Around the world, government entities have enacted legislation encouraging the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to combat climate change. The state of Massachusetts’ Clean Energy and Climate Plan for 2050 intends to achieve net-zero emissions. Solar energy is pivotal to realizing the state's climate goals, yet relatively little is known about the array’s impacts of thermal forcing on the surrounding environment. To better understand the potential consequences of solar installation, I conducted a thermal assessment of surface temperatures using remote sensing data for ground-mounted solar array sites across Massachusetts using a buffer technique. Through a regression approach between buffers, I determined that at 200-300 meters from the array, the surface temperature was no longer affected by the arrays. By comparing mean surface temperature difference between the array and the unaffected area before and after the array was developed, I found that post-development arrays displayed significantly higher mean differences in surface temperature. Previously forested sites had a significantly higher difference than the arrays that had other previous land cover. Compared to a sample of non-solar development sites, which was selected based on its similar patch size distribution and mean area, solar sites had a smaller extent of mean temperature difference from pre to post-development years. However, when comparing the samples in terms of land cover, forested sites had a larger mean temperature difference from pre to post-development years, for both solar and non-solar development. Solar sites had a smaller extent of mean temperature difference from pre to post-development years for non-forested sites, but there was no significant difference between solar and non-solar development for forested sites. Understanding the thermal properties of solar sites is vital to understanding how green technology can simulate similar problems to the climate warming they aim to combat.