Solar farms already online in Stowe and Hyde Park

It was a demanding and exhausting project for Carol Robertson and Ellen Burt, the general managers of Hyde Park Electric and Stowe Electric, respectively. Their weariness is evident, stamped on their eyes, stirred into the coffee cup on Burt’s desk, but their pride is palpable.

“I have to show you a picture,” Robertson said, calling up an image on her phone: a prodigious swath of solar panels, 1,440 of them, in the Hyde Park project.

Burt has photos, too, of the Stowe project, taken from the front, the side and even the air.

Stowe’s array, the Nebraska Valley Solar Farm, sits atop a former gravel pit on Beech Hill Road.

Waterhouse Solar in Hyde Park stands in a field off Silver Ridge Road.

The two farms are the first of their kind: No other town utility has owned a solar farm in Vermont’s history, Burt said.

Both towns sought 25-year bonds for up to $3.3 million to pay for the arrays authorized by voters in each town in overwhelming January votes.

The arrays were a way for the towns to get ahead of state law that will require utilities to produce much more of their own power — or cough up heavy fines.

The projects were finished early. Stowe’s wasn’t supposed to be online until October, but it’s churning out electricity more than a month before that.

Robertson said both solar farms also came in under their allotted budgets: Hyde Park Electric was awarded a $3.5 million energy bond, but Waterhouse Solar only came to just over $3 million for a turnkey operation.

Stowe was awarded $3.1 million to build the farm and Burt says it, too, came in at less than that. The utilities used the same contractors.

“This is what good project management can do,” Burt said.

Last Monday, the farms produced one megawatt of electricity each, their maximum capacity. The Nebraska Valley Solar Farm will account for 2 percent of Stowe Electric’s energy portfolio. Hyde Park’s farm is expected to provide 13 percent of all the energy needed for Hyde Park Electric.

Local jobs

In addition to farming the sun for sustainable energy, Burt and Robertson say the arrays will provide jobs and an economic boost to Stowe and Hyde Park.

For instance, the Stowe farm’s land is leased from the town government, something Burt says helps both ratepayers and Stowe taxpayers.

In Hyde Park, the farm represents a stable income for a sitting property as well as job opportunities for local people to maintain and repair the solar arrays.

“It’s economic value right to your own town,” Burt said. “It’s an investment into our communities. It’s wonderful. Both Carol and I are very proud of that.”

Proud of the farms

Robertson told the Hyde Park select board a week ago that the farm was finished and online.

“They were thrilled, but they said they couldn’t see it,” Robertson said. “I said, ‘That’s the point!’ We haven’t even put up the vegetation yet that’s supposed to hide it more. The select board really supported this project. They couldn’t believe it was online.”

“It’s really pretty,” Burt said of the Stowe farm.

Working together has cemented the bond between Hyde Park Electric and Stowe Electric and Burt and Robertson themselves.

“We understand each other more than other people do,” Robertson said with a smile.