Existing Lewis County, NY solar array in Lowville
By JULIE ABBASS, Watertown Daily Times
LOWVILLE, NY — Lewis County has entered into an agreement with the New York Power Authority to explore the possibility of creating a community solar project on under-utilized county-owned land. The property adjacent to the county Solid Waste Facility at 7952 Route 26 not currently in use will be analyzed for solar suitability by the Authority through the Community Solar and Battery Storage program introduced by Gov. Andrew Cuomo in February.
According to county Planning Director Casandra Buell, the program is designed to work with municipalities on creating ready-made sites for small-scale solar projects in the same way former brownfield, industrial and landfill sites are being prepped around the state for large-scale projects through the 94-C siting process that went into effect this year, replacing Article 10.
“Lewis County doesn’t (own) any of those large properties that aren’t forested and protected,” Mrs. Buell said. “The only opportunity that we had to lease land that we had available was the solid waste facility. There’s land surrounding that facility that’s under-utilized mainly because it’s wetlands and it’s kind of a wonky area.”
“Wonky” for most development could work well for a community solar project.
Mrs. Buell reached out to the Power Authority as soon as she learned of the new program with the solid waste property in mind.
This is not the county’s first foray into solar.
In 2019, the county’s solar array — built and owned by the Connecticut-based Greenskies Renewable Energy — began pumping power into the grid, decreasing the county’s energy bill by about 50%. About 25% of the energy produced goes to the county-owned hospital.
The 2-megawatt array was not expected to produce enough to cover all of the county’s and hospital’s energy needs.
A community solar project, however, will result in a number of benefits to the community that could not be part of the county’s existing solar array which was a simple power purchase agreement with National Grid giving credits toward each power bill, according to Mrs. Buell.
“This (would be a) community solar facility, so the county would have the ability to receive monthly lease payments for the property to be used for solar and on top of that we would have access to up to 60% of the energy produced from that solar farm. That’s amazing. We can have the best of both worlds,” she said. “We can have that energy localized and we would have a revenue stream coming in for the use of the land.”
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