Ramasamy, Vignesh et al. U.S. Solar Photovoltaic System and Energy Storage Cost Benchmarks, With Minimum Sustainable Price Analysis: Q1 2022. National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy22osti/83586.pdf
Nugent, Ciara. The Overlooked Solar Power Potential of America’s Parking Lots.
Time Magazine. December 8, 2022
https://time.com/6239651/solar-parking-lots-france-us/
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.