KNOX — Still sitting on most of the $130,000 it was awarded by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, Knox is making steady progress toward a small solar array that Supervisor Vasilios Lefkaditis estimates will offset “all or a good portion” of the town’s $9,000 annual electricity cost.

 The town wants to build the municipal array on a roughly 15-acre property on Street Road, the site of the town’s former landfill. Lefkaditis indicated at the town board’s March 9 meeting that the 70-by-130-foot array would be little more than a speck on the acreage. 

The cost of the project is hazy, Lefkaditis told The Enterprise, but he believes that the town will be able to use the rest of the NYSERDA grant money to build an array large enough to generate the approximately 70,000 kilowatt hours the town uses annually.

“To date, we received two quotes from state-contracted solar providers,” Lefkaditis said, “but the quotes are preliminary. As we get closer to finalizing the grant we'll narrow the scope of work and re-quote the array.”

Knox, because of an initiative largely led by former councilwoman Amy Pokorny, was designated a Clean Energy Community by NYSERDA in 2017 and, being among the first, was entitled to $100,000 to spend on energy projects, in addition to $30,000 it received from NYSERDA’s LaFarge mitigation fund following a settlement between the state and federal government over a cement company in Ravena. 

The town has so far used a sliver of the money available on new light-emitting diode bulbs for the municipal baseball field.