Schoharie County may have finally found a place for a solar farm:
Back behind its new jail.
Supervisors Friday authorized Flood Recovery Coordinator Bill Cherry to take the first step in finding out whether installing free-standing solar panels on a portion of the 102-acre Howes Cave site is possible and economically feasible.
Mr. Cherry reminded supervisors that they’d asked him to look into the possibility of adding a solar array on county-owned land to help reduce their energy costs about two years ago.
“We couldn’t find anything that worked,” he said, “but I think the jail site is worth exploring.”
In the past, there wasn’t enough room, or the sites were too wooded or too far away from National Grid infrastructure.
But now that the county’s broken ground on the new jail, the board, open area behind and to the east of it might with for at least a five megawatt solar farm, a size that could power the jail, the County Office Building, and the DPW garage with possibly enough left to offer it to towns and villages at a discount.
The idea got Cobleskill Supervisor Leo McAllister thinking.
The 40-acre Doc Reilly Park, just a mile away, is under-utilized, he said, and could be the perfect tie-in as a second solar array.
“All it’s doing [Doc Reilly Park] is costing us money,” Mr. McAllister said.
“It’s just a couple of ball fields used a few times a year,” in part because of the expense of developing it and in part because of security concerns.
Mr. McAllister said the town’s been exploring options for the park, donated in the name of former Cobleskill Supervisor Frank Reilly for years and the original owners have no problems with it being used for a solar farm.
Though a couple of supervisors balked at a solar farm along Route 7, the property is 40 acres and stretches back to the creek.
Supervisors authorized Mr. Cherry to publish a request for qualifications to explore the feasibility of adding a solar component to the jail site.
The facility would be built at no cost to the county.