All towns · pembroke

Energy Committee

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So, 121K, 142K, 142K, 104K, it's all very tightly up.
But one of them has batteries, one doesn't.
Right, and that was the big thing, was like, certain pieces are included, certain pieces
are included, like, one didn't have any of the electrical work, so I was like, what are they doing?
That's, yeah, that's like, what?
That's what I would like to get into the detail.
I'm a slow reader, so I'll take forever.
It's, you know, some number of pages.
This actually looks like a pretty good summary of it.
Well, you're looking at the page written or the type page bar.
I'm not sure if that is because...
Accurate.
That's the thing.
If it was accurate, it's laid down nicely.
It is.
It is.
It's a really nice to, but it may not be very accurate.
That's my thing is, I just don't know.
And that's what we need to verify.
right. All right, so we're recording. Now we're going to open the committee meeting.
So, hello, everyone. It's Monday, August 17th, 2026, 505 p.m. All the energy committee meeting to order.
We have a few absences. Do we technically meet quorum with three? Three or five? I think so.
Okay. So we got quorum. Jackie's not planning to attend. JJ, I think, is on her way out of the state. And Sharon, I haven't heard from a little bit, which is.
be good to check in with.
Also, not present is my laptop, so I feel, we're prepared.
But, um, so just our...
Just a question.
Yeah.
For Jennifer, for Smith, has she formally resigned?
I don't believe so.
Okay.
I think she is anticipating leaving the state shortly, therefore has been consumed by other priorities.
Yes.
Hey, Ryan.
You've got demoted to the...
Saudi board.
Yeah.
Or isn't promo made it.
I don't know.
Yeah.
It is.
I like a
question.
Yeah.
It's just, it's just a
technicality.
It comes to the
forum question, though.
Yeah.
Because at some point,
um, it,
I'm assuming we have a forum,
but in fact,
you only need a forum if you're going to
take an action.
So we can still have...
I think we're meeting a quorum,
by the way.
Because I, because I, is that if,
if what,
If JJ is still part of the thing,
we have three,
we have 50%,
and I think the form is 50%
of a, if we're only five,
so it's just a technicality
at some point, I think we should.
I'll talk to her and probably
recommend that she,
so I guess resigning is the right word?
Yeah, yeah, she has
in the letter to us.
I'm not actually sure how you do it,
but I know that for other committees,
part of the
select board, you know, daily
activity might be
somebody has submitted a lesser recommendation
and then they move to
accept the recommendation with regrets.
Their resignation. Yeah, yeah.
Just that way it's formal.
So I think there is some formality of that
that that has to be done.
I'll talk to her about that.
I did mention that I want to
but, okay.
If she still wants
to be involved in, you know,
it's kind of very good,
or so more time,
I mean, she's very welcome to you.
Right, and she doesn't have to be a member to still participate.
Yeah, yeah, that's also true.
Cool.
All right, so we just opened the meeting.
Thank you for coming.
We'll take however much time you're able to give.
So, I guess, just a quick summary.
So we attended the Energy Committee
CIP planning meeting last Thursday.
We had submitted a proposal
for rooftop solar on the safety center.
So we had generated
proposal spoke to that eventually
in the conversation, but we started
with the library solar proposal.
David had made the assumption that
we had seen that and been a part of it, so it was
on our agenda, not the library agenda.
It came up and I was like,
I can't really speak to any of this.
We did talk through some
things. There were
a lot of questions that also
pertained to the
public
works, the safety center
solar, the
Safety Center solar, not the public work solar.
Safety Center's solar proposal that
we had put together, so it was still
a worthwhile conversation, but we did
pivot to that since we could speak to it.
I think
we got the general gist of some of the questions that were
coming up regarding the
library proposal, and
the general consensus was the Energy
Committee should go
understand the proposal, see
how we can help answer some of the
questions at the Select Board or the Budget
Committee, the CIP committee will have.
and then circle back with them.
So we want to meet with you.
This all happened within the past week,
so we haven't been completely right up on the proposal,
and I know we didn't give you a whole lot of heads up to come here
and not defend it, but discuss it.
So I think if we could have a quick discussion
on what work has been done,
where we can help and add value,
maybe we can close some of the gaps with the committee.
So the, the, that I got
and we got three quotes from
revision energy, 7th gen solar solutions, and grant stay solar.
So those were three quotes from them, and just general quotes that I got.
And it seemed like I didn't really know where else to go from there,
mainly because the credit, like the tax credits were gone for the projects
that be potentially doing.
So one of my thoughts was, like, is it even worth it, right?
like if the tax credits aren't available.
And so I guess I was wondering what your opinion.
Yeah, I think it still could be worth it.
I mean, because we did the safety center without,
but with the assumption that the credits would not be available.
And, you know, that still had a payout period,
depending on all the assumptions, but, you know,
about 17 years and then it has a lifetime of 30 to 40 years.
So there would still be a benefit.
So I think the library ones, you know, would potentially, you know, showing project savings
over 40-year time, $300,000, more than $300,000, depending on, you know, the assumptions
and so forth.
Right.
That's still, you know, that creates a benefit to the town.
So if there's a credit, that's even better.
Right.
But there might not be a credit.
It still may be financially worthwhile.
Yeah.
And as an aside, I think David.
he said this at a previous CIP meeting.
He just mentioned that it's possible, given the cost of the library one,
that he might just find a way to make it happen if the town just agreed to do it.
He might just find a way to finance it and he had done so that could qualify for the credit potential.
I'm just curious is that because the solar one for the safety center would be more expensive.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, solar, yeah, that one is about 400,000 plus it's a new roof.
Oh, so we already have.
I know them to do it, that kind of proposal.
Yeah.
Yeah, you already have a new roof.
And I think that would be the, that would make sense that.
This chairs two.
And I think other things that kind of came up in the meeting, the CIP meeting on Thursday was
even the Safety Center project at roof plus solar system.
was about $500,000. That's probably too small to bond. But if David bundled, for example,
this, plus that, plus some work at the transfer station, you know, they have some building repairs
that need to be done. All of a sudden, all that work together starts to look like a million
dollar, you know, a million-plus project, which could be bonded. And the thing about bonding
is it creates a different type of more extended lower annual property taxing.
