Greenskies Building 2.7 MW Solar Project For Lewis County, N.Y.

By Solar Industry Staff

Connecticut-based Greenskies Renewable Energy has announced it will build a 2.7 MW municipal solar array in Lewis County, N.Y., the company’s first municipal project in New York.

The ground-mounted system will be built on a 19-acre cornfield behind the county’s public safety building on Outer Stowe Street in the village of Lowville, the county seat. The array will consist of 8,500 solar photovoltaic panels.

“The clean energy generated by the system will produce enough electricity to provide the county with about half of its annual power requirements, and will save Lewis County and Lewis County General Hospital a guaranteed $3.3 million in energy costs over the 20-year term of the power purchase agreement between Greenskies and the county,” states Ittay Arad, vice president of business development at Greenskies.

The savings could exceed $5 million over the length of the agreement, depending on the amount of power the system produces, the company adds.

“It became a no-brainer as we came to understand the economics of it,” explains Lewis County Manager Liz Swearingin. “It will lower our energy costs for a long time.”

County officials formally executed the power purchase agreement on Jan. 20 in a ceremony at the Lewis County Office Building. Under the agreement, Greenskies will design, engineer, construct and maintain the new solar array, selling the electricity produced at the site back to the county at a fixed and discounted rate.

Arad expects construction on the project to begin this summer and end in the fourth quarter of this year, weather permitting.