By Bill Kirk, Eagle-Tribune
July 29, 2008

One of the largest buildings in the Merrimack Valley now boasts the largest privately owned solar panel array in the state.

The roof of the old Lucent Technologies plant now holds more than 1,000 photovoltaic panels capable of producing enough electricity to power 200 homes on a sunny day.

Dan Leary, president of Nexamp, the North Andover company that installed the panels, credits Orit and Jeff Goldstein, owners of Osgood Landing, for their strong support of and investment in solar power.

“Ozzy Properties has the vision to understand that alternative energy sources are critical to the future success of businesses regionally and nationally,” said Leary, whose two-year-old company has become a regional leader in alternative energy solutions.

Ozzy Properties President Orit Goldstein said the installation is beneficial for environmental and financial reasons.

“We are proud to be on the forefront of a growing business-environmental movement and are confident that our efforts will spur other companies to take similar actions,” Goldstein said. “The notion that we can do something that is environmentally sound while also achieving a financial benefit is particularly appealing.”

Neither Nexamp, nor Ozzy Properties, intended to have the largest, privately owned solar array in the state.

It happened in stages.

In 2007, Nexamp, then a fledgling company with five employees, was hired by Ozzy Properties to install a set of panels on the roof that would be capable of creating 103 kilowatts of power. The Goldsteins liked it so much, Leary said, that they recently had his company install another array capable of creating 67 kilowatts of power.

“Once they saw how great (the first phase) worked, they wanted to do a second system,” Leary said.

Ellen Keller, vice president of commercial real estate for Ozzy Properties, said, “We didn’t plan to be the biggest. We got an e-mail from Dan telling us we were the biggest.”

Leary said one of the reasons Ozzy Properties liked the project so much is that Nexamp is a “turnkey operation” that handles everything for their clients, from permitting and financing to installation and maintenance.

“People think it takes a lot to make it work and then they wonder if it’s worth it,” he said.

While the total project cost about $1 million, he said, Ozzy Properties took advantage of $750,000 in state and federal tax credits and got other state-financed incentives so that the payback period shrunk to just 41/2 years.
That is, Ozzy Properties will break even on its investment by 2011 or 2012, at which point it will start getting free electricity to offset huge energy costs for the 2-million-square-foot building.

Meanwhile, Keller said, the company is considering expanding the use of green energy to power the vast building, including adding wind turbines, additional solar panels and possibly even possibly installing so-called “green roofs” — using plant material as roof cover.

“We’ll consider anything,” she said, noting that the company’s goal is to save money while also being good stewards of the environment.

Inside the building, other measures are being taken to save energy, including turning off lights in some of the vast, unused spaces in the old Lucent manufacturing facilities, putting lights on timers and motion-detectors, and turning down the heat or using less air-conditioning.

The solar panels and conservation measures combined have “dropped our energy bills,” Keller said.

She said that even before Lucent started laying off people and moving out — the company is scheduled to be completely out of the building by January 2009 — they had realized significant energy savings.

While Ozzy Properties can boast the largest privately owned solar array, it is not the largest in the state.

The two largest are owned by municipalities, said Jon Abe, vice president of business development for Nexamp, including one in Brockton and another in Waltham.

The second-largest private solar array is owned by MassInnovations in Fitchburg. MassInnovations is a company owned by Bob Ansin, who is developing the old Wood Mill on Merrimack Street in Lawrence.

By Sarah Wolfe, North Andover Citizen
July 7, 2008

There’s currently enough solar power coming from the roof of the former Lucent Plant to power nearly 200 average-sized homes. In fact, the Osgood Landing facility, managed by Ozzy Properties, was recently recognized for having the most solar power of any privately-owned photovoltaic array in Massachusetts.

“We’re proud to be on the forefront of a growing business environmental movement,” said Orit Goldstein, president of Ozzy Properties. “It also helps us compete for tenants who have similar interests in the environment, which we’re finding is more the case nowadays. We’re confident our efforts will spur other companies to take similar actions.”

Local company Nexamp, Inc., formerly NexGen Energy Solutions, started installing the solar panels at 1600 Osgood St. last year.

“We finished it about two months ago in May,” said Dan Leary, Nexamp, Inc. president and chief operations officer. “The first array was 103 kilowatts and this last one was 67 kilowatts. It’s a total of 170 kilowatts.”

Leary said more than 95 percent of the components used for the solar arrays were manufactured in Massachusetts. The invertors are from Solectria Renewables of Lawrence, a company owned by residents James and Anita Worden. The invertors convert the direct current from the solar panels into an alternating current for the nearly 2 million square foot building’s use, offsetting the amount of power that would otherwise come from the utility company.

“Both installations were thanks to funds granted from the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative,” Goldstein said.

The arrays were below the cost projections, she said, and with federal solar tax credit and other tax incentives, Ozzy Properties expects to see a return investment in less than five years. The average life of the panels is 20 years.

Osgood Landing also replaced its oil boilers with high-efficiency natural gas boilers in April 2007, which reduce greenhouse gas emissions and save on heating costs. The new system is expected to cut CO2 emissions by 4,000 tons per year and particulate matter by 73 tons per year.

“I commend business leaders like Orit Goldstein for taking the initiative to do green power. At the end of the day it’s about supply and demand, and there needs to first be the demand,” Leary said. “Orit doesn’t just talk about it, she’s doing it. She’s the reason for putting North Andover on the map for green energy.”

A green bill

Ozzy Properties joins the growing number of business switching to green power. Nexamp itself will begin installing a solar array this month on the roof of its new East Mill location.

To encourage even more companies and homes to go green, Gov. Deval Patrick signed a new bill this week that will require energy companies across the state to consider cost-effective renewable sources of energy before relying on more traditional ones. Unanimously approved by the House and Senate, the bill also establishes a program that will let communities use state loans and grants to cover the cost of conservation and renewable energy projects.

“It give a real boost to the renewable energy industries,” Leary said. “It gives more incentive to encourage the use of renewable as an alternative to fossil fuels.”

By Pete Howe, NECN
July 3, 2008

NECN video: Click here to watch video

Many people see a very bright future for solar power here in New England. Like the owners of this huge North Andover Massachusetts building, a former Western Electric lucent plant.

Ozzy properties just activated the largest privately owned solar array in New England, nearly an acre of solar panels.

The million-dollar project produces 8 to 10 percent of the electricity used by tenants renting space in the building. With tax breaks and state aid, the solar will pay for itself in five years. After that, the electricity is virtually free. Solar power’s poised to explode in Massachusetts under a clean energy law governor Deval Patrick signed Thursday.

The 1997 deregulation law forced utilities like Nstar and national grid to sell off power plants. But the new law lets them own up to 50 megawatts of solar panels. Enough to power about 10,000 homes or small businesses a year.

We have Nstar green out, just started July 1st, where they can choose to have their energy come from a wind farm that has no carbon footprint. i think you’re going to see Nstar solar in the not too distant future.

Just how utilities get into solar energy is yet to be determined. It could be they pay for big arrays like this on top of businesses and schools, they build solar farms out in wide open spaces, or they pay for hundreds of homeowners and small businesses to put up 4 or 6 panels on their roof.

A typical home solar installation costs 15 to 20 thousand dollars. So having a deep-pocketed utility cover the up-front cost would make solar much more affordable for consumers.

In North Andover, Orit Goldstein has eight hundred thousand square feet of prime manufacturing space she’d love to fill up with solar equipment makers. And plenty more roof for solar panels.