impact and it's a low it's a very low rate right loan essentially so so i think um so i'm just trying to answer your
question the main concern that you kind of raised is that just because a credit is ending december
2027 that doesn't mean that it's not worth pursuing right i think that there's other considerations yeah i think
that was one of my first question really was because because and i think i had emailed is this what i what i have
is that way you have there yeah and then i guess one of my just potential considerations i was
trying to think of like as if i was a select board if we if you did decide you know oh yeah this quote
one seems amazing we love revision energy they're really good the quote looks great and we chose to
go with that one right like i'm looking at kind of like these options of this quote does not include
you know options this quote does not include so i guess i i just don't know
what would be the best quote and what ones would make the most sense based on these warranties
and what the quote doesn't include and other potential considerations i have yeah and i think that's
that's where we didn't have answers either and i think that's what we want to try to figure out um
and because i think when people started seeing that okay that quote you know the quotes are sort of
different they have different um things that are included and i didn't
know how to figure out whether you know what those things were either yeah um and it seemed
like if i just take the revision energy not having warranties not including a wrecking system
not including electrical work all of a sudden people start saying what are they actually
they actually proposed it right and so is there any other documentation from revision
besides this three pages here all of these quotes are just the exact all of people are
okay okay um and then i mean should we just dig into each one kind of right now or
yeah yeah i'm i'm happy to do that i had some general comments and takeaways from our
discussion with the cip i think some of them are still relevant to the library but might be different
if we decide to just move forward with it and the general stuff was like if if we don't do the pre-planning
necessary to do a project like this in the future then we can never do it in the future like if we wanted
to do solar today because for tomorrow only it's a 99% rebate through taxes like we couldn't
do that because we don't have the money so we we need to start building up that bank account just to be
able to consider that in the future but just because we put money into that bank account does it mean
it has to go to this so if we determine yes we want to start putting money in the cip account
four years from now 10 years from now 20 years from now the conditions are never right to do it we're not
to use that money they can use that money and use it elsewhere so in my head it's like we'd be silly
to not start doing this we're a municipal member of clean energy new hampshire which is a clean energy
advocacy group that does a long logging at the state house and whatever we pay 250 dollars a year to be a
member one of the biggest pieces of advice that they had for us when we were like what do we do as a committee
how do we prioritize our efforts they were like step number one is having projects in our show already so
when state grants come out or federal grants or rebates or whatever come out you're ready to go do it you're not then going out to the market getting quotes starting this long-length process so i think from our perspective it's like we can never consider any of this stuff unless we start putting money in a bank so it's less emphasis on the details because five years from now we go back to the market and quote these things these prices are going to be two x what they are today for one and also things will probably just look different
systems will be designed differently so I think getting down into the details is not as
important for now the big caveat is if we're going to like sneak this in this year anyway
we absolutely need to work out those details because we might be thinking it's 120k once they actually do the
racking and then all the other stuff it's 250k and then it's no longer in consideration so
and who pays with the interconnection studies and fees and that was kind of some of the general
takeaway I had from just discussing with the CIP committee last week we certainly can
get into the details now yeah yeah just on that I mean it was the committee was really they were
eager to get into these weird details like should it be on a roof or should it be on the
field next to the roof or and to me it's just really just a bigger question of does a
committee support kind of the municipality investing in kind of
self-generation wherever it goes yeah yeah wherever it goes it didn't matter
yeah and trying to boil it down to financials because financially without the credit
it still is a good investment maybe the town determines like yeah we don't want to tie up
400k to make up money in 17 years from now and like that's fair but if you get a 40% tax
credit that is like substantial money on the table to leave so what is the scale of this like how
how big is the library proposal how many kilowatts size is 35.2 kilowatts or is that 35.2
kilowatts per count? no that means it's total total in normal one four five lettered 600 a piece
all right in total yeah yeah i'm seeing what like seventh gen i don't have my glasses so it's hard to see
the seventh gin looks like it's 49.3 kilowatt total module power
The granite state solar is 41.4 kilowattstsk solar is 41.4 kilowatts.
They're not in the same, but that's in position is 35, the revisions 35 kilowatts.
Is the library on a demand rate, we looked at it and I don't remember what?
The price comes in a certain amount for the peak demand during that month plus
the energy usage.
I can't remember.
I mean, that's one of the issues that comes up for batteries.
I think in the long run, we will need batteries, but because at some point we're going to get efficient
pricing in.
Right, that will make for...
And batteries was included in one of...
Yeah, 7th January.
But the batteries that they were saying for...
what they would have, there's just no room inside the library to have them.
Okay, when he kind of showed him, like, one closet that could potentially be available.
He's like, oh, this isn't even...
No, they would most like to be outside.
And they have to be outside.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Now, I just want to say...
Yeah.
Just your general, yeah, what's your general?
Um, I...
Yeah, I don't know what closet you guys looked at?
Yep.
But he's talking about, um...
64 kilowatt hours of batteries.
I have a different generation of Pikes battery or, you know, a different model, but I have 30 kilowatt hours.
Yeah.
And it's pretty, it's like half the size of that desk.
I mean, it's probably a little higher like that.
So that, so 60, I don't know, maybe it's the size of that desk and this high.
It's not that big, unless you need a lot of space around it for me.
cooling or something, but yeah, it could be able to physically be that large.
But it may need a lot of, you know, standoff from other electrical components.
Right.
The main thing is that if it goes outside, it also means a heating system to keep a wall in the weather.
The new batteries, then this may be them, they're self-meaning.
Yeah, they would have self-eating batteries.
I'm not sure what the charge was from the batteries.
I can't refast them.
enough. But they do need to be kept warm instead of regular as you might be fostered,
which is...
Yeah, they're, yeah, I'm just...
Yeah, I think the new versions of those pipes batteries are something.
Yeah.
But, but, um, I'm kind of focusing in on the summaries because that's what the committee
quote is in.
Where are you...
Was there like an email?
email or something that indicated the revision quote, or estimate, I should say, it's not a quote, it's an estimate, that their estimate does not include
warranties, APS, SMART, RSD, RIS system, electrical work, interconnection studies, and fees.
Because I don't see anything on those three pages that says it excludes those things.
Right, and I'm just saying that because it's just not unquote.
Okay.
That's all that is.
Whereas the other ones that includes it, like the stranded states.
solar, like, on the quote itself, it says included and it talks about those things.
So that's where that one...
So, I mean, the thing, the one thing that this one does say is it says,
term key, this is provision, turn key system cost,
including allowances, it has permitting in site preparation allowance,
utility applications and upgrades allowance.
I'd be surprised if they quoted something that
didn't include like a significant, significant amount of stuff to make it work.
Like, you know, they wouldn't drop all solar panels on the roof and say,
hey, you got to get someone to rack it up and you need to spend someone to connect it to the grid.
I mean, they would do this.
Any refutable, and they're all wrecking all.
Yeah.
You go to get it.
Right.
So this is just straight, just like, right from the quote of the ones that said, oh, there's warranties included.
Okay.
an explicit say.
Okay.
Warranties included.
It's not like it said, warranties excluded.
Okay.
It's just what I saw right on the .
Okay.
So that's something, when we go back to the CIP,
I think we should say that we expect all that stuff is included.
It just doesn't explicitly say that it's included.
Right.
And I don't mind calling back or emailing these places and just saying,
like asking that, you know, like this one for
Yeah.
Can you include that interconnection studies
were included or something, right?
And then, in your experience, have they given in my school,
like, this is what the solar rate costs,
this is what the interconnection costs, this is what the racking system costs,
this is what the battery system, just to have it broken out
or more of a side by side?
Okay, I'm going to, I'm trying to, I'm going to answer a little bit to
and pieces.
Because we can look at the revision quote for the safety center.
And so there's a quote and there's an estimate.
So in this packet here, revision does specifically say estimate.
So when I was speaking with revision, what they're saying is that the estimate is something
that they put out there.
They've done kind of 80 or so percent of the work.
