sPower and Borrego Solar Systems together announced the completion of and connection to PSEG-LI’s electrical grid of the sPower Sutter and Sterlington solar projects in the Town of Riverhead, Suffolk County, Long Island. The two projects comprise the sPower Riverhead Solar Farm. With a combined system size of 6.3MWac (9.1MWdc), Riverhead Solar will produce more than 12 million kWh of energy annually, enough to power 1,100 homes.
“Bringing the Riverhead Solar project online required a coordinated collaboration from all parties from our EPC partner to PSEG-LI to local municipalities. We are pleased to have successfully achieved commercial operation,” said Ryan Creamer, sPower CEO.
sPower has a third project in Suffolk County under construction with Borrego Solar as the EPC. All three projects will supply energy to PSEG-LI under the utility’s first Clean Solar Initiative Feed-in-Tariff (FIT) program and will make sPower the owner of the largest portfolio of solar facilities under the program. The projects are the largest to come online under the FIT program and are among the first completed utility-scale solar projects in New York State.
“The site is adjacent to a substation, which makes interconnecting with PSEG-LI ideal,” said Brian von Moos, VP of Utility Project Development at Borrego Solar. “The project is located on industrially zoned land. Coupled with the landscaping plan we developed with the city, the project will largely be out of sight to neighbors. Another benefit is that the Riverhead project will generate renewable power where it is being consumed on the island.”
The sPower Riverhead Solar Farm is expected to generate enough clean energy to offset roughly 3,400 metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents annually – which equates to taking more than 720 cars off the road each year, or the same amount of carbon that would be sequestered by 2,830 acres of mature U.S. forests annually.
sPower and Borrego Solar have partnered on nearly 39MW of solar projects in California, Massachusetts and New York.