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Floating Solar | Earth Wise

June 7, 2022 By EarthWise 1 Comment

The largest floating solar array in Europe, 12,000 panels sitting on top of the Alqueva Reservoir in Portugal – will come online in July. Installing floating solar arrays, which are sometimes called “floatovoltaics”, produce renewable energy while shielding significant expanses of water from the sun’s heat. These dual benefits have led to floatovoltaic projects in multiple countries around the world.

The city of Cohoes, in New York’s Albany County, has proposed an 8,000-panel floating solar array on the city reservoir. Federal funding of $3 million for the project was obtained by local Congressman Paul Tonko and, in May, utility National Grid donated $750,000 towards the project. Engineering work will shortly be underway on the 3.2 megawatt grid of solar panels.

The city of Cohoes pumps its drinking water supplies from the Mohawk River into the 10-acre, manmade reservoir. The surface of the water is the largest undeveloped open space in the city. Such reservoirs constitute prime sites for solar arrays since the space cannot be used for other purposes. In addition, covering the water’s surface with the solar panels greatly reduces evaporation and helps to inhibit the growth of algae.

There are currently only 14 floating solar arrays in the U.S. and all of those are privately owned. The Cohoes municipal array will be the first of its kind. There are nearly 500 reservoirs in New York State and 24,000 nationwide that could be sites for floating arrays. Drought-stricken Western reservoirs like Lake Mead and Lake Powell could be ideal locations of solar arrays. Those reservoirs lose huge amounts of water to evaporation. There are estimates that floating arrays could provide as much as 10% of the nation’s electrical needs.

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National Grid gives Cohoes $750,000 for floating solar array project

Photo, posted August 25, 2010, courtesy of Martin Abegglen via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

New York Bight Offshore Wind | Earth Wise

May 2, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Late in February, the U.S. completed the most successful offshore wind lease auction in history. The auction for rights to develop offshore wind in the New York Bight brought in a record $4.37 billion from the companies bidding for them.

The New York Bight is an area of ocean off the coasts of New York and New Jersey that the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management has divided into six lease areas for offshore wind development. It covers a total of 480,000 acres. The more than $4 billion secured in the auction is more than three times the revenue received from all U.S. offshore oil and gas lease auctions over the past five years.

Five out of the six winning bids have European connections in the form of various partnerships. Europe has a far more advanced offshore wind market than the U.S. with a total of 25 GW of installations as of 2020. Winning bidders included participation by RWE from Germany, British-owned National Grid, and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, among others. Chicago-based Invenergy was the only American company without a European partner to have a winning bid.

The expected installed capacity for the 6 leased areas in the New York Bight is expected to be between 5.6 and 7 GW, enough to power 2 million homes. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management said capacity could be even higher.

The successful action has set the tone and expectations for auctions to come. BOEM has six more offshore wind auctions planned over the next three years. Forthcoming auctions are for areas of the Carolinas, Northern and Central California, the Gulf of Mexico, the Central Atlantic, Oregon, and the Gulf of Maine.

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New York Bight: 5 takeaways from the record-breaking offshore wind auction

Photo, posted August 13, 2013, courtesy of Larry via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Capital Region Community Solar

July 19, 2019 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

New York’s Capital Region is getting a major new community solar farm. A community solar farm is a solar power installation whose output is shared by multiple community subscribers who receive credit on their electricity bills for their share of the power produced. The primary purpose of community solar is to allow members of a community to have the benefits of solar power even if they cannot or prefer not to install solar panels on their own property.

US Light Energy has broken ground on the Sugar Hill Solar Farm, to be located on 40 acres of land on the Sugar-Hill/Sugar-View Farm in Clifton Park. The 7-megawatt, ground-mounted solar project will include nearly 20,000 solar modules. When fully operational later this year, the facility is expected to produce more than 8.6 million kilowatt-hours of energy a year.

The farm will be part of New York state’s Community Solar Program, and the electricity it generates can be supplied to customers anywhere in National Grid’s existing distribution system. Residential and commercial properties in Clifton Park will have 30 days to subscribe before the solar energy generated by the farm is opened to the general public. Subscribers of community solar farms typically save 10% on their electricity bills.

There are already community solar programs in operation in several Capital Region communities, but this is the first one in the Clifton Park Area. Apart from providing savings on utility bills, community solar allows consumers to support clean, locally generated power with little or no upfront costs. Not everyone is in a position to put solar panels on their roof, but community solar is increasingly an option for New York residents.

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Construction begins on 7-MW community solar farm in New York

Photo, posted March 19, 2012, courtesy of Kate Ausburn via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.