By Greentech Lead Team: New Jersey
American Water, a provider of high-quality and reliable water and wastewater
services, is installing solar arrays at two of its water filtration facilities.
These arrays will enable the company to become more cost efficient and reduce
carbon footprint.
New Jersey American Water is
constructing a total of nearly 7,000 solar panels which will produce more than
2.2 million kilowatt hours each year in energy offsetting production costs at
its Delaware River Regional Water Treatment Plant in Delran (DRRWTP), and at
its Mansfield well station in Burlington County.
“Over the past several years, we
have become more reliant on solar power to make our operations more cost
efficient and to reduce our carbon footprint,” said Suzanne
Chiavari, New Jersey American Water’s vice president of
engineering.
ENERActive Solutions of Asbury Park
are designing and building the solar field of 3,565 panels at the DRRWTP. This
installation will produce nearly 1.2 million kilowatt hours per year. The $7.7
million project is expected to complete in April 2012.
In Mansfield, New Jersey American
Water and ENERActive have begun a $7.1 million project to install 3,290 solar
panels that will produce more than one million kilowatt hours of power per
year. The solar field is targeted to go online by June 2012.
“As a company that cares about
water, our most essential natural resource, it makes sense from an
environmental and economic standpoint to use our most abundant natural resource
to power our treatment and distribution facilities,”
Last summer, New Jersey American Water
added a 150-kilowatt solar field to a well station in Farmingdale.