Crews are preparing to switch on four solar arrays with a total of 15,000 panels at Baltimore County’s closed landfill in Parkton.
The solar farm is expected to account for about 11 percent of the electricity the county consumes annually.
It’s the county government’s first large-scale ground-mounted solar facility.
The landfill is still a workzone. Crews are finishing things up including connecting the solar facility to the BGE power grid. It’s expected to go online by November 30.
Gregory Strella, Baltimore County’s chief sustainability officer, said the county has a deal with Total Energies, the company that is building and owns the facility. The county will buy the energy generated at the landfill at a set price for the next 25 years.
“We can see what’s happening to the price of electricity in the near term right now,” Strella said. “It’s going up and up. We feel like it’s important to secure locked-in energy pricing for the county at this time.”
The county gets credit for adding clean energy to the grid. The value of that energy is then applied to offset the power it uses at county facilities.
Seth Blumen, the county’s energy and sustainability coordinator said, “We’re saving money on numerous county facilities’ accounts through this project.”
Strella said there are other benefits as well.
“We’re adding a significant amount of power generation to the power grid at a time when generation is very scarce,” Strella said. “And that additional generation actually helps ease pricing for our broader community.”
Closed landfills are viewed as ideal locations for solar farms because they often have few neighbors and the land has little agricultural value.
In 2021, then-Baltimore County Executive Johnny Olszewski set a goal for the county to get 100 percent of its energy from renewable sources by 2026.
The county is falling short of that goal. When another solar project opens in a couple of years at the closed Hernwood landfill, the county estimates it will be generating enough renewable energy to account for about 55 percent of its power needs.
“These projects take multiple years, in this case multiple administrations, to move from concepts to plans to reality,” Strella said.
He adds they are looking for other ways to increase generating renewable energy, including putting solar panels on county building rooftops and in parking lots.
“We’re constantly evaluating opportunities to generate more renewable energy and we’re very active right now making those decisions for the future,” Strella said.