But if you actually wanted to do this thing, they would then have to do some additional
work and involving their engineers and so forth to get a quarter.
So this is an estimate. What we got for the safety center was a quote,
even though that quote is not going to be valid by the time we implement the project.
So, okay, so that's one thing.
This one, the...
So the estimate is preliminary, the quote is more final,
executable, but that time frame.
Correct.
So when you get the quote, you'll get the quote, you'll get,
a list of equipment. It may not be broken out by line item. I'd have to look.
Like, I don't think they're going to...
Solar panel and invert. Yeah.
Yeah, but they're going to show you all the components they're going to use.
They're going to tell you the numbers of the components they're going to use.
And then they'll probably have kind of a lump together equipment cost, labor cost.
All right.
Ancillary, you know, engineering, design work.
But I can look up...
look up our quote.
I would say it would be good to
reach back out to them,
and maybe there's other stuff that makes sense
to ask them about, but just as a
starting point, I think,
confirming that the stuff that's currently
and that does not include
is or is not included, just, you know...
Yes. Sell that out a little bit more clearly.
All of their stuff should be warrantied
to the manufacturer spec,
and then their install spec, I would imagine,
Racking systems, electrical work.
I assume all that stuff is in there, but it would be good to confirm.
The interconnection studies and upgrades and fees,
I would imagine, the upgrades is not something that they include
in case they require something.
It is an estimate for utility application
and upgrade as $1,000.
Oh, that's right.
I would...
This recommendation is for all of them.
I just want to be efficient.
Ryan, if you wouldn't mind where you're...
where you have bullets in each of the three,
this quote does not include bullet items.
If you could just contact them back and say,
hey, we didn't see anything about these specific bullets
in your proposal.
The CIP committee was curious.
Could you just comment whether or not
the quote you provided includes that type of work?
So that's that one topic.
Sorry, Richard, what were you?
No, I was kind of...
Now is kind of what we're talking about, so that's part.
Okay.
I think the thing with the interconnection is if the utility,
because the utility is kind of doing the interconnection study,
you would apply, in an ever source that uses this little online system
called Power, you apply, you put in all the information,
like what's your load, what's your solar system,
and they basically evaluate it and decide
can their existing lines handle that could
their existing transformer handle it.
And then they come back and respond to you.
And say, no, you need another one and that's another model.
Yeah.
So I guess the question here is if
Eversource ends up saying, you know what,
we need to upgrade your service line, or we need to upgrade your
transformer, I don't know if that's a matter of
Eversource billing you to do that,
or if it's a matter of Eversource scheduling it and just saying, look,
ever sort of pays for it, but we have to schedule it and we'll get a transformer in six months,
and we'll get the alignment out in eight months.
I'm kind of making up things, but that's, I think, it's one of those two things.
I ran into one person who was putting in a home system, he wanted eight kilowatts,
and he was told about utility, you know, in April already put in a big enough system,
so we need a new transformer if you want to add eight kilowatts to it.
And that's only $8,000.
Put in the middle.
a transformer.
And were they billing the resident?
Or were they building the resident?
Or would they build the resident?
Okay.
For the expansion necessary.
Okay.
Which I always find interesting.
Yeah.
So maybe that's a second level question is if the,
if ever source, when they do their interconnection study,
if they determine that there has to be either the electrical cable upgraded or a transformer
upgraded, who typically gets built for that?
Usually the customer.
Yeah.
But I want to hear the installer say that.
That's right.
Yeah.
I remember a few years ago, there was a huge
food fight in Maine because I think Central Main
wanted to build a new solar array
for upgrading this whole area of the system.
Everyone was up in arms and were like, this will literally break the model
and I forget where that fell.
I just feel like we can't shovel all that cost on.
I think what they usually do is say, well, we'll split the difference.
You pay for half of it to build our system.
And we'll figure out somewhere to get the other parts paid for.
But normally if you require an expansion as a customer, general customer,
if it's beyond a certain size, you end up paying for the expansion over time.
over time.
Right.
Yeah, if I want three-phase power at my house.
Well, yeah, you want three-phase power.
Yeah, I guess what you're talking about is what my potential considerations pieces to it,
like unforeseen cost, equipment cost, upkeep costs.
Sorry.
And this is here, this interconnection study, upgrade, and fees.
Right, like that's kind of part of it.
And the unforeseen costs, like, are we doing a transformer upgrade and, like,
what would be the cost of that?
Like, what's the hidden cost?
Yeah.
What's this inverter?
replacement timing, you know, 10, 15 years, or what's the cost of that?
Yes.
Moving trees in the front lawn that may walk this time.
Well, let's kind of go through some of these,
because this was like another level of questions that actually I didn't want to get into,
one or two people, I think, started to go to it.
Right.
Because some of the questions I think, I don't want to sound dismissive.
Some of the questions I don't think are a relevant consideration in CIP,
and some of them are.
Yeah.
be the right things, but maybe we can just kind of go through real quick.
Yeah, and I don't think any offense, because, like, my first sentence is, I have no idea
for most of the stuff.
So it's more just the general gist of, like, I don't want, like, one stone to not be unturned,
right, where it's like, oh, we didn't think of this part or something, and it's like, now
the select board is like, oh, yeah, we said yes to this panel project,
but no one even brought up the fact that we had to do a transfer.
It won't fit.
It won't fit.
they're restructuring the roof, you know, like little things like that.
Yeah, so the first two bullets, I actually, I know there are conditions for net metering.
I would guess that the library could qualify, but I don't actually know, but that's
something that we could, I'm sure we could do online kind of inquiry, and that might be
something that these installers have experience with one one issue that this
raises and that goes back to the battery issue if there is a limit to transformer capacity
then restrict your output to less than that and by using the batteries you can use
the power yourself and not put it on the grid yeah yeah and that gives you a way
of kind of buzzing with this stuff the the the wrecks like I wouldn't worry about that
directly. Even though there's an answer to that thing, to me, wrecks are pretty inexpensive.
And you would probably generate some wrecks.
And I know CPC and H was looking at ways for people to be able to sell their wrecks
because there's other people that want to use the rex as a credit to meet their renewable portfolio standard requirements.
But like in the context of this library operation, it's going to be
so far beneath the radar where you're talking.
Yeah, I don't even mind if we went through these things and you said, don't even worry about it,
because I don't need to know how you need to do.
Yeah, so the net metering, we should know if you'll be able to do net metering because in the summer
you're going to generate a lot of excess power probably, and in the winter you're going to not
generate very much of all.
