Former SI Landfill Will Hold 10-MW Solar Facility

NEW YORK CITY-Coming to a former landfill near you will be the largest solar energy installation in the city. The Bloomberg administration said Monday afternoon that SunEdison had been selected to design, construct, install and operate a solar power facility on 47 acres at Freshkills Parks on Staten Island, with the potential to generate up to 10 megawatts of power—enough to power about 2,000 homes.

The installation will increase the city's existing solar-power capacity by 50%. It's the latest in a series of solar initiatives the city has launched in recent years, which include scaling up use of solar energy at city-owned sites and developing the NYC Solar Map, a web-based tool that estimates the feasibility of installing solar panels on any of the one million buildings in New York City.

The Bloomberg administration is moving ahead on steps to officially map an additional 1,500 acres of Freshkills into parkland, officially bringing the total for Freshkills Park to 2,200 acres. The addition would bring total parkland in New York City to more than 30,000 acres—larger than the entire city of San Francisco—for the first time in history.

“Freshkills was once the site of the largest landfill in the world,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday. “Soon it will be one of the city's largest parks, and the site of the largest solar power installation ever developed within the five boroughs.”

Adds Cas Holloway, deputy mayor for operations, “Developing solar energy on Freshkills Park shows that large-scale renewable energy projects are possible in New York City, but this is only a first step. If we are serious about meeting New York City's tremendous energy needs from renewable sources we need the state and federal governments, as well as our utility partners and others in the private sector, to work with us to make solar and other renewable energies easier to develop, install, and access the energy grid.”