Contractors pour concrete into steel that will support the racking for a solar array on top of a landfill cell at the Frederick County landfill. Staff photo by Bill Green
Steve Bohnel reports for the Frederick News-Post
A prominent company known for its electric cars is building a solar array at Frederick County’s landfill, which will power multiple county facilities in Maryland.
Mike Marschner, the county’s special administrative director and the project manager, said Tesla is building the array of solar panels after three or four years of working through permitting with state and county officials.
The panels, which are being placed on top of a geosynthetic cap at one of the facility’s closed landfill sites, will produce a maximum of about 1.9 megawatts of power. A total of 7,776 photovoltaic modules will produce 3,669,961 kilowatt-hours of energy in the array’s first year — enough to power about 10 county buildings or facilities, roughly 20 percent of the county’s general building power needs, Marschner said.
Marschner said the county entered a 20-year Power Purchase Agreement with Tesla, where it will pay 6.6 cents per kilowatt-hour during that time span. The county is not purchasing additional power through the agreement, but rather using the array versus other forms of energy such as steam or coal.
The power will be routed off the landfill site by Potomac Edison, through a virtual net metering system. That system allows the county to receive solar credits for excess solar power produced.
“The value to us, because you are in this virtual net metering mode, is we don’t pay for certain things that you normally pay for when you’re buying commercial power from the power company,” Marschner said, adding those could be fees and other charges from Potomac Edison.
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