COURTESY / DESIGNLAB
The former Great Northern Paper mill site in Millinocket is now called One North. Mount Katahdin is in the background.
Updated: August 23, 2022
NY clean energy developer to invest $21M in Millinocket community solar project
Courtesy / Greenbacker Renewable Energy Co.
Greenbacker’s 2.8-megawatt solar project in Lawrence Brook, Vt., includes pollinator-friendly habitat planted beneath the panels.
A New York City investment firm plans to spend $21 million on the development of a community solar-power farm at One North, a 1,400-acre, mixed-use industrial site in Millinocket, formerly the site of the Great Northern Paper mill.
The project will be a 7.5-megawatt ground-mounted array covering 20 acres, according to the firm, Greenbacker Renewable Energy Co.
The solar farm is expected to have a subscriber base of 1,100 customers, help reduce electricity bills and generate local jobs. The project could also reduce the need for fossil-fuel power emitting 3,800 metric tons of carbon dioxide a year.
The goal is to start construction in early September and be online by May 2023, according to Jacqueline Fedida, a vice president on the Greenbacker investments team who helped lead the One North project acquisition.
One North is managed by Our Katahdin, a volunteer-driven nonprofit that purchased the mill site in 2017.
Big footprints in US, Maine
Greenbacker, founded in 2011, is a sustainable infrastructure fund and an owner/operator of renewable energy projects across the U.S. Together, they have a generating capacity of 2.6 gigawatts. Greenbacker has $2 billion in funds under management.
For preconstruction assets such as that at One North, Greenbacker oversees construction, gets the project up and running and owns and operates it throughout its useful life.
Greenbacker entered the Maine market in 2020, when the fund acquired a to-be-constructed 15.3-MW wind farm, called RoxWind, in Roxbury. The farm entered commercial operation last November and powers approximately 4,500 homes per year.
Greenbacker now has 18 solar projects and one wind project in Maine, representing a capacity of 83.2 megawatts. The projects are in Penobscot, Androscoggin, Hancock, Franklin, Cumberland, York, Aroostook, Sagadahoc, Somerset and Oxford counties.
There's also an office in Portland with 70 employees.
“We have a very strong Maine presence,” Fedida told Mainebiz.
Late last year, Greenbacker acquired the One North community solar farm project as part of a portfolio that included a pre-operational energy storage project and pre-operational solar projects in Maine, Illinois and New York.
Greenbacker purchased the portfolio from San Diego-based Borrego, a developer and operator of large-scale renewable energy projects that has worked with Greenbacker for years.
The Maine portion of the acquisition included three solar projects in separate counties across the state. Two of those projects are community solar and one has a commercial power purchase agreement. Each project is preapproved for Maine’s net energy billing program, which was capped in early 2021. The program allows consumers to offset their electric bills by the net amount of clean energy they generate on their property or use from community systems.
One North
“The project was very attractive to us mainly because of the story,” Fedida said. “The story of community revitalization around the mill and the opportunity to provide that much renewable energy and provide customers a discount to their electricity bills was in line with our corporate objectives.”
Greenbacker will operate and maintain the project on property leased from Our Katahdin.
The Gray Pen Group in Portland is the project’s engineering, procurement and construction contractor. It’s expected the construction will employ 50 to 60 people.
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