Along five acres off West River Road in Hooksett, over 800 gabion baskets sit on top of the town’s capped landfill. Within three weeks, metal poles will be attached to either side of the fixtures. By the time one year has passed, those poles will hold nearly 2,300 solar panels.
Mark Zankel, the director of community solar for ReVision Energy, looked over the landfill on Tuesday morning, a week after the company started construction on the 1.34-megawatt solar array project. “Having participated in a number of ribbon cuttings for towns that have energized community solar projects, it’s really great to see the pride that people in local communities have when they turn one of these systems on, and I expect that that will be the same for the town folks,” he said.
The project, expected to go online in late summer 2027, will produce 1.65 million kilowatt-hours of electricity annually to offset a portion of both the town’s and the school district’s consumption. Hooksett joins a number of other state municipalities that have also utilized landfills for renewable energy projects.