Mass. entities claim solar power on N.C. grid will offset carbon use

Three parties are claiming that energy from the 60 megawatt Summit Farms Solar project in Currituck County will offset a portion of their “carbon footprint”: the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Boston Medical Center, and the Post Office Square Redevelopment Corporation.

MIT says the solar power purchased from the Currituck facility will equal 40 percent of the institute’s current electricity use. Boston Medical and the redevelopment group say the Summit Farm power will offset 100 percent of their electricity use.

But none of the electricity generated at Summit Solar Farms will supply energy to those Massachusetts facilities. It will not even be on the electrical grid they use. MIT will continue to power its campus with an on-campus natural gas generation system, supplemented by power from a local Massachusetts utility. The medical center and the redevelopment group will continue to power their facilities with electricity from a local utility.

Power from Summit Solar Farms, when it’s available, will go on the PJM power grid which serves the mid-Atlantic states.

The 650-acre project, containing 255,000 individual solar panels, is five miles south of the Virginia border, two miles south of Moyock, North Carolina, and adjacent to three residential neighborhoods.

The project is approximately two miles long and one-half mile wide.

As Carolina Journal has reported, opposition to this and other local solar facilities led the Currituck County Board of Commissioners in February to place a moratorium on construction of new solar plants. Residents consider the facilities to be nuisances and worry about potential harm to water supplies and property values.

The project, started in 2015 as a project of Duke Energy, is in Dominion’s service territory. Duke sold it to SunEnergy, a North Carolina-based solar company owned by Australian race car driver Kenny Habul. In August 2016, SunEnergy transferred ownership of the project to Dominion Solar Projects, LLC, a Dominion Power subsidiary, but retained ownership of the real estate.

MIT, Boston Medical, and the redevelopment group announced in October 2016 they had formed an alliance to buy the electricity from Summit Farms, “adding carbon-free energy to the grid and demonstrating a partnership model for other organizations in climate-change mitigation efforts,” according to a release from the MIT News Office. Dominion Power will own and manage the facility and “assume responsibility for the project’s full cost — with financing made possible by the guaranteed power purchase.”

“This agreement will enable the construction of a roughly 650-acre, 60-megawatt solar farm on farmland in North Carolina,” according to MIT. MIT committed to buy 73 percent of the MWh, Boston Medical 26 percent, and the redevelopment corporation 1 percent.

The project is owned and managed by Richmond, Va.-based Dominion Power. The three entities in Massachusetts entities signed a 25-year contract with Dominion to buy all the power, estimated to be 146,000 MWh per year, which then will be resold and added to the regional electrical grid. MIT’s investment in solar is part of the school’s effort to address climate change.

The deal was arranged by CustomerFirst Renewables, a Maryland-based company launched in 2010, that allows businesses to “switch to renewable energy” without physically switching.

Responding to written questions, MIT Director of Sustainability Julie Newman said she was not able to disclose the price MIT and the other partners pay Dominion for electricity, how much they expect to sell it for, or the projected net loss on the arrangement. 

“We believe our experience can help catalyze similar investments in clean energy, which will be vital to achieving a zero-carbon global energy system within this century,” said Maria Zuber, MIT’s vice president for research said in an October news release. Zuber is leading the implementation of the MIT’s Plan for Action on Climate Change.

How reliable is the generation from this solar facility? A 60 MW generation project running at full capacity for the full 8,760 hours in a year would produce 525,600 MWh, but solar projects only generate when the sun is shining. MIT’s estimate of 146,000 MWh per year represents available usage, or capacity factor, of 27.7 percent. In other words, the project sometimes will produce a full 60 MW, sometimes 0 MW, but on balance it will produce about 27.7 percent of the full capacity.

According to MIT, the project generated 5,312 MWh in January, 7,729 MWh in February, and 12,509 MWh in March.