Pittsfield called state’s ‘solar capital’

During a visit to Pittsfield in October, Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Ian Bowles called the city “the solar capital of the Commonwealth.”

Pittsfield is the site of roughly a dozen solar installations, including a 1.8-megawatt solar plant operated by Western Massachusetts Electric Co. that went online on Oct. 26.

The new Silver Lake Solar Facility sits on an eight-acre parcel, a portion of which is in the city’s William Stanley Business Park, the former site of Pittsfield’s General Electric plant. The solar facility is expected to provide energy for roughly 300 homes and generate at least $150,000 in annual tax revenue.

By next summer, the city expects that a solar array generating up to 1.57 megawatts will be supplying about 30 percent of the energy needed for its sewage treatment plant, according to Bruce Collingwood, Pittsfield’s public works and utilities commissioner.

Work is also under way on a large rooftop solar array at Berkshire Community College in Pittsfield. The $1.8 million project, the beneficiary of federal stimulus funds, is expected to eventually stretch over seven campus buildings and furnish about 400 kilowatts of energy, about one-fourth of the college’s electricity needs.

Statewide, the 63 megawatts of solar power now being generated is 17 times the 3.7 megawatts that was being generated four years ago, according to Bowles’s office.