From trashed land to community solar...
In Colorado Springs a closed landfill is being repurposed into a 500kW community solar array.
The Clean Energy Collective which is creating this site is recycling the 43-acre brownfield site into a renewable energy park. The CEC's community solar model allows local residents (including renters) and educational customers to purchase solar panels in the array and enjoy the benefits of solar without having to install panels on their own building.
"... this will be the fifth solar facility for the Colorado-based company. Along with an 858 kW facility in Rifle—currently the largest community-owned solar garden in the nation—and an 80 kW pilot facility operating in El Jebel, the CEC is developing a 1 MW site in El Jebel, a 1 MW facility near Telluride, and is working on more than 33 MW of community solar opportunities throughout the nation…"
http://newenergynews.blogspot.com/2011/12/from-landfill-to-solar-garden.html
The city of Davis, CA (just west of Sacramento and home of UC, Davis) also has a community solar array. Davis has been very involved with energy efficiency and planted lots of shade trees in order to cut AC needs in Central CA's very hot summers. This made a number of houses not good locations for rooftop solar, so folks put their money together and installed their panels on open land.
