Under clear skies and a bright sun, it seemed the right kind of day to celebrate the opening of the newest large solar project in Rhode Island.

Representatives of the South Kingstown Solar Consortium — a three-year-old partnership between South Kingstown, Narragansett and the University of Rhode Island — gathered this week for a ceremony to mark the opening of a 3.6-megawatt field of shiny photovoltaic panels on two closed disposal sites next to the URI campus and a 4.5-megawatt array on a third landfill in South Kingstown.

When combined with a 36.3-megawatt installation on out-of-use industrial land in West Greenwich that the consortium is set to break ground on this month, the solar projects will offset big chunks of the energy bills for the three partners leading to annual savings of about $1.2 million for URI, $200,000 for South Kingstown and $95,000 for Narragansett.

“I think it’s incredibly important that we come here today to take a step forward to reduce our reliance on fossil fuel combustion and generate energy here in Rhode Island,” URI president David Dooley said of the projects that will total up to $90 million in costs when the West Greenwich array is factored in.

The installations in South Kingstown completed by Boston-based Kearsarge Energy are just the latest examples that developers can navigate the sometimes tricky path to installing fields of solar panels on capped landfills and other contaminated industrial sites in Rhode Island that are unsuitable for other uses.

The ribbon-cutting in South Kingstown follows the openings last month of Warwick-based Southern Sky Renewable Energy’s 2.6-megawatt array on a capped landfill in North Providence and 6.3-megawatt installation on tainted land in Warwick that was formerly home to Leviton Manufacturing.

Also this week, Boston-based CME Energy opened the 4-megawatt expansion of a 3.7-megawatt system on the Forbes Street landfill in East Providence that became the first solar landfill project in Rhode Island in 2013.

“I think people sometimes get scared of solar,” said Kearsarge managing partner Andrew Bernstein. “It can be put in locations that are not offensive in terms of how it looks.”

That’s a salient point these days in Rhode Island, where solar power has run into a level of resistance that would have been unforeseen just a couple of years ago.

Spurred on by new state laws that sweetened the incentives for renewable energy, developers are proposing ever-larger fields of photovoltaic panels that in some cases require the clear-cutting of acres of woodland.

The prospect of converting undeveloped, open space to industrial use has prompted a backlash in some communities. In Cranston, where Southern Sky is building a 21.5-megawatt array that will be the largest in Rhode Island when it’s completed, the City Council this week passed a resolution asking city planners to impose a one-year moratorium on new solar development while new zoning changes are considered.

“The Cranston City Council supports green energy but believes we need to also ensure that the rural character of Western Cranston be protected for future generations,” the resolution reads in part.