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Benefits for Peekskill Go Beyond CO2 Emissions Reductions

This project will provide positive environmental benefits like reducing 30,000 tons of CO2 emissions (about the same as taking 6,500 passenger vehicles off the road) and preventing woodland and meadow habitat destruction for solar panels — it also offers direct community benefits, ones that land in bellies and in budgets.

The Food Sovereignty Fund

The project is expected to generate an estimated $50,000 per year for the Food Sovereignty Fund, about $1.25 million over the life of the project. The Fund will support local food security and sovereignty initiatives in Peekskill.


For example, the Fund will support the Peekskill Regeneration Farm, a public food garden in Lepore Park that donates fresh produce directly to community members, the city’s Senior Nutrition Program, Fred's Pantry, and the Peekskill Housing Authority, while also providing free farm-based education to youth through the local school district and New Era Creative Space. Supporting farmer and youth apprentices will increase the farm’s output while providing hands-on training for young people curious about organic farming. All food and educational programming is provided at no cost to the community.

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Local volunteers working onsite at the Peekskill Regeneration Farm.

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We are an environmental justice community and we see a big opportunity for low to moderate income cities to replicate what we're doing.

— Joe Seaman-Graves, city planner for Cohoes, New York, said about their floating solar array project (Source)

Household Savings

The project will participate in a New York State program called Community Distributed Generation, which lets local solar projects share their power with nearby households. Peekskill will see energy bill savings of at least 20% for lower income households and 10% for other households.

 

Here's how it works:

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  1. Residents sign up as subscribers to the project.

  2. Each month, the solar project produces clean energy and sends it to the grid.

  3. Subscribers get a credit on their Con Edison bill based on their share of that energy, at a discount set by the project.

  4. Con Edison handles everything on one bill, so there's nothing extra to manage.

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Residents enjoy outdoor dining in downtown Peekskill. Source.

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The panels are sealed and act as a lid that brings evaporation down to nearly zero, benefiting regions [...] that repeatedly experience periods of drought. The water also keeps the panels cool, allowing them to generate more electricity than their land-mounted counterparts, which lose efficiency when they get too hot.

— Isabella O'Malley, Associated Press (Source)

Additional Potential Environmental Benefits

Floating solar panels shade the water’s surface providing several environmental benefits including stabilizing water temperature and slowing evaporation, supporting water conservation efforts.

 

The panels also reduce sunlight penetrating the surface of the water, helping to prevent harmful algae bloom and thereby reducing the frequency for chemical treatments. These benefits help protect both water quality and reservoir levels over time.

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There's continued research, but the ability to save about 80% of those evaporative losses or more is possible, and it becomes part of the solution, Will it ever be all of the water conservation solution? No, but it's an important part of it.

— Lee Addams of Water Wise Solar Solutions said about the Park City, UT floating solar array. (Source)

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