The New York State Office of Renewable Energy Siting and Electric Transmission (ORES) has issued its final siting permit for AES’ 125MW Somerset solar project.
The facility, which will be built in Nicaragua County, on the southern shore of Lake Ontario, is notable as it is the first project to be built on repurposed industrial land awarded a permit by ORES. The project will be built on land once covered by the Somerset Station coal plant, and portions of a landfill, which the office of New York governor Kathy Hochul said were “ideal” land types for solar development.
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“The Somerset solar array exemplifies New York state’s progress toward a clean energy economy,” added Hochul last Tuesday. “With the issuance of this siting permit, we are creating good-paying jobs in Western New York, while providing clean, sustainable energy for our families and businesses.”
The award of the permit follows what the governor’s office called a “timely, detailed and transparent review process,” and this is reflected in the project’s timeline. AES initially expected to secure permitting in the first quarter of 2022, begin construction in the third quarter of 2023 and commission the project in the third quarter of 2024.
AES now expects construction to take 18 months, which would put the project’s commissioning date at some point in 2026. The project was also originally planned to have a capacity of 135MW, which has since been revised down. Regardless, ORES has now approved 19 renewable energy projects, with a combined capacity of over 2.8GW, in New York state since 2021.
The news follows a number of positive developments in the state, including the installation of 6GW of distributed solar capacity in October, one year ahead of schedule. Earlier this month, the state contracted a further 2.3GW of large-scale renewable energy capacity, of which solar accounted for 1.5GW.
