In just three months, contractors added a sustainable element to the Rehoboth Landfill with the installation of 3,200 solar panels that collectively produce 1,300 kilowatt hours of electricity per month.

The design, engineering, procurement and installation for the 1.3-MW solar array required a sophisticated racking system due to constraints posed by the landfill.

Designed on slopes as steep as 13%, the racking system required project designs to be drawn early in the process and redrawn several times, the team said. Designs included the staging of materials and equipment in a systematic way so they wouldn’t impact the landfill surface.

An innovative racking system allowed the project team to attach solar panels to the landfill “without penetrating it due to its utilization of concrete blocks over posts,” the team said. “This gave the team much more flexibility to adapt landfill design to all slope grades on site.”

After some solar panels had “durability issues,” the team worked closely with the manufacturer to ensure that the problem didn’t impact the schedule or budget.

Completed in February 2016, the solar array connects directly to the national electrical grid and is expected to generate approximately $2 million in revenue for the town of Rehoboth during a 20-year power purchase agreement.

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