Battlement Mesa solar array to switch on this month

1,422 solar panels to power Metro District’s water treatment plant The large solar array that will power the Battlement Mesa Metro District water treatment plant is expected to go live on the Xcel Energy grid later this month, says Katherine Rushton, commercial sales manager for Sunsense Solar. The 1,422 solar panels in the array are rated to generate nearly 700,000 kilowatt-hours per year, comparable to the electricity used by about 100 homes. The array is sized to power 100 percent of the treatment plant’s annual electrical demand. Sunsense Solar of Carbondale built the array for the Metro District using third-party financing, so the upfront cost to the district was $2,500. By locking in the cost of electricity with a financed solar array, the district is expected to save about $3,000 in the first year of operation, and about $200,000 over the coming 20 years. The project came about through a workshop in April 2014 hosted by CLEER, Sunsense Solar and Garfield Clean Energy. Steve Rippy, general manager of the Metro District, was among the local government officials learning about the financing mechanism. Further conversations between Sunsense and the Metro District board, with energy consulting from Matt Shmigelsky of CLEER, brought the project from an idea to a plan of action. “Steve Rippy and the Metro District Board of Directors were very open to learning about how to implement solar through a power purchase agreement,” said Rushton. “Once they understood the concept, they were eager to move forward.” Rushton noted that during the construction, from May 11 to Aug. 20, Water Plant Superintendent Roger Bulla served as the liaison between the Metro District and the construction team. A Sunsense crew of seven solar installers and five assistants built the racks and installed the solar panels, along with 16 inverters that convert direct current (DC) produced by the panels to alternating current (AC) used by the electric grid. Also on the job were three subcontractors. SGM of Glenwood Springs handled structural engineering for the foundation. Lyons Fencing of Silt carried out excavation on the two-acre site and built the concrete foundation and perimeter fencing. Expert Electric of Rifle wired the AC side of the array. “This was a challenging place to build, due to the river rock throughout the site,” Rushton said. “The Sunsense install crew worked closely with Lyons Fencing to remove some very large rocks.” The Battlement Mesa array joins a robust list of government-owned solar arrays across Garfield County. A total of 27 arrays from Battlement Mesa to Carbondale have a total generating capacity of 4.6 megawatts, and produce about 8.4 gigawatt-hours of clean electricity per year.