Solar racking manufacturer and turnkey installer Terrasmart completed Connecticut’s largest utility-scale solar plant in Canterbury. The company supplied racking and built the 66.5-MWAC plant.
Credit: Terrasmart
Terrasmart surveyed the site, designed a system to withstand New England weather conditions, manufactured the racking and executed the mechanical installation of the 66.5-MWAC fixed-tilt system in seven months. Working with project partners, Terrasmart converted 270 acres of forest, farmland and reclaimed gravel mines to renewable energy production.
The 150,000-module system — created for one of the country’s largest utilities — uses Terrasmart’s ground screw foundations and GLIDE racks to anticipate frost heave, high snow and high wind. With the completion of this project, Terrasmart has installed more than 1.1 GW of solar in the Northeast over the last two years.
“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,” said Ed McKiernan, president of Terrasmart. “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% 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.
“Serving as PM for this project was a huge accomplishment and one of the highlights of my career,” said 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.”
Terrasmart used its proprietary surveying software during system design. To safeguard system integrity, in-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.
News item from Terrasmart
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