SHUTESBURY — An April fire at a large-scale solar project on Pratt Corner Road is prompting town officials to seek changes to its special permit conditions, aimed at improving safety and offering more protections to the town.
Members of the Planning Board told the Select Board Tuesday that they support the concept of reopening the special permit with NextEra Energy.
Planning Board member Michael DeChiara said adding new conditions governing the 5.6-megawatt development, on 30 acres of the so-called Wheelock Tract, could protect the surrounding woods and help firefighters when responding to emergencies at the site.
An Aug. 17 memo from Fire Chief Leonard Czerwonka to NextEra, the Planning Board and the Select Board stated that on April 16 an inverter hut caught on fire. Emergency dispatch notified firefighters at 5:52 p.m. that a fire was happening in the vicinity of Leverett and Pratt Corner roads, with firefighters locating the source of the blaze at 6:28 p.m.
Czerwonka said the immediate response was to keep the fire from spreading beyond the inverter hut, but firefighters had to wait for an hour for capacitors to be deenergized before lobbing water on the inverters. Firefighters were at the site, set back from Pratt Corner Road, for several hours, eventually opening the cabinet doors to make sure everything was cool inside.
The Planning Board did a site visit with NextEra representatives on Aug. 13, where DeChiara said “jaws dropped” when planners learned about the inverter fire. There has been worry about fires associated with battery energy storage systems connected to such solar arrays.
“Some of the things that were surprising to us… is that NextEra said their best practices are not to inform first responders for an inverter fire,” DeChiara said.
The board was also concerned that if the fire happened later in the year, when grass is typically longer, it could have spread beyond the site.
Czerwonka, too, said the fire could have been bigger during a drought, and that’s why solar arrays are typically mowed regularly and have rocks put below their critical infrastructure.
“This is the only one that they have that is like this,” Czerwonka said
Two years ago Czerwonka said he asked for more stone and hardscape at the site, and has also requested cameras and an alarm system to alert any problems. He also would like better access points so that multiple fire trucks bringing water to the scene have places to stage close by.
DeChiara said reopening the special permit, with approval from town counsel Donna MacNicol, would also benefit NextEra, as the company is interested in increasing the amount of mowing and possibly applying spot pesticide. In exchange, the Planning Board would like to expand gravel below the arrays and the nonflammable distance to trees and other vegetation.
Planning Board member Jeff Weston said his concern is that spraying onto the fire means potentially putting PFAS and contaminants into the area around the project. Weston said due to its remote location and the Fire Department being mostly volunteers, additional protections would be wise.
The solar project was built almost 10 years ago, following a lawsuit and appeals from opponents who contended the land was either the site of an Indigenous burial grounds or a ceremonial landscape for Native Americans.
