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Sun providing heaps of electricity for Massachusetts

Solar power hot all over Cape, state Jun 3 – McClatchy-Tribune Regional News – Patrick Cassidy Cape Cod Times, Hyannis, Mass. Solar in Massachusetts is on fire. Over the past two years, capacity from photovoltaic panels across the state has more than quadrupled from 25 to 115 megawatts, enough to power about 115,000 homes, according to figures provided by state energy officials and energy information websites.

On Cape Cod and the Islands alone, 665 solar projects have been built
over the past five years totaling more than 8 megawatts.

“In general, we have certainly seen a boom in the field of solar
energy,” Massachusetts Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs
Richard K. Sullivan Jr. said……Perhaps the biggest hurdle for solar
energy developers, however, is plugging into the electrical grid. The
queue for developers trying to hook renewable energy projects into the
grid is long and growing with more than 1,000 solar energy projects,
equal to 207 megawatts, waiting for an interconnection study to be
done by the utility NStar.

“Interest in renewable energy — be it solar or wind — is really high
right now,” NStar spokesman Michael Durand said. “There are more
applications coming in than we have ever seen.”

NStar’s critics on this front argue the utility isn’t doing enough to
complete engineering studies to interconnect solar projects to the

June 4, 2012 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | decentralised, USA