So if you can bank some power that you've sold back to the grid and then use it in the winter,
because it's, ever source has a count.
for it they give you credit for it that's a big benefit yeah so you so we do
want to make we do want to make we do like frankly if you don't have net metering
available yeah and the only other option is batteries and
try or scale down the system so that you never generate access the problem
is that this is generating power at any time not just the average over the
month yeah yeah because you're not going to get a kilowatt of credit yeah yeah
if you're not netteeter so that's definitely net meter yes so that one we want to learn
and can it be a group net meter is another part to serve other town properties
right and then you can share yeah yeah yeah access okay so then the next one
investment tax credits yeah we kind of talked about that like what it'd be worth that
the first bullet definitely yes the second bullet I think there's a case to do some
sort of somebody else owns it our terms are last but we don't have to financially
outlay I feel like that would be a CIP or it's a budget committee thing my recollection
is that if someone else owns if they can still claim tax credits where certainly
on a homeowner level you can't get tax credits anymore but if someone else leases it to
you they can still get them and I'm not sure when that ends and how it relates to
I agree and I think that one would be in the category of how you finance it
versus whether to do the project yeah if it makes sense then you can get someone to
finance it and own it and then maybe lease it a little like I think that would be something
that would be worthwhile for Energy Committee to give one of its advices to you know
here's the trade-offs of direct ownership versus a EPA and this is what you would
committee it's just generating energy that's all we care about okay so
the roof is I think that's a question we almost have to ask the roof we probably
need to get DPW folks to because I don't know if we get the roof but they do
so we didn't even melonson or someone else yeah it was melonson okay it still may
be good to have DPW ask the question because they're the main ones that interact
with them. I'm not asking these like reinforcement.
Well, they won't know the reinforcement, but the ones like
warranty, yes, does the panels, how does it affect the warranty of the roof? I think
that's a really important question. The who pays for roof penetrations
that's part of the installation. What if there's a leak, that's part of the
question of what's the warranty of installation? You know, the solar company's
needs to stand behind that they're not going to put leads in the roof. And usually the solar
company would be the one who would do array removal, whether it's like whole removal or partial removal
for maintenance or access to the roof or something like that. So is that more of like a question
that I would ask these companies, right, do root penetration leaks array or removal, is that covered
under warranty? Yes. Yeah. Or you could just ask it like, what is your
warranty for roof leaks and what kind of service fees do you have if we need to remove
panels to do your roof maintenance or any kind of thing. Yeah, so there's like two types of
removal. One is we want to keep the solar because the solar is so good, but the roof is bad for
whatever reason. You literally have to remove that whole thing to do the roof to then put it back
on, which is pretty expensive. We're removing it because it's end of life and it ended life before
the roof, then, yeah, someone can probably be paid to cover it. Or is there an insurance policy
that covers those costs that have to be purchased? Right. But removing it might literally be
pull the panels off because you own the panels, but we're going to leave the racks there because we're not
getting touch those fast. Because they're sealed up well. If you've got to do something with the roof,
you get to remove the rack too. If that's the case. But if you just want the panels gone because
they broke or don't generate power anymore or whatever, their end of life and your roof is fine.
Yeah.
Be ugly, but take those fasters out, then you have to do something about the penetrations.
If you just loop them in, their ceiling.
But the first part of your question, the root penetrations and leaks, we will be penetrating
the roof. They will do a good job to make them not leak, and that's just like a, if it did
leak, what do they do about it? They, that route, it's got to be part of their warranty.
Like 10-year installation, if anything,
we come back and fix it or make it right. I couldn't imagine any solar company being
successful and not guaranteeing that your refilled leak after an install. So that's
got to be something that they cover. Yeah. Yeah. So we can ask, ask those questions.
And then your first one, this is like we got to get a structural engineer involved to
take a look at the roof structure and what it can support. We're probably fine, but it would
It sounds like the CIP committee wants some outside advice there.
Yeah, and that would be good.
Yeah.
Because the weight of the panels is pretty well known, so we need to say,
can't it support this much when it's suspended in this kind of system?
And I think the way that would be handled is Ask BJ.
It's not up to you to, you know, contact to an engineer or whatever, but we just say,
you need to ask VJ, what can he do, who can he contact to evaluate the roof integrity
and whether it can handle the extra mode of the panels.
Yeah, so.
So.
That may be an issue with the recycling or the
safety center.
Because that metal roof is lightweight.
I don't think it will be here.
You meet at the transfer station.
Yeah.
There are other options for metal roofs where you have thin panels that gloom on essentially.
They're very light, less than a pound per square foot.
Okay.
But that's not, I don't know that's not that.
When I googled it during the CIP meeting, they said two to four pounds per square foot,
distributed, obviously there's point loads and other things that need to be taken into consideration.
But, I mean, it's small percentage.
of what the roof is typically designed for.
Yeah, yeah.
Usually seven foot should be usually 70 pounds of square foot.
Yeah, so I suspect that there's 70 pounds of square foot.
Yeah, so it's drop in a bucket.
It's probably fine.
Yeah.
But with the, with your observation that all of that sits on the rack that has two or three points
than trying to poke a hole in the proof.
Right, right.
Yeah.
Yeah, so I think the vendors would have a,
advised us to cut out trees if we had to.
But at first bullet, we might determine two years in that,
yeah, we get some pretty nasty shading and we want to cut them down.
That would really hurt me.
Yeah, they'll usually do an exposure study.
Yeah.
And they can do it online.
Yeah, there was like one tree that they had recommended.
Oh, yeah, okay.
Um, you probably see it.
I mean, you can probably assume it's that a lot.
one that's right here.
This one right here.
Not that tall.
Like right now, there's no tree shade on the roof.
Yeah.
I think what they had talked about was the amber pine tree,
if you've ever known what an amber pine tree would.
That little thing there?
Yeah.
That little thing there?
Yeah. I think they had recommended that one
or potentially, I think maybe that the birch.
Okay.
One just that's the tallest one.
Okay.
I think they have this recommendation of the hangar
because it's that.
Okay.
That's, I would, my gut feel is it's not a major thing.
It just results with a little loss of power.
Yeah, the little loss of power.
And only seasonally, because like right now,
it's, you know, we're getting towards the fall,
whatever it's called, the Solstice or whatever,
and the equinox, yes, thanks.
And there's no tree shade on the roof right now, and it's
here isn't tall enough to get the midday shading.
Yeah.
Which is when it would cast a shadow.
Certainly, no vendor is not going to install it because we say we're not going to cut the tree on it.
We can just, we can make that decision.
Yeah, that's an example.
Inverno's twice and time and yet that's about right.
And then the transferable grade will learn from ever source
when they do, when the project is being done.
I guess my thought about like this inverter replacement timing and or transform upgrade would be,
are we knowing what that cost is up front and then we're saying,
okay, the transformer upgrade is now added into this quote,
and then the inverter replacement is just going to be something that we saved up for?
So here's the thing.
So this is the argument, this is the logical argument that would be had with the utility.
Yeah.
And it might actually went.
The systems they're proposing.
are I saw it was 100% of the load.
Okay, maybe I'm getting this wrong.
Let's pretend that your total power consumption is 35 kilowatts.
I don't know what it was, but let's say that that was your peak.
Your service cables already handle 35 kilowatts, okay?
Your meter handles at the transformer handles it.
when you install solar and the solar is operating,
it's going to be reducing the load.
So if they're making a 35 kilowatt system,
at best you're going to have zero kilowatts going through the service cable to the grid.
So that's reducing the demand on the transformer,
reducing the amount of cable.
And if the worst case or the weirdest case happened,
that is you had no consumption in the library,
but full,
power of your solar panels, they would be pumping back out 35 kilowatts, which is the same amount
that your maximum load is.
