PROJECT DESCRIPTION

“Citizens Energy Corporation is a leader in turning brownfields to brightfields by installing solar arrays on capped and closed landfills. The Agawam Landfill solar project was one of five projects Citizens selected Conti as their engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) contractor.

Conti performed EPC services for a 2.6 MW DC landfill solar farm on a former wastewater treatment basin owned by Essential Power Massachusetts. As constructed, the slopes in the solar project area are generally between 2 percent and 9 percent and final cover consisted of a paper fiber sludge and vegetative support layer.

The ballast blocks for the racking system were distributed throughout the site using low ground pressure equipment. Conti managed different aspects of the project including construction, grid interconnection, utility coordination and state, county and township approval.

The solar photovoltaic (PV) system is composed of 7,676 PV modules, 404 pre-wired strings, 1,891 precast ballast blocks and equipment pads including Sunbelt Transformers and SMA Sunny Central Inverters. Along with the solar field, other construction activities included placing erosion barriers, installing two culvert crossings and building out a new access road to the equipment pads.

Once construction was complete, Conti tied the PV system into the existing Eversource distribution system. Citizens Energy Corporation will own and operate this array for the next 20 years.