Connecticut regulators learned nearly seven years after the fact that an East Lyme solar farm had changed hands, following a complaint from neighbors about noise from new equipment installed at the site.
GRE 314 East Lyme LLC sold the 5-megawatt solar facility on Dec. 30, 2019, to GSRP Chambers LLC, which was then owned by Goldman Sachs Renewable Power LLC, according to a July 27 letter from GRE.
But GRE never notified the Connecticut Siting Council of the sale, despite a 2013 council ruling requiring written notice of any ownership change.
MN8 Energy, a New York-based solar and energy-storage company, confirmed to the Hartford Business Journal that it owns and operates the facility. The company was created from Goldman Sachs’ renewable-power platform, which launched in 2019 and became independent in 2022.
The ownership gap surfaced in June, when Kristin and Andrew Green, who live at 14 Mountain View Road — next to the solar facility — contacted the Siting Council about a machine installed at the site roughly a year earlier.
The Greens said the equipment produces a constant “whirring” noise, along with louder banging sounds at times. They said California-based Solv Energy appeared to have installed and operated the equipment, but the company did not respond to their complaints.
MN8 said the equipment is a replacement inverter, installed to replace a “faulty, discontinued” unit that repeatedly failed and ranked near the bottom of reliability across the company’s portfolio. Candice Adams, MN8’s head of communications, said the work was done last summer, with final completion Sept. 12, 2025.
“We made the upgrade in order to continue supplying Connecticut with clean, reliable energy,” Adams said.
When the Siting Council contacted GRE, the company said it could not address the neighbors’ concerns because it had not owned the facility since 2019.
The council issued GRE a Notice of Enforcement Action on July 7 over its failure to report the ownership change. The notice provides for a $1,000-per-day penalty if the violation is not corrected.
GRE has asked the council to modify the enforcement notice or hold a hearing on the matter.
The council has since contacted MN8 Energy representatives about the equipment and ownership of the facility. It also has requested a written agreement identifying which entity is responsible for the facility’s assessment payments, as required under the council’s original ruling.
The council said the company didn’t respond by the Aug. 28 deadline.
However, Adams said MN8 is “engaged in communications with the CSC” and believes it is “fully compliant with Connecticut law.” She said no exempt modification request was required for the inverter work because it was “a one-for-one replacement of facility components that is necessary for reliable operation.”
Goldman Sachs Asset Management committed about $1.9 billion in capital to launch Goldman Sachs Renewable Power in 2019. The platform later became MN8 Energy, which says it has about 4 gigawatts of solar assets that are operating or under construction.
