Niteroi Starts Work on 2,700-Panel Solar Park, Boosting Sustainability Drive

• Niteroi in Rio begins BRL 7.7 million Encosta Verde solar project, set to power public buildings with 150 MWh of clean energy a year.

Rio de Janeiro’s seaside neighbour Niteroi has decided that the city’s steep, underused slopes can do more than frame postcard views—they can slash its electricity bill, too. Municipal infrastructure company ION has started laying foundations on the BRL 7.7-million (USD 1.4 million) Encosta Verde solar park, installing 2,700 photovoltaic panels along the sun-drenched face of Morro do Boa Vista.

Crews are working on an aggressive schedule: by December, steel piles, inverters and wiring should all be in place, setting the stage for energisation early next year. Once switched on, the array is expected to generate roughly 150,000 kWh annually—enough to light schools, health clinics and administrative offices without drawing from Brazil’s hydro-dominated grid. City engineers put the annual savings at close to BRL 500,000, money that can be funnelled into social programmes instead of utility invoices.

But Encosta Verde is more than a power plant. Designers have built in a rain-harvesting system that will catch storm runoff, easing pressure on the city’s drains and providing free water for cleaning roads and irrigating public gardens. Native seedlings are being planted around the structures to restore the Atlantic Forest canopy, stabilise eroding soil and offer a new habitat corridor for birds pushed out by urban sprawl.

The hillside site was chosen with safety in mind. Landslides and brush fires are perennial threats in Rio’s humid subtropical climate, so the project team is reinforcing slopes and installing monitoring sensors that can trigger early warnings if ground movement or heat spikes are detected.

Mayor Axel Grael, who has spent decades championing environmental causes, called the project “a living classroom,” noting that local schools will use the array’s data dashboards for hands-on lessons in math and climate science. Encosta Verde also dovetails with Niteroi’s goal of trimming city-wide carbon emissions 20 percent by 2030—a target that now looks more attainable.

If the model delivers on its promise, officials say other hillside pockets could host similar micro-solar farms, proving that even space-strained coastal cities can find room for clean energy—and turn overlooked land into public value.