On March 1, the largest solar photovoltaic (PV) energy system in western North Carolina went online, providing about 730,000 kilowatt-hours per year to area residents through Progress Energy’s distribution grid.

The 555-kilowatt array, known as the Evergreen Solar Farm and located on a closed Evergreen Packaging landfill in Haywood County, was installed by Asheville-based FLS Energy, a design-build solar installer that also offers solar system financing.

The solar array is the result of a power purchase arrangement, under which FLS will operate the system and sell the electricity generated from the more than 2,300 solar panels to Progress Energy Inc.

The clean, renewable energy will provide a distinctly green hue to Progress Energy’s generation mix, which in 2008 relied on 35 percent coal. To its credit, Progress has since announced it will close four of its most polluting coal plants and replace them with natural gas.

Natural gas, a slightly cleaner burning fossil fuel than coal, is still neither “green” nor renewable, so the addition of solar will also help Progress Energy meet North Carolina’s renewable portfolio standard, or RPS, which calls for 12.5 percent of electricity sales from renewables by 2021, coming from within the state, with 5 percent of the total created by energy efficiency measures.

North Carolina’s RPS is admittedly smaller and less ambitious than that of California, for example, or even that of Michigan, but is still an improvement on its neighboring states Georgia, Tennessee and South Carolina, which have no RPS in spite of having abundant sunshine.

The Evergreen Solar farm is Progress Energy’s fourth utility-scale solar project in the state, and as of May of 2009 Progress had one megawatt of developed solar, with 11 megawatts of solar power coming online by the end of this year.

It’s a grand start for Progress, but not the largest landfill solar project in the nation. That title is held by the solar PV array on 12 acres near Fort Carson, Colorado which delivers 3,200 megawatt-hours of power per year.

Though no longer the Army’s biggest solar project, it will still provide enough power for 540 area homes, thanks to the Department of Energy Western Area Power Administration (WAPA) and six other public and private entities that cooperated in the enterprise.

Landfill solar is, in fact, one of the best ideas of the 20th century, redeeming what would otherwise be unusable land and converting it to clean-energy producing space. According to the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, which manages land reclamation under the Superfund program, there are about 480,000 brownfield sites, comprising about 15 million acres of land, that can’t be used – even after reclamation – for farming, housing or urban development. But nothing precludes putting solar panels on it and replacing coal-fired generation with something clean and green that is guaranteed to last at least a quarter of a century.