Biomass Rejected in Favor of Solar in Springfield, VT

-  by Susan Small­heer, July 17, 2014, Rut­land Herald

North Spring­field, Vt. — Out with bio­mass, in with solar panels.

Win­stan­ley Enter­pris­es announced Wednes­day that it was seek­ing state approval to build five, 500-kilo­watt solar arrays in the North Spring­field Indus­tri­al Park.

Some of the land that will be used was ear­li­er pro­posed to be the site of the ill-fat­ed North Spring­field Sus­tain­able Ener­gy Project, which was reject­ed by state reg­u­la­tors ear­li­er this year. The bio­mass plant would have burned tons of wood­chips a year to pro­duce 35 megawatts of electricity.

The devel­op­ers of the project could not be reached for com­ment Wednesday.

But accord­ing to a news release sent out ear­li­er in the day, it is a joint project of Win­stan­ley Entepris­es LLC, of Con­cord, Mass., Green Lantern Devel­op­ment LLC, of Water­bury and Pow­er­smith Farm Inc., of Guilford.

But accord­ing to the three groups’ news release, the five arrays would total 2.5 megawatts of elec­tric­i­ty, and rep­re­sent approx­i­mate­ly $8 mil­lion in cap­i­tal investment.

By com­par­i­son, the bio­mass plant was esti­mat­ed to cost upward of $150 million.

“This is very excit­ing for us and for our poten­tial partners/offtakers. The Spring­field Com­mu­ni­ty Solar projects are a great exam­ple of envi­ron­men­tal eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment,” said Adam Win­stan­ley, prin­ci­pal of Win­stan­ley Enter­pris­es, in a pre­pared statement.

Win­stan­ley Enter­pris­es recent­ly built a solar facil­i­ty in Brattleboro.

The release, with­out being spe­cif­ic, said that the solar pow­er and “util­i­ty sav­ings” would go to “local schools, munic­i­pal­i­ties and hospitals.”

Win­stan­ley, whose firm bought the for­mer Fel­lows Corp. build­ing sev­er­al years ago and reha­bil­i­tat­ed it, defend­ed using the lots in the indus­tri­al park for ener­gy generation.

“We believe that com­mu­ni­ty-focused net-metered solar is the high­est and best use for that land,” the release stated.

Bob Flint, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Spring­field Region­al Devel­op­ment Corp., said the solar project would be going next to Winstanley’s busi­ness facil­i­ty in the North Spring­field Indus­tri­al Park.

“It’s not the prime land in the park. It’s where the bio­mass plant would have gone. The solar array will sta­bi­lize the long-term oper­a­tion of the build­ing,” Flint said, refer­ring to what Win­stan­ley now calls 36 Pre­ci­sion Drive.

“They have a very suc­cess­ful project in Brat­tle­boro,” he said, refer­ring to Winstanley’s 2‑megawatt solar project along Inter­state 91.

Win­stan­ley Solar said it plans on fil­ing indi­vid­ual project appli­ca­tions to the Ver­mont Pub­lic Ser­vice Board over the next few months, and said that the first project may be oper­a­tional by late 2014 or ear­ly 2015.

There is already a large solar instal­la­tion in the North Spring­field Indus­tri­al Park owned by IVEK Corp., which was built in 2010.