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A photo of the E. Main Street parking lot from November 2024.
ANSONIA – If you’ve driven by the public parking lot on E. Main Street, you may have noticed it got a facelift recently.
Contractors were onsite starting in October to install about 850 solar panels, which now hang over most of the parking spots in the lot.
The city paid about $2.38 million for those panels – but city officials say it’s an investment that will make money in the long run.
Under an agreement between the city and the company Johnson Controls International (JCI), the solar panels will feed power back into the grid. Then, the city will receive a credit based on the amount of power generated.
Budget director Kurt Miller said those credits will generate about $120,000 per year for the city. He said most of the $2.38 million construction cost will be offset by federal tax credits, worth $1.9 million.
He estimated that the city will have recovered all of the costs within about five years. He said the panels will continue to generate power – and revenue – after that date.
The total cost of construction is $2,380,159, according to a document Miller shared in an Aldermen meeting. He said the money came from the city’s $41 million sale of its sewer system last year.
“We used $2,380,159 of tax money, or WPCA sale funds, to offset the cost of the solar carports. So we did not need to borrow any money, so we avoided paying principal and interest costs,” Miller said.
In total, the carports are capable of generating power up to 420 kilowatt-hours (AC kW), according to permit documents.
Big Picture: City Needs New Ways To Make Money, Officials Say
The solar carports are one of several energy-related agreements the city has made with JCI.
The largest agreement is a $37 million lease-purchase deal to construct a 3.9‑megawatt fuel cell on the site of the former SHW foundry downtown. Another agreement included the installation of 60-kilowatt solar panels at the public works facility on N. Division Street.
Throughout Ansonia’s budget season, officials in Mayor David Cassetti’s administration have said that Ansonia needs to start generating new revenue soon, or it’s in trouble. They say that these energy deals are the key to doing that.
“Ansonia does not have a spending problem. The City of Ansonia has a revenue problem, and there’s not enough available economic opportunity to correct that,” Miller said in a Board of Aldermen meeting May 5.
A December report from the bond rating agency S&P Global agreed that the city needs a change to stay healthy.
It downgraded the city’s debt outlook and said that the bond rating could be lowered – meaning the city would face higher borrowing interest rates – if it doesn’t stop using money from its fund balance for its regular budgets.
Derby received a similar warning, but started a recovery plan last year.
According to the ratings agency report, Ansonia’s government intends to stop using its fund balance by bringing in new revenue – such as the energy projects – and raising taxes.
“The fiscal 2025 budget includes $5 million in fund balance for current operations and the city plans to use the increased fund balance position to appropriate an average of $3 million in reserves annually from fiscal 2026 to 2030, while phasing in tax rate increases and expecting revenues from new development. Management aims to eliminate the fund balance appropriation by fiscal 2031,” the December report says.
The fiscal 2026 budget – which was finalized June 10, and goes into effect July 1 – includes $5,250,000 in “use of future revenue,” a line item which in past years has mostly come from the city’s fund balance, according to statements by Miller.
Separately, it also projects about $1.26 million in future revenue from the SHW fuel cell project.
