SOUTH PORTLAND — The interim city manager will soon begin negotiating a power purchase agreement with a Portland company that wants to install a solar power array on the former municipal landfill off Highland Avenue.
Following a workshop discussion Monday, a fully supportive City Council is set to vote Sept. 7 to direct Don Gerrish to negotiate an agreement with ReVision Energy. Gerrish would return to the council to have it consider a final proposal for a solar farm on the 34-acre site.
ReVision recently sweetened the terms of its proposal to build the solar facility, reducing the price that the city would pay for electricity generated by the array from 12 cents to 10 cents per kilowatt-hour under a power purchase agreement.
ReVision revised its offer after proposed legislation to reform Maine’s solar regulations failed last spring, causing several communities to pull back from solar proposals without the means to make them financially viable.
City officials have teamed up with their Portland counterparts to negotiate separate agreements with matching terms for ReVision to build a solar array atop each city’s capped landfill. Portland’s landfill is a 44-acre site off Ocean Avenue.
Under the proposal, ReVision would build a 660-kilowatt array in each city. Each array would serve a maximum of 10 municipal meters – the most possible under Maine law – and generate about 1.2 million kilowatt-hours of electricity annually for municipal and school use.
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