Jay and Silent Bob probably won’t care much when they’re standing out front, but the 15-acre plot behind the Wawa in Pilesgrove Township, N.J., will soon be covered with a 500 kilowatt photovoltaic farm that provides the majority of the Wawa’s electricity needs.

The Wawa (a popular regional brand of gas stations and rest stops) signed a 15 year power-purchase agreement to buy the power produced by the system, said Sunolar co-owner Jim Angeloni.

“It’s a net-metered system. In New Jersey you can’t generate more power than you use over a 12-month period,” he said. “The system was designed to meet their needs and not exceed them.”

That being said, the system is powerful enough to offset the Wawa’s night and winter use.

However, during a hearing discussing the array, Pilesgrove’s zoning board said they were concerned that using the entire 15-acre parcel, which was zoned for commercial purposes, for solar would reduce the amount of land in the township available for commercial development.

Angeloni said the company originally had plans to develop a 2-megawatt farm on the land, but scaled it back to a 500 kilowatt array.

“We have a power-purchase agreement that only requires the 500 kilowatts,” he said.

The array will now only be on 5.6 acres of the land, Angeloni said.

“We’ll retain the rest,” he said. “That will remain commercially zoned property.”

Since Sunolar will own the property, it could, in the future, develop more solar on it. However, any such move would require more variances and permits from the township.

After hearing Sunolar’s revised plan and doing some additional negotiations, Pilesgrove’s board approved the solar farm with five of seven members voting for it and two against it. At this point, the project is pending a review of site plans. That review is happening this week.

This is the first solar installation for Sunolar, Angeloni said.

“This will be the first we break ground on,” he said. “We have others in development.” However, it’s not the first time he’s worked with zoning boards.

“I’m a retail developer,” he said. Part of the reason for getting into solar development, he said, was a lack of new retail development.

He added that he chose New Jersey because, “It is one of the top five states to do solar projects in right now.”

Image courtesy of Wawa.