The state’s Lieutenant Governor stopped by Derby Thursday to congratulate Connecticut’s smallest city on taking a big chunk out of its electricity bill.
Mayor Anita Dugatto and several Aldermen greeted Lt. Gov. Nancy Wyman at the city’s long-capped landfill off Pine Street to show off the location of a new 3,000-panel solar array that, if all goes well, will come online around the end of the year.
Dugatto said the energy generated by the solar panels will be used to reduce the city’s electricity costs by 15 to 20 percent over the next two decades.
A precise dollar amount on the potential savings can’t be calculated, she said.
“We don’t know what (the cost) of electricity is going to be down the line,” Dugatto said. “But we know it will be stable, the expense.”
“By turning this former landfill into a source of solar energy, we are turning the landfill into an environmental asset,” Dugatto said in prepared remarks. “Not only are we reducing Derby’s carbon footprint, we are setting in place smart, long-term energy planning that will yield substantial savings for our taxpayers.”
Wyman said Derby is setting an example other municipalities, and the state itself, should follow.
“It’s great to have the smallest city in our state going out and leading on this, it’s great,” Wyman said. “Maybe other cities and towns will realize this is the best way to go.”
“It’s land that we can’t use anymore,” Alderman Carmen DiCenso noted.
Last November the city’s Aldermen authorized the deal, which carries no up-front cost to the city, allowing Troy, N.Y.-based Jordan Energy to put solar panels on the landfill.
Under the state’s “ZREC” (zero-emissions) and “LREC” (low-emissions) renewable energy programs, clean energy companies submit competitive project bids to the state’s electrical giants — Eversource Energy and United Illuminating, the companies that fund the program.
The goal is to spur clean energy companies like Jordan Energy to invest in the state’s economy. At the same time, the solar panels are designed to save cities money by using the sun for energy.
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Jordan Energy’s partner in the project is BQ Energy, based in Poughkeepsie, NY.
Jim Falsetti, a director at BQ, and project manger Mike McNulty were on hand Thursday to explain the project to Wyman — and get lobbied by the lieutenant governor.
“You guys want to come to Connecticut?” Wyman asked. “We’ll talk later.”
Click play on the video below to see McNulty explain the installation process.
Because the panels will sit atop an old landfill, the company can’t drive steel beams into the ground to hold the panels in place, McNulty said, so concrete blocks will be poured in place to which the panels will be fastened.
The power generated at the solar cells will feed into a transformer connected to the power grid, and Derby will be credited for the power on its utility bills.
The installation will be 750 kilowatts DC, which McNulty said will produce about 840 megawatt-hours per year, or about 60 percent of the city’s electricity usage.
The target date for construction to end is Dec. 31, he said, barring any unforeseen circumstances.
‘Every Year Should Be An Election Year’
Though approved by Aldermen nearly a year ago, Dugatto said Thursday’s event marking the start of construction just happened to fall five days before this year’s municipal elections because the project had to get other approvals from the state and local land use boards — as well as work out a contract with United Illuminating to hook into the power grid.
“It just happened,” Dugatto said. “The company had to apply to UI for an interconnecting contract and they just recently signed that. That was the last part of the whole process.”
Sam Pollastro Jr., the campaign manager for Richard Dziekan, Dugatto’s Republican opponent in Tuesday’s election, called the timing of Thursday’s event “suspect,” and questioned how great the project will be when city officials can’t provide dollar estimates of how much money will be saved.
“How could you tell us how great this is if you can’t even tell us what we’re saving right now?” Pollastro, who is also a member of the city’s tax board, said.
“Every year should be an election year,” he said. “They seem to have gotten more stuff done in the past three months than in the past 18 months.”
“What’s next, are they going to bring a crane in the day before the election to show that work’s getting done?” Pollastro went on, referring to a prior election and an announcement Thursday regarding upcoming demolition in the downtown redevelopment zone. “That’s not moving Derby forward. That’s damage control.”
