A Liberty firm on Monday finished putting solar panels on Morris Farm’s 19th century barn on Wiscasset’s Gardiner Road. Monday night, the same firm, ReVision Energy, got a unanimous green light from the Wiscasset Planning Board to build a solar farm at Morris Farm.

“Congratulations,” Wiscasset SunCATs member Marty Fox told ReVision Energy solar designer Hans Albee as he reached to shake Albee’s hand after the planning board’s vote. The SunCats have encouraged solar power’s introduction locally.

Solar energy’s advocates have been a big factor in ReVision Energy’s ability to get projects in the Midcoast, Albee told reporters.

In a public hearing minutes earlier, Albee recapped the proposed solar farm project and took questions. No one objected to the project or raised concerns about it. The only attendees besides the planning board, Albee and Town Planner Jamel Torres were Fox, fellow SunCATs member Susan van Alsenoy and two reporters.

The hearing took five minutes. Then Torres confirmed for the board that ReVision Energy had turned in a land survey the board requested. The final nod that board members gave the project’s site plan was the last hurtle before the firm could start the project.

The portion of the equipment that goes in the ground is planned for installation Dec. 1 or Dec. 2, Albee said later. With that in place, the rest of the equipment can be added over the winter, he said.

Eight CMP customers agreed to join the solar farm, the second member-owned one in Maine, Albee said. The first was in neighboring Edgecomb. The firm had first planned on lining up nine customers for the Wiscasset one, but the shares the eight customers took ended up covering the energy the solar farm will yield, he said.

The solar farm’s members will get credit for its energy on their monthly utility bills, Albee said.

Just down the road from the municipal building where the night’s hearing took place, the last solar panels went on the roof of Morris Farm’s circa 1840 barn and the system began working Monday, Albee said. The barn’s solar panels will meet the farm’s energy needs and are a separate project from the solar farm.

“Thanks to Morris Farm, Wiscasset is now a center of renewable energy,” Morris Farm board co-president Les Fossel of Alna said in a telephone interview Monday night..As with the nonprofit farm’s agricultural pursuits, the solar projects promote sustainability, or using resources without using them up, Fossel said.

Under a 20-year deal with ReVision Energy, Morris Farm is leasing roof space on the barn to the firm, which will sell the farm the electricity the system generates; as a nonprofit, Morris Farm can’t get solar tax credits, so the firm will get them and use them to offer Morris Farm a discount on a buyout offer that kicks in seven years into the agreement, a ReVision staff member has said.

The farm’s store and the Christmas trees being sold there are another kind of sustainability, the economic kind, Fossel said Monday; the store is in the black, the trees, along with the farm’s other products, were grown locally, he added.

Albee said getting the system on the barn up and running the same day as ReVision Energy got the town’s approval for the solar farm was very exciting. “It feels very good. We’re happy to be working with Morris Farm and to be bringing another farm to the Midcoast and take advantage of its abundant sunshine,” he said.

The solar farm’s members will own and maintain it, according to Revision Energy staff.

Solar farms make tapping solar energy an option for property owners who either don’t want panels on their own buildings, or whose buildings’ locations wouldn’t work for it, Albee said.

Van Alsenoy praised the Planning Board’s handling of the solar farm proposal. “I like the way this committee does business. Well done,” she said in an interview.