Great Barrington — Customers are frequently seen standing in the Guido’s parking lot, asking each other what on earth is happening on the cleared lot next to the store.
It turns out Guido’s Fresh Marketplace bought the 5-acre lot so the grocery store could not only expand at some point, but cover 100 percent of its energy costs with a 2-acre solar field that will generate 385 kilowatts.
“It will pay for itself,” said Dawn Masiero, Visual Communications Manager at Guido’s.
Masiero said the Great Barrington expansion is just an “intention.” Right now, the company is devoting much of its energy to finishing a major expansion to its Pittsfield store and a number of its departments. It will even sell Iredale Mineral Cosmetics, she noted. She said customers are always asking if Guido’s can duplicate Pittsfield’s cafe and food bar in Great Barrington, and she says the company “would love to make it happen.”
The solar field will be installed, maintained and operated by Dynamic Energy Solutions LLC, a Wayne, Pennsylvania, company that has a Massachusetts crew and uses local contractors whenever possible.
Vice President of Business Development Andreas Schmid says Dynamic takes care of the whole project, start to finish, and then on to operations and maintenance. He said the company “has completed 100 percent of the projects we’ve contracted.”
He said Guido’s tenants like Mazzeo’s butcher and Bella Flora have separate meters and that some of those tenants will also be covered. And after Guido’s expands, it will have the option of adding more panels to the roof.
“It’s another step in Guido’s growth and increasing their business in a sustainable way,” Schmid said. “They are great owners, and very invested in the community.”
Schmid, a Lenox resident who grew up in the Berkshires, says this solar installation will be paid off in four years, after which time the company will no longer have an electricity bill.
“That makes their business competitive,” Schmid said, noting that Massachusetts has one of the top five highest energy costs in the U.S.
Dynamic also has an agreement with Williams College in Williamstown to do solar installations there, and there are other Berkshire County projects that he can’t yet reveal, he said. Two other colleges have contracted with Dynamic, as well as the New Jersey company that makes Smarties candy.
Schmid said the company also installed 30 acres of panels for a net metering project in Hudson, New York, generating energy for a group of hospitals.
This won’t be the first “homegrown energy system for Guido’s,” Masiero said. If you go around to the back of either store, you will see a large blue tank installed by Grind2Energy, where all organic food waste is deposited, then ground into a fine matter that goes to a local farm to contribute to their own homegrown energy production.
