Members of the East Hampton Town Board and the town’s Natural Resources Department celebrated operation of the first megawatt-scale solar power plant on the South Fork last Thursday.
The Accabonac Solar plant, comprising 3,456 individual 320-watt solar panels across two acres, produces 1.6 million kilowatt hours annually, a figure that Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc said is equivalent to more than half the annual electricity usage of municipal buildings. It also represents electricity sufficient to power 136 residences each year, and is equivalent to the avoidance of 1.24 million pounds of coal burned or 127,306 gallons of gasoline consumed annually.
AES Distributed Energy, based in Virginia, developed the project on a decommissioned, town-owned brush dump off Accabonac Road in East Hampton, following an original proposal by SunEdison, which subsequently filed for bankruptcy. The Long Island Power Authority has made a 20-year commitment to purchase electricity from AES Distributed Energy.
Christopher Thomas, a lead project engineer with AES Distributed Energy, said this week that once construction is completed, a project still must go through inspections with local building officials, interconnection with the utility, connection to the local communication infrastructure — in this case, a new fiber optic data service — and testing of automatic protection devices and communication systems before permission to operate is granted. These steps, he said, are responsible for the gap between completion of construction — a ribbon-cutting ceremony was held one year ago — and the solar farm’s operation. He called that lag time “longer than we would have liked” but said that it was not uncommon, citing the complexity involved in those post-construction activities.
Solar arrays are sited on municipal buildings including the Lamb Building in Amagansett and the Police Department substation in Montauk. Other municipal buildings are being examined for suitability to support solar panels, Mr. Van Scoyoc said.
The town has encouraged residents and business owners to consider the installation of solar panels through the Solarize East Hampton program, which can reduce or eliminate the need to buy electricity from the grid.