Officials hit the switch on Hartford landfill solar array

Submitted photo An aerial shot of the landfill solar array in June.

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The Materials Innovation and Recycling Authority has turned on a new one-megawatt solar panel array at the Hartford landfill alongside I-91.

MIRA, formerly called the Connecticut Resources Recovery Authority, turned the system on in mid-June after capping the six-acre section of the landfill upon with the 3,993-panel array sits.

Earlier this month, MIRA asked the Public Utilities Resources Authority to classify the system as a Class I renewable energy source, which will allow it to generate renewable energy credits.

MIRA will sell those credits — equivalent to one megawatt hour a piece — to Connecticut Light & Power for $110, or 11 cents per kilowatt hour, according to the application.

MIRA would also sell excess power to CL&P for the same base price, but with a variable price on top of it set by grid operator ISO New England, according to David Bodendorf, senior environmental engineer at MIRA.

Bodendorf estimated that the solar array may bring in approximately $200,000 in income per year.

The landfill is the first in Connecticut to generate solar power. The panels sit atop a cap made of artificial turf designed to protect the landfill’s methane gas collection system.

The Closure Turf cap, made by Georgia’s Watershed Geosynthetics, and solar generators were installed East Berlin’s Tecta America. Massachusetts-based E.T. & L. Corp. is general contractor for the landfill project.

The project is a part of the state’s zero-emissions renewable energy program, which will pay out a total of $720 million in energy credits over 21 years. Other projects in the ZREC program include similar solar arrays at ESPN and a TJX distribution center, both in Bristol, the state revealed a year ago.