A five-megawatt solar canopy that will span about two miles may be built along the Route 2 median in Lexington next year as a part of a pilot program Gov. Maura Healey nicknamed the “Green Mile.”
Something similar exists in South Korea along a bicycle path, but this will be the first highway median solar project in the United States.
“Let it begin here,” John Iredale, founder of Solway Development, the Weymouth-based energy infrastructure development company that will develop the canopies, said to LexObserver, quoting Capt. John Parker’s famous Battle of Lexington speech.
Iredale and James McAuliffe, who is a partner at Solway, first presented their idea to build solar canopies along highway medians to former Gov. Charlie Baker. He was supportive of the concept, they said, but it was shelved when the COVID-19 pandemic struck. Healey picked it back up when she was voted into office.
Iredale and McAuliffe’s idea sparked when they were working for a different solar company, building canopies over MBTA parking lots. Iredale realized highway medians are essentially unused land that sometimes exist close to cities.
“When you’re a solar developer and you’re looking for land to put solar on, you can go out to Western Massachusetts, but that doesn’t really serve the communities in the Greater Boston area,” McAuliffe noted. “We’re always looking for land that isn’t being used…it really was, ‘look at this land in the middle of Lexington, and all of these other communities, that is just ripe for solar.’”
Solway has been working with the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, or MassDOT, to get the “Green Mile” up and running.
“Solar is the fastest and most affordable way to bring clean energy to Massachusetts — and MassDOT is proud to be part of the solution,” Monica Tibbits‑Nutt, secretary and CEO of MassDOT, told the Observer. “This innovative project will generate enough affordable electricity to power thousands of homes across the Commonwealth.”
The state’s transportation department looked at various highway medians across the state. The strip of land in Lexington checked all their boxes.
“It’s a really nice site,” said McAuliffe. “There are no wetlands, wildlife, or nature issues.”
Compared to other more rural municipalities, Lexington does not have much solar, McAuliffe noted. So this program would not put much pressure on the local power grid.
“The only solar you’re going to have in Lexington is rooftop solar and maybe some canopies over parking lots, but not like 25 acres of a solar array because the real estate is just too valuable,” he said. “The grid can take it fairly easily.”
Solway will lease the land from the state for the next 20 years with support from the state’s SMART program (an incentive program where utility companies compensate solar owners for the electricity their systems produce) and investors.
Investors have long benefitted from putting their money into solar because of the federal government’s solar tax credit, which has existed, in some capacity, since 2005.
In the early aughts, residents could get a 30 percent credit (up to $2,000) for their solar panels. A 2008 law aimed at stabilizing Wall Street removed that $2,000 limit. According to recent data from the IRS, the average consumer gets about $8,000 back for their installation, the Washington Post reported.
The tax credit was supposed to last another 10 years under President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act. But President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which he signed into law last week, slashed the solar tax credit.
“The solar industry is going to be scrambling to figure out how to make solar projects work,” McAuliffe said.
Trump’s new policy won’t affect any solar projects that begin construction before July 4, 2026, however. Iredale and McAuliffe are confident construction on their pilot program will be underway before then.
So far, the land has been secured by a letter of interest. Solway has been working with Eversource on their interconnection agreement for about a year (they expect it to be completed in the next six months or so) and they’ve met with Lexington stakeholders.
“Members of town staff…are excited to see this kind of innovative project proposed in Lexington,” Maggie Peard, Lexington’s sustainability and resilience officer, told the Observer. “Especially in dense areas, there are a lot of competing uses for areas where solar could be installed, so using space like a highway median that can’t be used for anything else would be a big win for renewable energy.”
The Solway founders estimate drivers will see the canopies along Route 2 by fall 2026.
There are about 398 more miles of highway median that can take this type of solar development in Massachusetts. If all goes well with the pilot program, Iredale and McAuliffe intend to expand their project to that unused land.
“If we could do all 400 miles, that’s equal to about one nuclear power plant…which could power hundreds of thousands of homes,” said McAuliffe.
But the timing of building the canopies along those 398 other miles of land likely won’t line up with Trump’s slashing of the solar tax credit. So there will be less of a financial incentive for investors to support the project.
“Up until this bill passed, John and I were like, ‘yeah we’re going to have 400 miles of these canopies in Massachusetts’ and now that’s in jeopardy,” McAuliffe said. “The state’s SMART program won’t be enough to sustain solar development. There are just big question marks everywhere. It’s tough.”
If it all works out, the “Green Mile” could set an example for the rest of the nation.
“One Massachusetts will fit into Pennsylvania four times. If you start to do that math on that across the country, you can do a lot, and that’s all starting with a little project in Lexington, Massachusetts,” Iredale said.
The Solway founders will host a virtual public meeting on Thursday, July 17 from 6 to 7 p.m. to get the word about their project out to Lexington residents.
Question: wouldn’t this make the highway less safe, the median area is designed specifically to slow down vehicles that “fly” off the highway at high speed, having steel poles in that area would dramatically increase potential vehicle damage, injuries, and deaths. No?
My guess is that the number of times a car flies through the median strip is extremely small…
This is a brilliant opportunity, yay for Massachusetts and Lexington for leading the way.
Lexington should be concerned about the environmental impact of solar panels to birds especially. Not to mention the visual blight to the landscape.
(i) The vehicles on Route 2 are the real threat to birds: 89 to 340 million birds die annually from vehicle collisions in the U.S. https://wildlife.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/jwmg.721?utm_source=perplexity (ii) highways are themselves visual blights
The heck with Lexington’s sense of aesthetics (visual blight) – while your maximally consumptive lifestyles shift the cost of the fossil fuel economy to poor communities here and around the world. And, what exactly is the impact of solar panels on birds? You are fishing for excuses not to take responsibility aren’t you? It’s been shown that the big glass corporate office buildings you all hide out in cause more avian injury and death than any other man made structure.
Any thought about gravel and rocks falling off trucks flying loose and smashing a panel?
Since this hasn’t been done in the US and this is a heavily trafficked area, safety concerns for drivers is key, as well as affect on birds and wildlife crossing the highway.
Any wildlife that manages to cross the highway without getting killed will be very safe under those solar panels.
In other more advanced countries, these highway solar canopies also provide protection for cyclists. Bike paths are build under the canopies!
I am currently working to make solar panel roofs over bike paths a reality. Email if you want to be a part of it: wsmithv@yahoo.com
This space is a great opportunity to create a covered bike path. Imagine a bike path that can be comfortably used rain or shine, snow or ice!
OK, let’s think this through. Even if 400 miles of highway median solar arrays were actually built, stating this is equivalent to one nuclear power plant is a falacy. Nuclear power plants run 24/7/365. Solar array produce power only when the sun shines sufficiently – duh. The Massachusetts electric grid is already straining under the challenges of intermittent power generation of solar and wind, and the demand of electric vehicle charging and other electrification boondoggles like heat pumps. We do not need additional unpredictable renewable power generation, using equipment made in China. We need more cheap base load power generation! How about actually just building/renovating a nuclear power plant in MA and get all the benefits with well known and minimal downsides.
OK. Let’s think this through.
Solar panels are passive. They don’t need dozens of people to monitor it. They don’t produce waste that will be around for millions of years. They don’t have the risk of meltdown. They are a LOT cheaper to build and maintain.
The more solar power we build the better as far as I am concerned. Stop finding reasons not to build solar and look for creative ways to add more.