This Is Not Your Normal Ground Array! Crucial Details to Consider When Siting PV on Landfills and Other Waste Containment Sites

Landfills, "Superfund" sites, coal ash heaps and other vast waste impoundments are a huge potential market for future PV project development but the design challenges are significantly different from farmland or rooftop arrays. We will survey the critical factors specific to waste sites which must be considered when adding solar panels to these lands.  Such factors include: waste content and closure characteristics, topography (slopes, plateaus and differential settlement), stormwater management, cover stability, in-situ gas collection, regulatory permitting, ongoing O & M, postclosure monitoring, and liability. Each factor will be explained in terms of its impact on the financial/economic/engineering and environmental benefits (or disadvantages) of a project site. Throughout the presentation we will highlight existing PV projects in the US and EU which exemplify one or the other PV approach to successfully solving these challenges and point out avoidable problems you may encounter.  

Finally, we will summarize the discussion by suggesting concise site selection filters which participants can use to evaluate future projects.