New Hampshire town energizes 2.25 MW landfill solar array

Derry, New Hampshire has turned its old town landfill into a solar farm. The 2.25 megawatt array sits on 10 acres of the capped landfill and now sends power directly to town and school buildings. A Vermont company, Encore Renewable Energy, built and paid for the project, so the town had no upfront cost. Instead, Derry signed a long-term deal to buy the electricity the array produces.

The savings come from the price. Derry is paying $0.065 per kilowatt-hour for solar power, well below the $0.14 per kilowatt-hour that Eversource NH normally charges. Town officials expect to save $250,000 to $300,000 in the first year alone, and more than $4 million over the system's 25-year life. Officials say the array will generate roughly as much electricity as 500 average New Hampshire homes use in a year.

The project took six years to develop. A volunteer town committee, the Derry NetZero Task Force, studied energy use across 40 town and school buildings before the town picked Encore in 2021 from seven companies that bid for the job.

This is a municipal project, not something tied to individual homeowners, so there is no rebate or program here for residents to sign up for. But it shows a growing pattern: towns are putting solar on land that cannot be used for much else, like old landfills, to cut their own electricity costs. If your town is exploring something similar, it is worth watching how these deals lower public energy costs without raising taxes.