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City of Lebanon, NH Live Meeting Stream

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Okay, this is the September meeting of the Leak EV subcommittee with everyone present, Bill, me, and Clifton.
Something not on the agenda, I just thought I'd let you know, Chris.
I got a message from just to say at Ewing in late July saying, you know, I'm being reappointed and I need to stop by and sign something.
at the clerk's office, and right now they say they have nothing for me to sign, so.
It probably is through Josie herself, because she doesn't normally push that out to the clerks.
Okay, she had a whole pile of them that she went thumbing through.
Oh, yeah, then I don't know then, because I know, I don't know if Bill has made it up,
but he had to go.
They asked me the same thing, too, and I have to get sworn in.
And it may just be that you need to be sworn in because you renewed, but I don't know.
So I will make note of that and send Josie an email and include both of you in it just for.
Okay.
Yeah, there is a, but when you're first appointed, there's a acknowledgement, I think, of a conflict of interest policy or something like that.
But, Chad, you just, I think, have to be sworn back in.
And maybe this is it.
She says, as a reminder, if you have not been sworn in.
Sworn in, yeah.
And we were originally, so we're good now, right?
Or do we have to do that again?
So each time you're renewed, you have to reaffirm and be sworn in.
Because you're for another, a new term in office.
So I should ask for the city clerk, not just the person at the window.
Do you just tell them you need to be sworn in?
They might, they're all.
I did.
It can all do that.
She looked.
She found nothing.
You said you need to be sworn in?
That's what it says.
If you have not been sworn in.
Right, but what did you tell them at the window?
Oh, that I needed to sign something.
You're right.
So they went to the police.
So they're going to look for a document.
to sign versus being sworn in as a council member, a committee member, rather.
Incoming from Henry, my phone goes to my hearing aids, incoming, Henry says he's out of town
and trying to connect but having difficulty.
Do you see him anywhere?
I don't, so.
All right, let's see.
And he says, I'll keep trying.
I was going to tell him, we don't see you on teams.
Hi.
Okay. All righty, then. Let's go on to the agenda.
First, is there any discussion or a motion?
I move to approve the minutes.
And that's from July 9th because there was no August meeting.
Right. Of July 9th. Great job, Chris.
And I second that. Bill Stearns.
All in favor?
And it's unanimous. So those July minutes are approved.
Old business.
E-Bite project. What's up, Bill?
I met with one of the electricians and went through the site over at Spencer Street, and he's going to send
over a quote for doing that. He suggested having two outlet boxes separated so that you could have
one at either end of the E-Bite charging stand, and that would allow plenty of space and six outlets
for plenty of charging as well.
Awesome.
I'll let you know once a quote comes in and we can decide what to do at that point.
Okay. Great.
Unless there's anything else on e-bikes.
Oh, I will say Bill tipped me off that Enfield has installed the first e-bite charging station in the Upper Valley.
So Meg and I rode over to look at it.
And it's lovely. You know, it's small.
It's a great location.
right next to this fabric store, right in a little downtown, you know, near the brewery
and the coffee shop and everything.
And I took some pictures, and my hope is when we get ours ready, we do a joint grand opening
with publicity and with the rail trail folks involved and an organized ride from one
in, one station to the other with a picnic or, you know, we'll make a big to do out of it.
Sounds great.
Next on the agenda, funding for EVSEs.
There's nothing really new there, except that my little brain, as always, is, well, two things.
One is I did send to you all just by email yesterday, our soon-to-be-new member of Leak, Mackey McSompson.
I had coffee with him yesterday morning at the coffee shop, and he turned me on to a
site called, it's electric. It's electric. I think it's U.S. dot us. And they have an
interesting model, which I'm just drooling over. I don't know if it would work here because we may
not have the population saturation to make it a viable business model. But they have
contracted with various cities, Boston, Seattle, I forget where it's probably San Francisco,
maybe New York. And their model is, if there's a building,
that has sufficient power in their panel to support a level 2 charger, its electric will pay for the charger, pay for the installation, you know, the trenching, the repaving, the everything. They will own the station and operate it and give a cut to the building owner. And so then you have curbside charging, and they're focusing mainly on cities. That makes sense, because a lot of people in cities have no place to park except on the street. But I'm
I was thinking, I mean, we don't have a lot of curb space here, but we have some.
And some of the places that we've identified as one, you know, where there's capacity are those pole
chargers. Yeah, I think the thing that I thought was interesting about that was,
although we're jumping ahead to new business, but that's great. Well, you're right. You're right. Sorry about that.
Is that it doesn't come with the cord. You have to bring your own a cord that plugs into the station.
So it's a proprietary thing.
So either if you have a lot of it in one place or if it's for residential application where the person just keeps it in their car, which is why they don't have to have a display screen or anything else.
I mean, they tell the fact that it's this really simple design that doesn't even look like a charging, any other charging station.
Because all of you, you have to have the proprietary.
cord and plug it in and then they know to charge it to your account.
Yeah.
