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    Western NY Community Solar project serving Low-to-Moderate Customers

    May 22, 2023
    The 6.4-MW Amherst solar farm will produce all of its energy for the Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority serving low-to-moderate income residential customers. More than 1,300 housing units were enrolled
    Image credit Catalyze
    Catalyze Solar 646b79cb159fd

    The Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority in Amherst, New York, is connected to a newly completed community solar project by developer Catalyze.

    The 6.4-MW Amherst solar farm will produce all of its energy for the Buffalo Municipal Housing Authority serving low-to-moderate income residential customers. More than 1,300 housing units were enrolled into the subscription service by Ampion.

    Amherst is listed as a Clean Energy Community in the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority program. NYSERDA helps lead state goals to deploy 6 GW of distributed solar by 2025.

    "We’re proud to support New York’s efforts in building a clean, resilient and low-cost grid powered by renewable energy," said Steve Luker, CEO of Catalyze. "Community solar projects like Amherst offer the opportunity to provide lower energy costs and renewable energy access to everyone, including low-to-moderate income communities.”

    Catalyze is a solar developer supported with significant funding from EnCap Investments LP and Actis. The developer has completed on-site rooftop and utility-scale projects for customers including Pepsi Bottling, Damco, Costco, Blackstone and Cathay Bank, among others.

    The Amhert solar farm also utilizes sheep, shepherded by a landowner of the Amherst community, to maintain the vegetation on site during the grazing season. This provides the landowner with a new source of revenue as well, while having minimal negative impact on the solar site itself.

    Community solar offers an option between on-site rooftop solar, which can be cost-prohibitive for individual customers and property owners, and utility-scale projects which involved complicated rate cases.

    About the Author

    EnergyTech Staff

    Rod Walton is senior editor for EnergyTech.com. He has spent 14 years covering the energy industry as a newspaper and trade journalist.

    Walton formerly was energy writer and business editor at the Tulsa World. Later, he spent six years covering the electricity power sector for Pennwell and Clarion Events. He joined Endeavor and EnergyTech in November 2021.

    He can be reached at [email protected]. 

    EnergyTech is focused on the mission critical and large-scale energy users and their sustainability and resiliency goals. These include the commercial and industrial sectors, as well as the military, universities, data centers and microgrids.

    Many large-scale energy users such as Fortune 500 companies, and mission-critical users such as military bases, universities, healthcare facilities, public safety and data centers, shifting their energy priorities to reach net-zero carbon goals within the coming decades. These include plans for renewable energy power purchase agreements, but also on-site resiliency projects such as microgrids, combined heat and power, rooftop solar, energy storage, digitalization and building efficiency upgrades.