So I don't think you would need an upgraded transformer, upgraded service-centric cable,
because they're building it within your kind of 100% of your load.
The question would be, is there one transformer that takes time-haul and the library?
that would be added up.
But it's not a demand.
So if anything you're lessening your demand at worst,
you're back feeding with the full demand,
which if anything is lessing a little bit...
I would be surprised,
if this is the straw that breaks the camels back,
then they got bigger issues.
But in any case, this is where,
the example of the homeowner,
because they were living in an individual.
area where there were probably four or five customers on the same transformer.
And somebody had already used up most of the spare.
And their design says, what's the maximum load we could expect to see?
Yeah.
And, you know, an individual house might put 10 to 12 kilowatt hour,
a kilowatt system.
Yet, you put five of them together,
the usual average output is enough that a 25 kilowatt transformer can handle
because of the diversity.
Yeah.
The problem with solar is that if everybody on that system had five kilowatts of solar running,
and the sun comes up, and it's all producing at the same time, then you have a coincidence.
Right.
Yes.
You're right.
So in your scenario, if the library's service cable and transformer are shared with multiple buildings,
and they did some kind of...
Well, the service cable would, that'd be separate.
But the transformer would be coming from the same transformer.
Yes.
Yes.
And the transformer might not be able, should we ever get solar on the town hall.
Yeah.
And that would be the issue at that point that they might say, well, no, you, if you want solar
on the town hall now, you would have to put in a new transformer and that's your bill.
Yeah.
I think it's unlikely, Ryan.
And if it is a problem, then inevitably at some point in time in the future, it's going to have to happen.
Well, the other office.
that comes up, as I was saying earlier was, if you're at a marginal level of that,
and you have, specifically if you have a demand charge,
then batteries allow you to defer putting power on the grid
or buying power on the grid during those really difficult times.
And that way you can reduce you demand charge.
It's not every day.
And at the same time,
so that's the problem that comes in.
What's it is the half of the utility doesn't consider?
So it just wants the nameplate.
Yeah, and you want the nameplate of what will be put on the grid.
Yeah.
And that's what they don't care about how you manage it and stuff like that.
And that's why I'm saying you put in the name plate
that is within spec and you use whatever the panels produce
goes into a battery and if that battery is
big enough with the output, then you can deferred.
reduction.
No, I'm going away.
But Matt might have some thoughts on that.
So for the inverter replacement timing, I think the timing we understand 10 to 15 years,
but it's probably good to get one or all of them to quote what that cost would be, just so we know what that.
Like, I think for the entire design, service life of this system, it'd be good to know
roughly when we can expect what charges.
I think aside from inverter replacement, there's nothing else that is,
is planned?
If you had batteries,
batteries, they probably have about the same life
as the number.
Yeah, they said 10 year for the error and the batteries.
So, yeah.
And otherwise, like, we don't need to clean them.
Yeah, I can give you some example numbers.
10 and 15 years is so long in technology
that that number is probably irrelevant
because there might be something so much better.
But, so I saw,
So I saw, let me see, what's their name,
Seventh Generation was proposing Solark inverters.
They were using, I think, 18K.
They have two 18K inverters.
I mean, those are commercially available.
We can look them up, but I'm going to guess those are $8,000
apiece today.
I'm sure you can buy them.
So I know you're time to train.
So I think it would be good to understand.
I think it would be good to understand what they would roughly quote for that.
But to Matt's point, in 10 years, everything's going to cost different.
The replacements will be different anyway.
But I think if we're going to pitch this as something we want to get into,
I think we need to understand what the full life cycle costs was.
The 18K is $6,260 a piece.
So two of them is going to be $12,500.
If you bought them right now today,
And one of the advantages is not, both of them don't necessarily fail at the same time.
You can buy one, buy the other one some other time.
Right.
Yeah.
That leads to the question of, should you get insurance to cover those failures?
I mean, if they failed every year ago, yeah.
But in 10 or 15 years, I mean, someone may even say, oh, you have something completely different.
Yeah.
Put some money aside.
Yeah, it may be.
Maintain the fund.
Yes.
And I think that's rare so long as we've done our homework to say this is what makes sense to put into the fund.
We're not going to ask for the full system costs.
It might be every five years we should throw a couple grand in there.
I don't know.
That's exactly right.
So I think that's kind of a do-out on the energy committee is to look at over the course of any of these solar systems that we might propose over and over and over,
what does that look like?
And if we put in another 100 kilowatts, is that $5,000, like whatever, whatever?
there should be some fraction of that system cost or size or something that we should add into that piggy bank.
So that's less of an action.
I think if you could just ask them what the inverter's cost, just so we have that thing.
Oh, you need the other companies.
Yeah.
Yeah, and even whatever company is using that one, I'm sure they're not going to say that's how much it costs.
They're going to say it's that.
There's a 15% material markup plus a 2K labor or whatever.
Right.
So whatever that quote is, because we're not going to go all.
buy one and do it ourselves.
Yeah, I would expect you're looking at something like $300 to a kilowatt.
And I guess my thought about this inverter replacement time is just to at least have a general number in mind.
So that way when we have a proposal, we're at least able to say this is the proposal cost, right?
But these are the costs going forward.
We're going to have costs for an inverter replacement.
We're going to have costs for when we have to take the panels down when the systems end of life comes.
we're going to have costs, you know, for insurance.
It's like, it's like within that proposal.
So that way no one's like, no one told us we had to dish out $15,000 for this.
I mean, obviously there's some things we can't predict,
but at least that has as part of this proposal piece to add.
Yeah, so we asked the question.
So those companies ask them, what are their service costs for removing panels?
I'm guessing it's 25% of the installation costs.
That's what I remember.
So it's going to be all that order, I think, for removing.
And then my mind, at least when, like, I'm thinking to myself, okay, I have child care costs now, right,
what am I going to do with that money when I no longer have child care costs,
you know, like, put it to, like, my, like, retirement, right?
So, like, we have different values.
And one of the long-range plans thought is that if we're saving money, right, like, wouldn't,
if we're saving money with energy costs, wouldn't, then we just,
say, okay, the library's budget was this amount for the energy costs and we're saving money,
would we just put that into a general fund each year that would accrue interest to then offset
future costs to replace the panels or something, right?
Like, rather than saying, okay, then in 25 years, we're going to then pivot the cost of those taxpayers
at that time, right?
Like, wouldn't we just have the saved money go into a fund, right?
Or does I go into an energy fund to continue on change?
not adding systems where it's appropriate.
My guess is that, like, the way that the budget works and everything is that, let's say that you
or the safety center starts saving $1,000 a month, that would just be a reduction in the budget,
and so the budget would be smaller.
Now, it makes sense to say, look, if we're saving that much money, should some fraction that go to more investment
or, you know, for potential future energy projects or other, you know, other town projects.
Yeah, but I think it would first be treated as just a savings.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, at least just like to bring it up within the proposal to discuss it with this budget
or future budget committee or whatever it is or the town administrator, right, to say,
like, what would be the overall plan that we should include in the deal, essentially?
You mean it's the proposal?
