For the moment, a 12-acre, panel-packed field near Philip Morris USA’s Park 500 facility in Chesterfield County is the largest solar array in Virginia.
But it won’t be for long, said Dominion Virginia Power officials, who on Friday gave media members a tour of the 8,000-panel, $4.9 million site. It is one of 10 facilities built as part of the utility’s Solar Partnership Program, which leases ground space at commercial, industrial and public facilities for solar panels.
The partnerships are designed to allow Dominion to experiment with the effects of solar energy on the existing grid.
“Grid reliability is one of the big tenets of our culture,” said Mike Gurganus, a project manager for new technology with Dominion. “We need to make sure that we can blend that electricity into our grid.”
