A solar facility in East Windsor remains out of operation more than a year after it burst into flames, and a state investigation concluded Wednesday that the underlying cause of the fire has still not been fully explained.
The Public Utilities Regulatory Authority, in a final decision closing its 16-month investigation, found that high winds likely triggered the equipment failure that sparked the March 11, 2025 fire at the 5-megawatt facility at 341 East Road.
PURA cleared Eversource of wrongdoing in its accident response and maintenance of its equipment.
The facility is owned by Florida-based NextEra Energy Resources, which bills itself as the world’s largest operator of wind and solar projects.
In the decision, regulators said repeated failures, unexplained shutdowns and years of noise complaints from neighbors point to possible deeper electrical problems with the facility.
“The occurrence of failures across multiple locations of the site … frequent site trips, and persistent noise emissions, suggest that electrical stress may be playing a role in recurrent issues, rather than these being a series of random, isolated events,” the authority wrote.
PURA ordered Eversource and NextEra to conduct power quality studies and a full equipment inspection of the site, with plans due to regulators by Aug. 12.
NextEra cannot complete the required studies until the facility is re-energized — and as of Wednesday, PURA said it had not been notified of any plan to restart it.
The fire began when arcing utility equipment ignited a brush fire that spread rapidly in high winds toward a nearby tobacco barn, burning dozens of trees before firefighters extinguished it. Residents living near the facility said the blaze followed days of warning signs.
Amanda Wright, who lives directly across the street, told regulators she and her husband were in their living room when they heard a loud explosion and saw “a wave of green light” before flames erupted.
After the site was repaired and re-energized in mid-2025, at least five more incidents occurred between July and August of that year, including unexplained shutdowns of all three of its systems, an electrical arc inside a switchboard and blown fuses. The facility has been offline since late August 2025, when NextEra retained an independent engineering firm to determine whether it was safe to restart.
State Rep. Jaime Foster (D-Ellington), whose district includes East Windsor, called the fire “not an isolated event, but rather the latest chapter in an ongoing saga of negligence and inaction,” and urged lawmakers to give the state and municipalities authority to hold energy providers accountable.
East Windsor First Selectman Jason Bowsza called NextEra’s operation of the site “extremely problematic at best.”
Under PURA’s order, once the facility is re-energized, Eversource and NextEra must monitor its power output for 60 days, demonstrate compliance with national electrical standards, certify that the facility’s inverters are properly installed and configured, and report the results — along with any remediation plan — within 120 days.
