There are two interesting – maybe “infuriating” is a better word – tidbits in this Monadnock Ledger-Transcript story about a 1.3-megawatt solar array opened atop a closed landfill in Jaffrey:
- It is the first under New Hampshire’s Low-Moderate Income Community Solar Program, designed to help low- and moderate-income families. The electricity will support an estimated 250 families in the region; the selected families will receive a 25% reduction in the supply portion of their bill. The infuriating thing is that the program was created four years ago but this is its first actual project. There are roughly 11,000 people in the state enrolled in the Low-Moderate-Income Community Solar Program, according to the story.
- Town Manager Jon Frederick said Jaffrey, which as a town of 5,600 doesn’t have a ton of expert staff in town hall, has been trying to get a solar array on top of the town’s capped landfill “for nearly two decades.” Financing, regulations, grid connections, local building bules – these are all obstacles that slow down what is otherwise a very quick process, the building of a solar farm on a parcel where nothing else can be grown or built.
No wonder New Hampshire is a solar laggard.
