MMWEC announces plans to construct 7-MW solar project

by Paul Ciampoli
APPA News Director
February 22, 2021

Massachusetts Municipal Wholesale Electric Company (MMWEC) recently announced plans to construct a 7-megawatt (MW) nameplate capacity solar project on its campus in Ludlow, Mass. Six MMWEC municipal utility members are participating in the project.

The ground-mounted solar project will be built on a 30-acre section of MMWEC’s 200 -acre property in Ludlow. The site is well suited for solar, MMWEC noted in a Feb. 10 news release.

After receiving responses to a request for proposals, MMWEC is working on a contract with EDF Renewables Distributed Solutions Inc., as the project developer. Construction is scheduled to start this summer, and the project is expected to come online by late 2021. 

Using its unique statutory financing authority as a political subdivision of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, MMWEC plans to use a local financial institution to issue tax-exempt revenue bonds to finance the project. The project’s cost is estimated at $14.5 million. 

The municipal utilities located in Boylston, Ipswich, Mansfield, Marblehead, Peabody and Wakefield are participating in the project. 

The project was developed in alignment with the state’s decarbonization goals, MMWEC said.  It also allows for member municipal utilities that may not have ideal locations for projects within their own communities to add more solar to their power portfolios.

MMWEC provides a variety of power supply, financial, risk management and other services to the state’s consumer-owned municipal utilities. It has 20 municipal utility members and 28 project participants.