Maple Manor Apartments Project

Project Summary

Maple Manor is an independent housing complex providing high-quality housing options for qualifying low income elderly and disabled persons. Comprised of 40 one-bedroom, single-level apartments Maple Manor offers a setting that’s private, attractive, and safe. Maple Manor is a not-for-profit entity governed by a local, volunteer Board of Directors. Maple Manor retained Norwich Solar to provide a turnkey solar electricity system to be engineered, installed, and commissioned on the rooftops of five Maple Manor apartment buildings.

The grant-funded project offered the dual benefits of reducing its energy expense immediately, and significantly over time while enabling a marquee solar project for the region that is anticipated to result in 2,128 tons or 4.3 million pounds of avoided carbon emissions over 30 years.

There was no upfront or ongoing cost to Maple Manor for this solar installation beyond paying for the electricity. Estimated savings for Maple Manor are approximately $6,500 in Year One and estimated at over $160,000 over the first 25 years of the project.

Norwich Solar Scope

The Project Team completed all design and engineering of the solar system, including obtaining all permits, inspections, review, and approvals from applicable regulatory agencies. We satisfied all interconnection requirements, procure all materials and components and completed commissioning of all equipment.

Norwich Solar’ EZ-PV approach involves assembling PV panels onto racking at our assembly facility, where they are prewired and pre-tested before being deployed onto the field. This greatly improves the resilience and reliability of the initial installation. Once on site, the MetaModules are mechanically lifted onto pre-set roof or ground racks and are set in place by the installation crew.

This approach minimized the amount of equipment on site, with no need to stockpile components. The MetaModules were assembled in our West Lebanon production facility, a short drive from Newport, New Hampshire.

The MetaModule approach is ideal for residential communities like Maple Manor because of the drastically reduced on-site construction time. Traditional solar PV projects have several shipments brought to the site and perform the time-consuming assembly process in the field; nearby residents must, therefore, tolerate the noise levels, equipment stockpiling, traffic impacts, and overall disturbances associated with a construction project. With the MetaModule approach, the laborious assembly process is completed before any equipment arrives on site and allows NST to complete a project of this scale in about a week.

Norwich Solar installed higher capacity 72-cell solar modules and inverters to maximize energy generation. The Solar PV System includes panel-by-panel SolarEdge optimization to maximize solar production when the array is partially shaded. Additionally, as a larger array, the System offers a higher New Hampshire rebate, further reducing the net cost.