US independent power producer (IPP) Syncarpha Capital has completed construction work at the 7.1MW Acton solar-plus-storage project in Massachusetts, which is located on the site of a former chemical manufacturing facility that “significantly” contaminated the local environment.
The project consists of a 7.1MW solar facility and a co-located 4MW battery energy storage system (BESS). Construction was completed by US engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) firm Distributed Energy Infrastructure (DEI) and racking was provided by US company Terrasmart.
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The project is most notable for its rehabilitation of a polluted brownfield site. DEI described a number of steps taken to build the project in as safe a manner as possible—including minimising underground excavation into polluted land by building electrical infrastructure above ground—and the company noted that “certified specialists” were brought in to deal with asbestos found at the site during construction.
“Projects like Acton show what it takes to responsibly bring clean energy to communities while addressing the challenges of building on historically contaminated land,” said Sean Harrington, DEI president and CEO of Distributed Energy Infrastructure. “By transforming a brownfield into a productive solar and storage site, we’re expanding access to renewable energy, strengthening the local grid and putting otherwise unusable land back to work.”
The site was originally home to a chemical processing plant owned by US company W. R. Grace, which produced commodities including sealants for rubber containers, latex products and resins, from 1954. However, in 1973, local residents complained about local air pollution around the plant, and testing from the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1978 found that two local wells had been polluted, which the EPA attributed to the dumping of “effluent wastes” in lagoons in the area.
The EPA closed chemical processing at the site, and placed the area on the National Priorities List in 1983. In the years since, the site was added to the EPA Superfund, a list of polluted sites that are in need of rehabilitation, at the expense of either the original owners of the facility responsible for the pollution or the EPA itself.
The EPA then permitted the deployment of a solar array on the site as part of the rehabilitation process, initially intended to begin commercial operation in 2024, and the arrival of a solar project was met with support from local people. In interviews published by the EPA as part of its sixth five-year review into the rehabilitation of the polluted land, a representative from local public schools described the installation of a solar project as a “positive” development for the surrounding communities.
Community engagement is often a priority for developers looking to build solar projects on brownfield sites. Earlier this year, PV Tech Premium spoke to BrightNight about its work with a local community in developing a 201MW PV project at the site of a former Kentucky coal mine.