It's just to be how it works.
So it seems like a very smart opportunity.
You know, it's an interesting business model, but it's distinctively different than something
that somebody could use while they've come to the opera house to watch a show in downtown
Lebanon because it requires the special cord.
In most cases, yes.
I mean, one thing to build on what you said is
you have to agree that the station will be public.
So someone wouldn't have it just at their house.
It would be on the curb at their house of the public.
Right, right.
But there were, the usual model is you become a member and they'll send you the charge cord to plug it in and you keep that in and you keep that in your car.
But there was another model where they have a cupboard full of those right next to the charge station.
Oh, okay, I hadn't seen that.
Yeah, and I guess you have the code to be able to unlock that cupboard or something.
It didn't seem to be that much on their website.
I didn't find that bit, but yeah.
I kind of dived a little deep for something.
So it's viable, but again, here, it's not like we have a really dense city with a lot of curb space,
but we have some.
I mean, that pole charter right outside Ava?
Well, the other place that could be a good model for is a business that has people coming in
to work for eight hours, which includes in this area, unfortunately, there's many people who
commute 30, 40 miles each way, 60 miles even or more for a job here in Lebanon.
And that seems also like an ideal application because it's level two that they specialize in.
And, you know, while you're parked at work and you just keep the cord in the car.
And I think it's that there's, I think that's a niche that we could really promote it for.
As an example, you're building at one court street.
if it had the capacity, you could put it, they would put in a charger for you in your back parking lot.
Yeah, except it's a city property. Our buildings just to the property line.
Okay. Well, I mean, just to the, yeah.
Well, then the first step from what I've been reading, again, there's not a lot on their website is they,
they make an agreement with a city. Right. And so what I am proposing, and we'll take this
to Leak and DPW, whoever is the city gets in touch with them. So to see,
you what it's about. Will it make sense? Because right now they have a waiting list beyond
the things that they're working on. And I think the more people we can get from New Hampshire
saying, do it in New Hampshire, you know, then the better chances we'll have on the waiting
list. And like if there's capacity at City Hall, they could put in a charger in the parking
lot for us. They have a 200 foot distance they're willing to go in the trenching and whatever. So
it's absolutely no cost to us and the city would make a little money over time, presumably.
And that's assuming that this company stays viable and doesn't go out of business in three years.
You know, there's always that. But that's, you know, when you flash the free, free, free,
you know, in my mind is like that falls under funding for EBSC.
I don't have anything else to report on that. I will talk a little bit more in a new business about
a tangential related item.
Site Plan Review Regulations Amendments. So we have a date when Tim Corwin says the planning board
will take this up. Oh, so it didn't happen when you thought it might.
It did not happen yet. And I will say that our planning board member on Leak, Patrick Kennelly,
he nudged him.
and then Tim gave me a date.
And I'm trying to remember which date that is.
I think it is, yes, the 28th.
Monday, September 28th, on the planning board,
they will go over EVE site plan amendments.
So hopefully we'll move forward with that.
Great.
I should say, when I met with Mackey,
he is very interested in joining the EVEY subcommittee.
Once he's officially on Leak, he could not
come today because he's a working man and a meeting got scheduled at this time slot.
I will say that I, for both this and Leak, I often have a conflict, like, particularly with the first
half hour.
I know it works better for Chris that we start at 3.30, but kind of wonder if four o'clock
we might go back to for the winter.
Well, and let's pull Mackie into this conversation.
I mean, when can, let's find.
And let's find it.
Yeah, yeah, that's true, right.
Yeah, that works for all of us.
I'm totally open to changing.
This meeting doesn't tend to run over.
It's the Leak meeting next week where it does to move past 5 o'clock,
and I have to go help set up for another event in the evening.
Oh, well, that particular one is the reason why I think I asked for it to be a little earlier,
but I have no problem on this meeting.
Okay.
Because we get things.
done and quickly with moving it to four personally.
And I think that would be a good goal to set for Leak, too, is let's get a little tighter in our
meetings and not have them go so long, but, you know, if we don't find some other time, maybe
that's a compromise where we start a little later and you may have to leave, but you're there
for the first hour or something.
That sounds great.
I don't even know if Mackey can do that time, so let's talk about it at Leak and see what works for Chris,
too.
Great.
I think that's it for the site plan review regulations amendments.
I haven't heard any more word from planning on the commercial aspect that we met with him.
Like if a developer doesn't want to put the EV charging on his site but wants to contribute to it in lieu of fund,
how much should that payment be?
Right.
How will it be managed by the city?
will have the authority to spend those funds.
So maybe before the next meeting, I'll try and check in with Nate and see how that's all going.
I will say that that policy, in talking with the head policy person at Plug in America,
she doesn't know that any place else in the country is doing this, and she thinks it's a brilliant idea.
So she's really asking to be kept in touch on how we set this up.
Okay.
Well, actually, that's the next issue.
agenda item, developer option for payment in lieu of EVSE.
We just covered that.
Right. Okay. Perfect.