Kind of as the proposal, but kind of like, okay, okay.
this is the proposal, this is the cost of the quote, we're going to go at that one,
these are future costs we're expecting, and then the savings that we get from that,
what are we going to do with it?
Yeah, the people that are voting are going to want to see it as less property taxes.
Yeah, yeah, they will, which is fine, right?
Like, I just guess, in my mind, I'm just thinking, okay, like, where's it going?
What's the savings for?
Yeah, just to make it clear, we state it.
Yeah.
But, yeah, I mean, that, to me, the pitch,
is you make this investment, like I'm just looking at grant estate solar,
just because it's right there in front of me.
We would spend $105,000,
and then over a 25-year period,
the town would say $300,000, approximately $300,000.
And that would be, you know, people would see that as,
you know, some of the other property tax bill.
Right.
Over that.
Do you want me to ask David about what his thought was,
about contributing now to it rather than being in the CIP?
Well, I think it was, I mean, you can ask him, you can you say that you, you know,
you heard me say something.
I said, I would say, Matt, told me, you haven't been, yeah.
Yeah, we did the seventh generation, consideration of, you know,
you know, assuming that it gets approved by the town that David may have a way to pay for this one.
Right, and I'm one of my thoughts here.
But I would ask him sooner than later because if it, you know, there would have to be some warrant article for the time to vote on.
It will have to be prepared for before March meeting.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, like a 2027 project or 2028.
Yeah, the word article would have to be ready by January of 4027.
And we're happy to get in the weeds on this stuff and give a recommendation on a vendor and a size and design.
and all that once we kind of get some of these questions about what is and isn't included clarified if everything's included in all of them and we can kind of see an apples to apples we're happy to help make a down select if that's what the select board wants I don't know where in this like I don't think I don't think that's where this is now honestly what I think these three quotes do is they say that a library project is about a hundred and twenty five to hundred
$150,000.
We now have a little bit of information on what some of the reoccurring costs might look like
and we can kind of smear that out over, you know, an annual cost.
And then we need to, we need to learn, would this qualify it in the net metering program?
Could it be part of net metering?
Yeah, am I figuring this out or do you know?
Are you...
I think...
What I think...
committee should do is learn about the net metering for the municipal system.
and...
It's another thing.
The direct owners of ownership.
Yeah, the direct...
Yeah, that right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then if you could ask the other questions, you know, of the, to the vendors, and then to BJ just ask,
how could he confirm that the bifatory roof is adequate for...
Two points on the net metering.
Um...
Group that metering came to power from that,
be shared with other municipal buildings.
Yeah.
I'm quite sure that it wouldn't go to other people in town.
It would be other buildings.
Okay.
And...
Who's asking on it or wherever?
No, that's for area.
Oh, yeah.
Yes.
Group that metering.
Okay.
Okay.
And the other issue is which form of that metering would apply.
There's a big break occurs in 100 kilowatts.
Yeah, that goes back many years.
Yeah.
And at that point, there were going to get net meters a lot smaller.
Yeah, so he's less than that.
I know that the Safety Center trimmed the project to stay under that limit also.
And then I'll probably head out, but just my last bullets are just like these bigger picture questions that really, like, we could be here all day, probably discussing.
But maybe it would be worthwhile to include some of these thoughts.
in the proposal, like, you know, stance on the benefits of the environment?
Like, is that, like, really important?
What about EMF ways from the murders and health and safety to staff and patrons?
Like, that's on my mind.
If it's even negligible, is it not?
You know, like, do we have a stance on ethics of mining and cobalt batteries for silicon?
You know, like, to me, it's like one of those things where I was like,
I had to include it just because I had to include it.
It's not like I need to stay all the late at night.
Luckily, these batteries don't have coal.
Yeah, just a thought.
I just wasn't sure if like that's something that someone would bring up and that would be an argument for somebody who said, don't.
Somebody may bring it up.
It probably would be wise for us to know.
Even better.
Answer, like a technical answer.
Right.
But my personal opinion is that if people want to debate kind of the philosophy or ethics of these things,
I hope that doesn't happen in a town hall meeting, you know, like where we're a voted.
It's going to happen. I hope that kind of discussion happens.
I hope that as well. I would not be surprised if that's where it goes based on a past experience.
However, I think trying to keep this focused on the financial benefits to the town is where we want to, if we get into a culture war, pro or con,
then we're doomed.
Yeah, yeah.
I guess in just like my mind, it would just be something like of note.
Like it would like you do the proposal.
It's like, of note, we did make this consideration of, you know, the ethical pieces to this.
But it's not like something where it's like, you go up to town meeting and be like, this is the Warren article.
And like, you blatantly are like, you know, like, let's talk about this, but like at least like to have, like, some notice to say, like, we have considered this.
Yeah.
Yeah, I don't know.
To me, this is, this is an anecdote.
But there was a guy, he was, one of my coworkers, he was, he was excellent at giving presentations on really complicated topics.
And one of the reasons why he was good at it is that he said, basically, if you're proposing something that has controversy, like, let's say it was diamond mining, or let's say, you know, something, he says, you need to present the topic as a sphere.
Whatever the topic is, it has to be a sphere.
So you're telling someone, here's all the information, here's why we're doing it, you can give it to them, and they can look at it, and there's nothing to grab on to.
There's no handles. There's no potholes. There's no things, crevices where they can start to dig it apart.
And I think if these topics came out in a large group, there would be one or two people that would just be like, ah, that's something I'm going to grab onto.
I don't like it. And I'm going to use that thing to pry and, like, completely undermine the argument.
So a project like this would need to present as a sphere.
It's clean. It has a financial justification. It has technical merit. It has reliable vendors or whatever. And it creates a benefit.
But it doesn't have these handholds that people could have used to, like, just undermine and shape your case of art.
The building ball is out of place to put your son.
Yeah, you need, you give them a bowling ball.
Yeah, a can't even ball. Yeah. Candlefin ball. Yeah.
Also, does that make you want to understand that this is now a candlepin ball is now a big ball.
Yeah.
I guess with my mind with like the proposal piece to it, like of notes, that way it's like there's some research that's been done about it and whether or not you make up note of it or not.
But you start the proposal in the sense of energy committee mission is to help, you know, taxpayer money and the environment for energy committee.
This is the mission to it.
And then this is our sphere.
And if people were to talk about it, you'd say, you know, we're focusing on our mission, which is to, you know, this is the financial piece to us.
So at least you at least have some backup to talk about it, but I don't think it would be brought up that much.
Yeah.
On the environment part, let me just say this to Penny.
There is a town plan or a master plan of the town, and it has some information on what Pembrook's collective view on the environment is.
So we would just, I think, look at the master plan and see.
is this type of project consistent with the master plan.
On EMF waves, on the inverters, those things have lots of,
they will have lots of certifications of meeting standards.
UL 1747, IA, 15, 41, or whatever they are,
they will have, like, gobs of standards that they've gone through for all these types of things.
We just confirm.
We'd like to see the certificate of,
of compliance of your inverters that the equipment you're using to make sure that it meets
all the safety things.
Yeah.
