Solar energy project debuting in Pittsfield

“What we’d like to do is open a new sector,’’ said Carl Frattini, director of business development at Western Massachusetts Electric.

The cost to install smaller scale rooftop solar panels is about $8,800 per kilowatt, he said. However, increasing the efficiency of production with large projects reduces the cost to about $5,200 per kilowatt, he said.

Ian Bowles, the state’s secretary of energy and environmental affairs, said that although solar power represents less than 1 percent of electrical use in Massachusetts, it is not subject to price volatility common with rising and falling oil and natural gas prices. So the rates consumers pay are more stable.

Solar power is far more expensive than fossil fuels, but its rates are down by almost a half in just a few years, he said. It’s on a trajectory toward parity with traditional sources of energy in the region.

“Then it will really take off,’’ he said.

But Philip Jordan, head of Green LMI Consulting, a Mendon work force and economic consulting firm, said technology still has far to go to push down prices. Renewable energy depends to a certain extent on government spending, which could fall as public officials close budget deficits, he said.

“It’s hard to know how fast things will ramp up in terms of efficiency of scale,’’ he said.

For its solar installations, Western Massachusetts Electric looks to abandoned industrial and commercial areas and former landfills, which are relatively inexpensive. The company plans to use a capped landfill in Springfield for its next solar plant. And its eight-acre Pittsfield property, once used by General Electric Co. to make transformers, was fouled by PCBs.

The site of the 1,800-kilowatt plant in Pittsfield is less obtrusive — and less contentious — than alternative energy such as wind turbines.

“I know aesthetics depend on where you stand,’’ said the company’s project manager, Bill Blanchard. “But I love it.’’