South Hadley, MA —Representatives from the South Hadley Electric Light Department (SHELD) and Mount Holyoke College will join with members of the South Hadley and Mount Holyoke communities to cut the ribbon on a just-completed solar panel project representing 1,472 panels mounted to the roof of the College's Kendall Sports and Dance Complex. The system will generate 541,600 kilowatt hours of electricity each year, roughly equivalent to the power demands of 66 households.
The ribbon cutting ceremony will take place at 2 pm on Monday, November 19 outside the Kendall Sports and Dance Complex on Dunlap Place on the north side of the MHC campus. Tours of the rooftop solar array will follow the ribbon cutting for members of the media.
The solar array will provide clean, renewable electric power to the athletic center and adjacent campus facilities, helping both the College and the utility advance their renewable energy goals.
Among participants will be Mount Holyoke President Sonya Stephens; SHELD General Manager Sean Fitzgerald; Shannon Gurek, MHC’s VP for Finance and Administration; Tito Sharma, President and CEO, Nextgen Renewable Solutions; Todd Bard, President and CEO of Lee Energy Group, and a number of local officials.
Installation of the array began in July. Lee Energy Group LLC, of Feeding Hills, and NextGen Renewable Solutions, a leading provider of commercial solar installations, developed the system for SHELD and the College.
The photovoltaic installation is the first large-scale commercial rooftop solar project in South Hadley
