DuPont marked the startup of a 548 kilowatt, five-acre solar installation on a former Superfund landfill site in Newport, Del.
The solar installation, at 205 South James Street will produce enough electricity to power 60 homes in the Newport community. It will generate about 729,000 kilowatt hours of power per year.
After successfully completing clean up at the Newport site, and with the support of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Delaware Division of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC), DuPont collaborated with Tangent Energy Solutions to add a solar project.
The project was developed by Tangent and owned by Greenwood Energy, a subsidiary of Libra Group. The solar panels were supplied by DuPont Apollo, a wholly-owned subsidiary of DuPont. Tangent and Greenwood also developed the larger Peninsula solar projects in Wilmington.
The Peninsula brownfield sites will generate about two megawatts of electricity. The celebration event included a program that was conducted at the nearby DuPont Photovoltaics Applications Lab near Wilmington Gov. Jack Markell headlined a group of speakers who provided comments during the program. Other speakers included: Shawn Garvin, regional administrator – EPA Mid-Atlantic Region 3; and Linda Fisher, vice president – DuPont Safety, Health & Environment and Chief Sustainability Officer.
“The DuPont Solar Power Project complements Delaware’s commitment toward using clean, renewable energy sources,” Markell said. “Generating solar energy benefits the residents of Newport, and positively impacts our state – increasing our competitiveness, reducing air pollution, improving public health and creating jobs.”
Delaware ranks 19th in the country in cumulative installed solar capacity. There is enough solar energy installed in the state to power 4,800 homes, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.
“Under the RE-Powering America Initiative, EPA encourages renewable energy development on current and formerly contaminated land when it is aligned with the community’s vision for the site,” Garvin said. “When we work together to turn an environmental problem into an opportunity, we create the best of what is possible – here solar energy will serve the families of Newport and inspire others to re-power America with alternative energy solutions.”
“We’re very excited about this project because it is the first time we’ve utilized solar on a former landfill. The project will reduce DuPont’s greenhouse gas emissions by 350 tons a year and reuse a portion of a federal Superfund site that had been considered to be unusable land,” said Fisher. “This is a great example of what we’re trying to do at DuPont around the world: working collaboratively to help meet the growing demand for energy with renewable fuels.”
This represents the 11th solar installation on DuPont land to date, and the fourth in Delaware. Two additional installations are expected to be completed by year-end, bringing the total energy output to 4.8 million kilowatt hours per year – enough to power 400 U.S. households. In addition to its DuPont Apollo subsidiary, which specializes in silicon-based thin film solar technologies, DuPont is the largest supplier of specialty materials to the solar industry
