VIDEO: Shady Grove Solid Waste Station Goes Solar

Montgomery County Executive Isiah Leggett on Monday led a ceremonial flipping of the switch on 1,248 solar panels installed on the roof of the county's Shady Grove Processing Facility and Transfer Station—what Leggett called "the county's first large-scale solar project."

The panels will generate nearly 350,000 kilowatt hours a year for use by the solid waste facility.

"The county wins by securing predictable and low-cost power while reducing our collective dependency on the grid and coal-fire electricity," said Leggett (D).

The energy generated will offset about 300 tons of carbon emissions each year that would have been created by using electricity from the grid—the equivalent of the annual emissions of about 60 automobiles, Leggett said.

The cost of the solar energy system's installation was covered by a $280,000 grant from the Maryland Energy Administration's Project Sunburst and a Solar Power Purchase Agreement with SunEdison of Beltsville, which financed and constructed the array and will operate and maintain the system.

The system will generate about 6.5 million kilowatt hours over the 20-year life of the project—equivalent to the amount of energy used to power 590 average-sized American homes for one year.

The energy will save the county an estimated $200,000 in operating costs over the 20 years, Leggett said.

Project Sunburst was created using federal stimulus dollars. A year ago, Gov. Martin O'Malley (D) announced the award of $9.3 million in grants to 17 projects statewide, including the solar energy system at Shady Grove.

The state used the federal dollars to leverage another $36 million of private sector investment, said Maryland Energy Administration Director Malcolm Woolf.

"It's a four-to-one leverage to make more jobs and more renewable energy in Maryland," Woolf said.

The projects will lead to the installation of nearly 40,000 American-made solar panels that will account for 9.3 megawatts of new generation, nearly double the amount of solar capacity on Maryland's electrical grid when the program began, he said.