Large Off-Site Solar Arrays Stir Open-Space Debate
September 6, 2017
PROVIDENCE — The Narragansett Bay Commission is making good on its promise to run on 100 percent renewable energy by 2020. The goal will be met with the addition of two proposed solar arrays, along with its existing wind turbines.
However, unlike the trio of wind turbines that spin onsite at the state’s largest wastewater treatment facility, the solar facilities will be built miles away on private land in Coventry and Richmond.
The Narragansett Bay Commission (NBC) already owns three wind turbines in Coventry built by Green Development LLC. The North Kingstown renewable energy company, formerly Wind Energy Development LLC, built some of the state’s first wind turbines, including 10 in Coventry.
Thanks to a law passed by the General Assembly in 2016, Green Development will own the solar arrays and NBC will receive the renewable energy credits. Known as virtual net metering, the incentive program allows people and organizations to receive the credits for renewable energy without owning the property or the energy system.
Expect to see more of these shared-power/ownership agreements now that the General Assembly opened the incentive program this year to nonprofits and educational institutions.
The solar arrays in two of the state’s more rural towns furthers the debate about the impact utility-scale renewable energy systems have on open space. Many solar projects eliminate large tracts of woodlands, meadows and farmland. It is common for miles of chain-link fence to surround solar fields, limiting the movement of wildlife.
Developers say the projects protect open space from permanent housing developments, commercial buildings and their related infrastructure. Solar installations, they say, don’t penetrate deeply into the ground and are easy to remove. Therefore, the land can easily revert to natural habitat after a solar array’s expected life of about 25 years.
Proponents say the land in and around solar arrays can be landscaped to include habitat for birds and beneficial insects, and even provide grazing for foragers.
“A solar array has little or no impact,” Cranston city planner Peter Lapolla said during a contentious debate in 2015 over a 10-acre solar array proposed for a former tree farm.
But some open-space advocates question the need to destroy woodlands and farmland and alter wetlands to make room for wind turbines and solar panels. A sea of solar panels and the interconnection equipment create a visual disturbance and generate noise from power inverters, they say.
The Land Trust Alliance, a nationwide network of land conservation groups, says communities should designate land for renewable energy and open habitat, beacause “large solar facilities dramatically alter the land. They come at a cost for wildlife habitat, farm and ranch land, scenic beauty and recreational and wilderness opportunities.”
Either way the debate over land use and renewable energy will intensify in Rhode Island. This year the General Assembly passed a law allowing up to 20 percent of farmland and protected open space to host renewable-energy projects without losing their local property-tax status.
Meanwhile, early adapters of renewable energy are seeing financial and environmental benefits. The three turbines at the NBC facility on the Providence waterfront save an estimated $1.1 million annually. NBC expects to save $18 million in energy costs over 25 years from the two solar arrays. The climate benefits will be equivalent to offsetting 110,092 metric tons of carbon dioxide.
The planned solar array in Coventry would have a capacity of 4.24 megawatts. The Richmond solar array will have a 5.45-megawatt capacity.
NBC provides sewage and wastewater treatment for 10 Rhode Island municipalities, including Providence. In addition to the wind turbines and solar arrays, NBC is building a 600-kilowatt anaerobic digester at its Bucklin Point wastewater facility in East Providence. This biogas system will burn a methane-gas mixture released during the sludge stabilization process at the wastewater treatment plant. The system is expected to be operational by next summer.
Categories
Join the Discussion
View CommentsRecent Comments
Leave a Reply
Your support keeps our reporters on the environmental beat.
Reader support is at the core of our nonprofit news model. Together, we can keep the environment in the headlines.
Not to mention the ecological effect of forest fragmentation when a large clear-cut opens space in the midst of a mature forest landscape. The suite of deep-forest species is immediately threatened by the very different edge-habitat suite attracted by the clear-cut and its specialized flora. Western Rhode Island, top to bottom, it our deep forest preserve. At significant expense to the public, much of it is protected by our system of state forests and wildlife management areas. The potential siting of the Invenergy power plant, which would clear approximately 200 acres on top of the exiting clear-cuts for the power line and the gas line that will service the facility has also drawn this problem in high relief. Proposed literally within a stone’s throw of the property line of the George Washington Wildlife Management Area, Invenergy’s own environmental consultant, ESS Group of East Providence, found 47 species, fauna and flora, designated by DEM as SGCN’s, "Species of Greatest Conservation Need." Most of them belong to the deep forest suite, led by such critically imperiled species as the neotropical migrant Cerulean Warbler, confirmed in Rhode Island only three times perviously during the past decade, (E-Bird, Cornell Ornithology Laboratory.) Clear-cutting deep forest for solar arrays is clearly a major concern for our western forest corridor. Thank you, ecori news, for pursuing the subject.
Perhaps we need a Save the Forest organization or coalition to complement Save the Bay.
This is a global issue, there is a story in the recent Nature Conservancy Magazine at https://www.nature.org/magazine/archives/energy-sprawl.xml
The Environment Council of Rhode Island will be holding some forums on the issue of siting renewable energy in RI this fall. We are hoping to move solar arrays into the city rather than on open space, or farmlands, and the carbon footprint of clearing forests for solar seems to make that a ridiculous choice.
Has anyone explored this concept? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/11954334/United-Utilities-floats-3.5m-of-solar-panels-on-reservoir.html We have large reservoirs that could accommodate such projects. There would also be less water lost to evaporation.
Stephen Wowk