By Green Energy Times staff
Encore Renewable Energy’s Misty Knoll Farm project – creating value on the least agriculturally usable portion of the property.
Chad Farrell, the President of Burlington, Vermont-based renewable energy developer Encore Redevelopment has announced that the company is taking on a new name. It is now Encore Renewable Energy.
The company is also taking on a renewed focus, as it transitions from a traditional property redevelopment company to focus more narrowly on developing new sources of clean energy by re-purposing land for commercial, industrial, and community-scale solar photovoltaic (PV) systems.
Encore Renewable Energy has a great deal of experience bringing problematic real estate back to useful productivity. These include brownfields, which often suffer from industrial pollution or similar problems that render them unsuitable for most uses. Many communities have landfills, and solar PVs can give them value they otherwise would not have.
Problem sites require special expertise. Developers need to be aware of shifting soil at landfills, often complicated by the presence of caps, which are underground barriers that cover the entire landfill to trap methane given off as waste decomposes. Brownfields require an entirely different set of skills, as they have problems that are highly variable from one site to another. Many brownfields have poisoned soils that were rendered toxic by industries that used them in the past.
Encore has had a great deal of experience with solar power. They have completed a number of large-scale PV projects, and have several more underway. One particularly pretty site is the 150 kilowatt (kW) Misty Knoll Farm / Middlebury Foods Co-op system, which was installed in 2011. Encore served as a full-service clean energy development company for the project.
Another more recent development is the Whitcomb Farm Solar system in Essex Junction, Vermont, which was completed in 2014. Encore did work on permitting, engineering, and financing for this system. At 3,600 kW, it is the largest PV system in the state.
Some of Encore’s best developments are in its own area, near Burlington, Vermont, and they have been coming at what seems to be increasing speed. Green Energy Times, in its issue of May 2011, covered the installation of 150 kW at the Farm at South Village in South Burlington. This was followed by an impressive array of 376 kW on multiple roofs of the Burlington School District in 2012, for which Encore was the turnkey developer. In 2013, Encore developed and installed a 578 kW array at the Burlington International Airport. Now, Encore is installing a 2,200 kW array on the landfill in South Burlington, with engineering provided by Sanborn Head of Essex Junction, Vermont. These, however, are just some developments in the Burlington area.
Clearly, setting the new focus is not entering into a new line of work, but simply a matter of refining the company’s already developed area of greatest expertise.
Encore’s website is EncoreRenewableEnergy.com.
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