I didn't know where to start on, like, the ethics of mining.
Personally, to me, that's way too deep for the town to discuss.
I know, like, the company I worked for, we were basically in a mining thing, and we had
lots of procedures on mining and, you know, to avoid, whether it was child labor
or bad environmental practices, and we had requirements on vendors that we used and that they
had to handle mining procedures and mining waste and all that kind of stuff.
It's a massive huge topic. We're buying, we're buying consumer and
use materials so that all the people help the chain have to be responsible and
taken care of that. To me, it's, we're too far removed from the production of that stuff to even
get into it. Otherwise, everything we do would be subject to this in the town. Everything.
Yeah. But we're so far down the food chain there. I mean, some parts of it you can anecdotally
refer to. So, for example, with the batteries, these are not lithium-cobalt, man.
these are lithium iron phosphate still has a lithium to be mine but not the
cobalt. Yeah. And the end results are a lot cleaner. Someday we'll have sodium batteries
don't even have lithium in it. But we're not there. Yeah, I did like these. That's my soapbox
on these. Good thoughts though. One of my thoughts is just kind of like what you're saying that there
could be potential that people could bring it up and then my thought was that I wouldn't
want someone to us to be like, oh, we had no idea about, yeah, you know, like,
we should have it in the back pocket, be like, you know what, this is like exactly what you just
said, you know, like, I don't know if there will ever be a warrant article that stirs the beehive as much
as the carbon fee and dividend one that I proposed, two years in a row back in COVID-19. And yeah,
that was kicking the beehive quite hard. But so we should have answers prepared, but I would not suggest
including that as part of the discussion
you remember that
I still stand by
my carbon fee and dividend
I still think it's a good idea
it's a phenomenal idea
we're fools that we're not considering it
alleviates the heavy hand of government
yeah it's a very elegant
solution to a big sticky
problem
but anyway
feel free to have out whenever
thank you very
doing those things and then I'll probably like BCC you want to this quote like whatever the energy committee email is I don't know
yeah yeah BCC or just full transparency you feel free to CCS we don't mind being on there
we don't mind company if we have questions yeah I guess not to hold you up the one thing I was not
clear on is what the next steps are so the way I understood it the CIP is a defined process
and are they waiting for clarification on this stuff before moving forward like what is
is the action on Ryan to come back with an update proposal is the action on us to come like I don't know what the next steps are
yeah I think what we should do is get some like a little FAQ list to David and just say hey we have this information
um energy an energy committee should we should give a recommendation that after having got all the information
the we think the scope of the project is complete the costs are probably representative
of the full cost of the project here's what it says about the roof
warranty here's what it said about whatever those other questions were it would or
wouldn't qualify for net metering that kind of stuff and it would be great if
this could be considered as part of the the town's CIP request for the next year
so is that like within the next week within the next month well so it okay so here's
So here's the thing is Thursday, they're at the CFP ends.
They're having their final meeting, they're voting on each project.
And what they do is they just will give a high, medium, low priority for each thing.
But then you have, you know, the CFP will be presented to a budget committee and then later
more hard to get together, there's always time and ways for
for things to kind of get reintroduced or brought in.
So since this has kind of already been put in front of CIP,
I think that if we get the answers, you know,
kind of within a month or so,
and even if it's not officially part of the CIP thing for Thursday,
people will be aware of it.
They will have remitted it on one of the rooftop solar proposals,
and I think I can see it getting
published if people...
Will you be at that Thursday meeting?
No, not the day.
I won't because I've got a conflict on that Thursday.
I just think one of the big messages that hopefully gets them sooner than later is just that
a lot of the things that seemed incomplete are actually not.
We think a lot of the things that it doesn't include are actually included because I think
people might just be like, this is a little priority, it's a mask, nothing's figured out,
when in reality they're pretty complete estimates, their estimates, not quotes, and I don't know,
I don't know if we need to do any intervening before Thursday day.
Yes, well, I think, so I think a little note from us would be good,
even though we don't have all the answers.
We can just say, but we...
So we met, we understand a lot more of the proposals or the estimates.
They are fairly complete.
We're confirming that to getting in writing.
We are chasing out a couple open-ended questions,
but this still makes sense to consider.
We still need to start putting money away for this if we were going to consider it.
Yeah, blah, blah, blah, blah, something like that.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I think, yeah, getting that note to David.
Okay.
Even though I won't be there at the meeting.
I'll also be sitting a note to Karen with just my thoughts on the project.
She'll, she's not going to vote my votes,
but she's going to, she'll read over whatever I, you know, what my thoughts on.
One thing that might make sense for perhaps us to do is to ask what the hosting capacity is at this location.
Capacity.
Yeah, for how much can be installed.
Yeah, at the point would we trigger a lot?
larger, the big transformers or something like that.
We can find that out.
All right, I'll talk to you later.
Thank you.
Thanks, Ryan.
No problem.
All right, so I'll get an email to David is probably not going to happen tonight, but before Thursday.
That was all a good discussion.
I do have to run in a couple minutes here.
We had review and acceptance of meeting minutes, which we'll punt.
We did present our solar project at the first.
solar project at CIP. I think it went well in that despite specific questions and hang-ups and whatever's, I think we made the point that if we don't start to do this, we can never consider it.
So hopefully they take that in the consideration.
Yeah.
The only-
You end up with someone else taking the risk of putting money for you and then driving a nice
bringing in for that.
Yeah.
I do think in talking through this was very helpful for me.
I do think something we as a committee need to do is just better understand what the full life cycle cost looks like because I think all this stuff has pitched sounds great and I still think it is great, but it would be good to know at 10 years in one day when the inverter fails, right past its warranty, what does that look like?
and what are the implications of that?
I don't think we need to really get too hung up on like end-of-life stuff.
Like there was a whole discussion about, oh, you can't recycle these things.
And yes, you can, there are recycling waste streams for them.
And they're only going to get more mature and developed as the curve goes like this
for a number of systems reaching end of life.
So I don't think it makes too much sense to get too hung up on that stuff.
But understanding if there was an emergency roof,
leak and they needed to pull panels off, like, what are we going to totaling the system or what's
salvageable? It's all salvageable. Just understanding some of that, I think, would be good for us
to have in our back pocket. And then the whole, what do we recommend, probably based on the size
of the system or the cost of the system, to put into some maintenance for any day fund,
I think that can be a recommendation that we come up with as well. So what we're seeing here,
as far as I could see of the sizes and checked them out, but like 35 kilowatts for 100,000
there's ballpark three bucks a kilowatt. Yeah, that was revision and the other ones were bigger systems.
They were 41.5 and 45 kilowatt systems. So again, what was the one with the battery?
That one was a 45. I think that was a 45. No, that's a 49 kilowatt system.
All right, so we've got almost 50 kilowatts, a three bucks a kilowatt, you're at 150.
Yeah. So the pricing is kind of the traditional residential level of price where if we're out in the field,
if you had the field to put it in, you could probably cut that in half.
It'd be about a dollar and a half kilowatt for the whole system.
But then you're on the ground, are sensible.
benefits,
problems.
The big do-out for us is to get David to note that
we met things seem reasonable. It still makes sense to include in CIP.
