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Nation's Largest "Brightfield" Dedicated

Federal state, and local officials, solar experts, environmentalists, and community leaders gathered to celebrate the completion of the Brockton Brightfield, a 425-kilowatt (kW) photovoltaic (PV) solar energy system located on a 3.7 acre environmentally remediated brownfield in Brockton, Massachusetts.

The Brockton Brightfield is the largest solar energy plant in New England, and the largest brownfield - an idle remediated "brownfield" transformed into a solar energy generating station - in the nation.

The new brightfield establishes Brockton, long known as the City of Champions, as Massachusetts' solar energy champion, with the largest installed capacity of photovoltaic solar power of any city in the commonwealth.

One of the ways that the city intends to build upon its solar leadership is by expanding the solar energy power plant to an associated brownfield across the street. Eventually the city plans to increase the Brockton Brightfield's capacity to 1 megawatt (MW).

"The Brockton Brightfield was built thanks to an extraordinary partnership between government agencies, nonprofit organization, and businesses," said Mayor Harrington. "We hope that Brockton's success in bringing this project to fruition will inspire other communities across the nation to turn their brownfields into clean solar energy generating brightfields as well."

Global Solar Inc. designed, built, operates and maintains the Brockton Brightfield. In building the Brockton Brightfield, Global Solar used 1,395 Schott Solar ASE 300 modules built at Schott Solar's production facility in nearby Billerica, Mass.

These solar panels will generate an estimated 535 Megawatt hours (MWh) of electricity annually, enough energy to power approximately 71 homes.

The development of the Brockton Brightfield will provide three key benefits to the community:

• Environmental. The use of solar power to produce electricity at the Brockton Brightfield, rather than fossil fuels, will result in a reduction of 589,570 pounds of carbon dioxide per year, equivalent to removing approximately 51 cars from the nation's highways. The Brockton project will also help avoid emissions of other greenhouse gases - about 1,086 pounds of sulfur dioxide and 289 pounds of nitrogen oxide.

• Educational. The Brockton Brightfield includes a stone-paved learning plaza, which will enable visitors to read about how photvoltaic solar energy works, view real-time data on the electricity being generated at the site on a LED display, and even get to touch a real Schott Solar module. Teachers in the Brockton city school district already plan to incorporate the site into their lesson plans, and the city expects that surrounding school districts will use field trips to the Brockton Brightfield learning plaza to help teach students more about pollution and solar energy.

• Aesthetic. The Brockton Brightfield project converts what was once an empty brownfield, symbolizing the city's polluted past, into a dazzling display of solar panels, demonstrating the city's embrace of a cleaner future. The calm orderly lines of solar panels are a perfect match for the urban mixed-use neighborhood, which includes both industrial and residential development. In addition, the Brockton Brightfield's granite capped brick pillars and park-like landscaping have improved the aesthetics of the neighborhood.

"The Brockton Brightfield is the most forward thinking project I have seen built in the neighborhood during my lifetime. Not only is it good for the environment, but it will also teach our kids more about renewable energy," said Charles Vella, a local resident who has lived in Brockton for the past 58 years.

The cost to construct the Brockton Brightfield was $3.037 million, with funding supplied by a $1.6 million city bond, $789,000 grant from the U.D. Department of Energy, and more than $1 million from the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative's Renewable Energy Trust. These organizations, along with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and NiSource, also provided the city of Brockton with planning and educational grants for the project.

The Brockton Brightfield realizes economies of scale due to its size. Whereas typical PV installations cost an average of $10/watt, the Brockton Brightfield's large utility scale size reduced the cost to about 47 per watt.

By selling the electricity and Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) generated at the site to Constellation NewEnergy, a competitive electricity supplier, the city of Brockton expects to secure more than $130,000 in annual revenue from the project. These revenues will be used to pay debt service on the bond and cover the brightfield's operations and maintenance costs.

The city of Brockton estimates that the brightfield will pay for itself within 15-20 years. The project will also provide the city of Brockton with an important hedge against rising electricity prices.

Bay State Gas Company cleaned up the environmentally contaminated site, formerly part of the Brockton Gas Light Company's gas works, throughout the 1990s up to 2004. Though a brownfield currently poses no threat to the community, a cap that seals in hazardous materials located on the brownfield limits development

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