A former iron mining operation once considered the largest of its type in the world has a new distinction: It will host the first site auctioned in New York’s Build-Ready program for large-scale renewables.
The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority announced March 13 that CleanCapital had won rights to build and operate a 12-MW solar array in Benson Mines in the Adirondack Mountains region.
Build-Ready is designed to address multiple state policy goals, including renewable energy development and brownfield reuse.
NYSERDA assesses the viability of sites suggested for the program, then works with the landowners to design a customized benefits package and to advance the design, permitting and interconnection processes, then offers it as ready to construct. Ideally, this offers prospective developers a much-simplified path compared with starting from scratch on their own.
The pre-auction process still can be lengthy, however. The Benson Mines project was announced in April 2021 with a planned early 2024 auction date, for example. And it initially was envisioned as a 20-MW project but was scaled back to avoid the need for system upgrades.
NYSERDA said it has screened more than 5,000 sites and moved only a handful into more-advanced stages of potential development. Just three other sites besides Benson Mines are listed as having reached Build-Ready status: a former landfill, the grounds of an airport and an unused city property.
Benson Mines began mining in the 1800s. It was a powerhouse for the region’s economy in its day, ranking as the world’s largest open pit iron mine by 1950. But it closed in 1978, leaving one more cluster of crumbling industrial structures in a region where tourists and seasonal residents far outnumber industrial workers.
The former mine has been cleared of the rusting relics. Benson Mines now runs a 1,500-acre timber operation there, and sells aggregate crushed from the estimated 60 million tons of rock on site.
The solar array will be placed on a tailings pile and is a good fit for the long-term goals for the site, company President Stuart Carlisle said in a news release: “This project has allowed us to put an underutilized portion of the Benson property back into productive use, bringing new investment, infrastructure development and economic benefits to the local community.”
It will be one of the largest photovoltaic projects in the Adirondack Park, which with its highly regulated land use and rugged wilderness terrain does not lend itself to massive solar arrays.
In a telling bit of geography, the state’s forest ranger training academy is held just down the road.
But more importantly, a National Grid substation is even closer.
NYSERDA President Doreen Harris said as the first of its kind, the Benson Mines project has value beyond its 12 MW of carbon-free power generation capacity: “We have now completed our first auction and are supporting the transformation of this underutilized site into something that is, in fact, build-ready. The Build-Ready program is helping to reimagine sites across the state so that communities can benefit from these otherwise-abandoned spaces.”
CleanCapital will finance, construct, own and operate the project and has entered into a 20-year Renewable Energy Certificate agreement with NYSERDA.