So moving on to new business, which always pops up at the end, so this is not written on your
agenda.
We talked about it's electric.
Setford just recently put in a fast charger, if you can call it that.
They've been planning it for a while, and they had, you know, they had lots of
Vermont money to do this, but just to give us a ballpark.
Because, of course, you all know, I'm still hoping to get a fast charger at Centera.
And I, you know, I just had two vacations in the last three weeks, and I stopped at a fabulous new Rivian
bank of chargers.
It was so good and so easy and so fast, kind of like the Tesla charters in West Lebb will be, I think.
So I'm going to write to Rivian, and I'm going to write to Tesla and say, you should do Centera,
and here's why.
And we know that the owners and we've scoped out the best site there and blah, blah, blah.
It's worth a try.
But in Stiford...
And there's a drive-through Starbucks or, well, a walk-through Starbucks.
Yes, and I had written Starbucks and got no peep out of them when they were planning to build that thing.
Right, right.
They should have put it in.
In Thetford, they put it at Pomponusik Mills, I think, because there was capacity there was capacity there.
But they only made them 60 kilowatt stations, four ports, two stations, two ports each,
four ports, 60 kilowatts, I mean, the definition of fast charging starts at 50 kilowatts.
The car dealers have those that you can go use for free, but I'm really disappointed.
So I was speaking to the shared energy coordinator, shared by a number of Vermont towns,
and he sent me this information.
The project cost around 180,000.
$1,000. That's lower than I would have thought. Yeah, but it's still amazing how much
they cost. Yeah, and that's just for 60 kilowatt stations. Yeah. The state paid the mass
majority of it. A majority of it Green Mountain kicked in about 20,000. It was installed by Norwich
EV, and he thinks they were going to cover the balance with the federal EV tax credit because they got it
in by the deadline.
And so I'm going to
call NORGV, too, and try and get a more up-to-date concept. If we wanted to put fast chargers
in Centera, let's say four ports, just like this, but faster, 150 kilowatts. And maybe with
some battery back storage, because demand charges, right? I mean, that's still going to be a problem,
right? And try and get a sense of what that costs. Because if we're going to start taking money in from
developers who don't want to do it, it may be able to build up over time if we can't get
Rivian or Tesla to do it. So that's where my thinking goes. If you get pushback from Rivian
and Tesla that they've already put charges in this area, you might try Iona as a third one.
Yeah, and you know, the Thetford one is using one I had never heard of called Red. She's called
Red. And so I looked it up and sure enough, they're online.
I think there's a whole bunch of these out there now, but I'm curious why Norjeev picked them
because they had been using AMP up for installations, I think. So to be continued.
The only other thought that I had that I wanted to mention to you all as an idea is, oh,
and by the way, I did send Nate a whole bunch of information that he asked for on sites that
we had identified as potential EV sites like level two and whatever. So it occurs to me
as they're finalizing how we're going to operate this program. And on the planning board agenda,
the last couple of this upcoming meeting in the last one, there were some how we're going to operate this program.
proposals that it might be good to draft a how-to for developers, because this is all new
and the planning, it's pretty new to the planning staff too and the planning board, but, you know,
just spelling out, here's what the zoning requirements are. Here's what the site plan review
process will say any minute now, we hope. Here's what level two is and low power level two are.
the benefits. And I mean, just do a couple of pages to clue them in and give them
resource. I think the other thing that would be helpful is excerpt the relevant parts of the zoning
regulations in one place because the definitions are sort of spread out along with all the other definitions
and to just pull out the definitions that are relevant to that section and just have here's.
Right.
I mean, I think developers of any scale, they presumably have somebody doing the site design
who's familiar with site plan regulations and zoning requirements.
But because thinking this, you know, charging issue through crosses over from the site plan
to the electrical engineering and planning for the building in site, it's, it's,
would be helpful, I think, just to have it one place with that sort of entry summary that
kind of highlights, here it is, and here's all the relevant documents right here.
I agree. And with a simple explanation of what low power level two is, because that's the
new feature that a lot of people aren't familiar with, I think. Because I also think that
would be useful as their inquiries from other. I mean,
We have seemingly somewhat pioneered this approach of putting, I mean, other people have put it in zoning requirements, and we started with some of those models, but we've refined this so that it is more developer-friendly in terms of incremental investment that matches the demand as the demand grows and how to plan for that.
I think it's going to be a model.
Once they adopt the basic language for the site plan regulations, it's a good model that other communities will probably be interested in.
Yeah.
So maybe I'll draft up something and run it by you, and hopefully after the 28th, we'll have a site plan wording of some kind.
And I can get from Nate how the in lieu of payments are going, and maybe by October.
Over some time, we can have something that would be useful.
Okay.
Anything else we should be talking about?
EV-wise or e-bike-wise.
All set here.
Okay.
Is this a record?
I move we adjourn.
I'm happy to second that.
And I think we're all unanimously unanimously in agreement with that.
Okay.
Okay, 355 by my watch.