Terrasmart announced the completion of Connecticut’s largest utility-solar plant located in Canterbury this week. Alongside project partners, Terrasmart converted 270 acres of forest, farmland, and reclaimed gravel mining into a 66.5-MWac fixed-tilt system in just seven months.
“As the largest solar farm in Connecticut and one of the biggest in all of New England, this project demonstrates our full-scope approach to PV execution,” says Terrasmart President Ed McKiernan. “Our end-to-end solution allowed us to value-engineer and deliver a robust system for the utility in record time.”
Terrasmart self-performed 100 percent of the work, deploying 170 team members seven days per week and 10 hours per day to deliver the project on time. The team worked hand-in-hand with the developer and other stakeholders to compress a 130-week project into less than 33 weeks.
Terrasmart surveyed the site (using its proprietary surveying system), and n-house geotechnical, mechanical, electrical, and civil experts designed the system to withstand icy New England weather with up to 120 mph winds, 35 psf of snow load, and 27 inches of frost depth.
“Serving as PM for this project was a huge accomplishment and one of the highlights of my career,” says Richard Van Fleet, director of construction at Terrasmart. “I’m proud of our construction team who did everything possible to compress the timeline and make this project successful.”
The 150,000-module system — created for one of the country’s largest utilities — uses Terrasmart’s ground screw foundations and GLIDE racks to withstand frost heave, high snow, and high wind. This project marks 1.1 GWs of Northeastern U.S. solar projects in just the last two years for Terrasmart.
To ensure maximum efficiency, the highly trained crew staggered installation and testing by rows, instead of performing the testing sequentially as is typically done.
Tags: utility-scale
