Greening MFFC: Solar on the Sap House

by Rob Terry, Executive Director

If you paid us a visit around mid-September, chances are you noticed the heavy machines hard at work between the Visitor Center and the Sap House. All of that trenching, ledge hammering, and backfilling was a critical component of an infrastructure improvement project designed to substantially decrease MFFC’s carbon footprint by extending grid power past the Visitor Center and up to the Sap House, setting the stage for several important upgrades.

With the upgraded line in, we are able to move forward with the installation of a 15-kW solar array on the, more or less, south facing roof of the Sap House. Extending the power line allows us to tie-in to the grid directly from the solar array and enter into a net metering arrangement with Green Mountain Power. Broadly speaking, in this arrangement, Merck Forest & Farmland Center will receive credit from Green Mountain Power based on the amount of solar electricity produced on sight. Based on our current power usage, the 15-kW system should generate slightly more power that we are using on an annual basis. It is difficult to predict exactly how productive the solar system will be, because it is dependent in part on a set of variables that are beyond our control. That said, a 15-kW solar system should generate somewhere around 21,000 kWh annually. To put that in perspective, the average annual power use in a US home is 11,000 kWh.

In addition, increasing the size of the power line to the Sap House will allow us to run our reverse osmosis filter (RO) when sugaring in the spring without having to rely on the propane generator on the farm. Our current line in does not provide enough power to run the RO, dramatically increasing the carbon footprint of our sugaring operation resulting from our having to rely on the generator, which is quite inefficient compared to grid power. Upgrading the line eliminates our need to utilize the comparably high footprint generator when making syrup.

Over the estimated 25-year life of the solar array, this project will prevent the release of approximately 317,000 pounds of atmospheric carbon.