The Town of Derry, New Hampshire has activated a 2.25 MW ground-mounted solar array built on a capped municipal landfill. Developed, financed, and constructed by Vermont-based Encore Renewable Energy, the project operates under a long-term power purchase agreement and delivers 100% of its generation directly to the municipality.
The installation covers 10 acres of reclaimed municipal property and was built at no upfront cost to the town. Local officials estimate the array will produce enough electricity to offset the power consumption of roughly 500 average New Hampshire homes annually. The generation will serve municipal and school operations across the town.
The project has a fixed power rate that undercuts the local utility’s benchmark supply costs. The town will purchase solar electricity from Encore at $0.065 per kWh, compared to Eversource NH’s current electricity supply rate of $0.14 per kWh. Town administrators project year-one savings between $250,000 and $300,000. Over the 25-year operational life of the system, cumulative savings are conservatively expected to exceed $4 million.
The initiative originated with the Derry NetZero Task Force. This all-volunteer municipal committee spent six years benchmarking energy usage across 40 town and school buildings to advance the system’s design and clear legislative hurdles. The Town of Derry selected Encore through a competitive procurement process in 2021 from a pool of seven bidding developers
Brightfield developments on closed landfills offer municipal off-takers a viable method to monetize otherwise undevelopable property while capitalizing on existing electrical infrastructure. The Derry installation marks another expansion of community-scale solar capacity across the region as local governments seek to offset operating expenses through localized generation.
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