Solar Citizen Spotlight

David Hall

Crowding the bank of the lower Merrimac River in the northeast corner of Massachusetts, the small coastal city of Newburyport has seen its share of innovation since its incorporation in 1764. It hosted the first ever U.S. Coast Guard station, state mint and treasury, built the first clipper ship and carried out the first ‘tea party’ rebellion against the British tea tax. Today its identity is as an historic seaport with a vibrant tourism industry and a wealth of historic buildings. It organizes waterfront concerts in summer, an annual literary festival and a week-long ‘Yankee Homecoming’ festival.

The city also plays host to a downtown shopping mall, the Tannery, named after the business that was once housed in the restored mill complex on Water Street. And the Tannery can claim its own share in the Newburyport story of innovation, thanks to David Hall of Hall and Moscow, the management company. David has been instrumental in making the mall the largest user of solar PV power in the city, with 392 panels on the roof of two of the buildings and a highly visible pole-mounted 1.2kW tracking array in the main parking lot. The system is designed for a total capacity of 60kW, the most power that Hall and Moscow would be able to offset from the site under Massachusetts’ net metering laws. And in 2007, it produced a monthly average output of over 6 MWh. (more…)