There are some questions that are open and will run down and follow-up.
Any other big actions that we need to discuss?
Well, we probably should give some thought to the type of
what the future might look like at some point.
and have a sense of how we plan for it.
Because we're not going to necessarily invest it now,
but how do we deal with it when it does finally come to us?
More efficient pricing.
Suddenly the value of solar goes to the very low levels.
If the ISO is trying to sell hard at Canada when it's shining,
it ain't worth much in the system that way.
And that's one of my biggest concerns with anything that is
that is really long time horizons is just who the fuck knows what's going to happen?
But you can see where things are going and that's the issue.
Once we get to the point we're backing off nukes because of sunshine too broadly,
then we're going to end up curtailing the production and we lose.
Yeah, even if five years from now some new solar technology hits the mainstream
and it's 30% efficient and all of a sudden all these old systems are,
I don't know.
Yeah, and the thing is that there are...
17-year payback,
or the world's going to look very different.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There are things we can do today that help that.
The batteries, for example, for a homeowner,
they make not much sense,
but they're selling like crazy right now
for people going in their own matters.
And there's a company called,
ASIC, I think, is the name of it.
I'm not really sure of it now.
Out of Texas.
that is now cooperating with utilities to put in battery packs for grid support.
Homeowner battery packs and grid support.
Where you're paying them a little bit of money to have this thing and gives you a protection against power outages.
And they make money providing grid support.
Yeah.
Even some of our local folks around here, you know, one of the first to do that was central Vermont.
Even Eversource has a program that's mainly active in Massachusetts in Connecticut
where they will give you a whole bunches of money to put in batteries in your house
and you give them the control of that battery versus discharging and charge.
Yeah, I feel like there's some payback period beyond which the uncertainty is high enough that we as a committee might not want to stand behind.
Yeah.
And I guess what I'm saying is this stuff is very near at hand.
Like, do you think within 10 years?
It's right now.
You can go to AmherSource and get money to put in batteries in your house.
Understood.
I'm more saying if this was a 30-year payback, we wouldn't...
30-year payback, I would say no.
But 17 years, I mean, 17 years have been long enough for me that I'm not.
I'm like, I don't know if that makes sense.
I don't know what that makes sense.
The tax credits that bring it down to a 10-year payback, then I'm like, okay, I think that makes sense.
But 17 is starting to get a little long on the tooth.
Very long on the tooth for me.
And I just having put a lot of our personal political capital into community power, having that works really good.
But then looking at not look really good and, you know, we stood behind that.
Yep.
And the area under the current right now is more negative than positive for residents in the town.
I just, I'm a little bit more sensitive to do we want to throw our time, effort, and wait behind something that has such a long payback where market conditions,
geopolitics, everything could completely flip this on its head and end up being a not great investment.
And this whole area is like that.
I mean, when you think about the cost of energy to make the electricity,
right now it's about essentially the cost of gas going into the plant.
It is like two or three cents a kilowatt hour, and we're paying 25.
All the rest of it is infrastructure, maintenance, administration.
Even if the private power was zero, it would cost us just about the same amount of money.
Yeah, so it's almost like, just like our PPA or whatever it was to get community power,
we're only going to launch if the cost is less than default.
Like, I feel like we're only going to get behind some project if it has a payback less than some number of years.
And I don't know, 10 years feels.
Well, the thing, the payback issue, you know, the utilities, the state spent a whole bunch of money studying.
What's the value?
the solar kilowatt hour and it concluded that what first of there wasn't any additional cost
because of it the main cost of all of our power delivery is infrastructure until we change the
structure of regulation that's going to stay there and i hope we do change i hope we get
use rates and all this other stuff i feel like all of the things that we would want to advocate
for undermine the financial case of an investment like that yeah so that's
So that just, I just...
Well, it undermines the investment in the structure as it is,
particularly the utility structure,
because they make their money based on their investment.
Everything we do to reduce load tends to reduce revenues.
Now, luckily we're in a period of time when we also see potential growth
to balance that.
And if we can do that and structure it in a way that doesn't increase investment,
for that new growth.
Then we have a chance to reduce the 10 of the total cost of power in the existing structure.
Now, the other approaches don't pay the utility 10% on its investments.
I know we can't predict the future, which is why I'm okay with getting behind this stuff or CIP,
because it's just starting to put money in a bank, and in five years, if we determine there's a better way to spend that money that money that does have a return.
I think we have the flexibility to pivot.
just get a little nervous when it's like, David wants to use the money and go do this thing now.
I still think solar makes a lot of sense.
Just if it was my money, I'd feel differently about it than taxpayer money where my neighbors might be
showing up in my house with pitchforks and they're like, why do you keep doing stupid things of the town?
I don't know.
Yeah.
The one other thing that comes to my mind is this whole business about the fact that we've managed to get the cost of installation of solar
to like three bucks.
where Australia is like a dollar
for the same time of service on somebody's roof
or kilowatt.
And their process is a hell of a lot faster.
I mean, the permitting installation is
you decide whether you did a roofer or the guy
that's going to put it on your roof that you'd like it done
and there's one guy put it. He picks up the phone and calls somebody
and describes what's to be done
and when he hangs up, you've got your permit.
Yeah.
And it can be producing electricity by Friday.
Yeah, I feel like not to get political, but it would be silly to install solar without tax credits.
Like, we, I can't predict the future again, but it seems like one party is going to continue to try to decarbonize.
The other party is going to do everything they can to stop that and just.
Then if you make this decision.
Like Texas that is building up, bring Google to fashion than anybody else.
Yeah, but I mean, it just...
Because it makes sense.
If we have the money, it totally makes sense to deploy now because there is a credit.
But in 2028, it doesn't matter who's president, if there's no tax credit, it would not, I feel like as a town and as a committee,
I personally would want to say, you might as well wait and see what the next administration is going to do
before you go and commit $400,000, you can get $200,000 of it back.
The other piece of that is...
If you can change the cost of the installation, the people in Germany get paid high rates,
you know, to put the stuff in, and they're, you know, their prices half of what ours is.
Australia is kind of an outlier because they're even less.
All done by relatively small installers, and, you know, they're much, much cheaper.
And now they're going very heavily in the batteries with some subsidies.
You know, whether you get 30% back on three bucks,
or you pay a dollar in the first place, that's a big difference.
I don't think we're going to see a major change in the labor.
Well, the place where it's occurring is that I think we'll be important going forward is in this plug-in solar.
The plug-in solar isn't relevant for the safety center or for the library.
No, it isn't.
But what it's relevant to is the cost of getting stuff done.
Because it, you know, it's like heat pumps.
Heat pump contracts are coming in for simple systems at $6,000 to $8,000, where the machine costs a couple of thousand, and there's a half a day labor to put it in.
Where's the rest of the money going?
Presumably to be electrician or the H-Bag guy or whoever, whatever services are required.
And that's one of the things the plug-in solar says, if you meet these requirements, you don't talk to your utility necessarily, you don't talk to the inspector, you don't talk to anybody, and you plug it in.
Yeah.
and you get 700 watts or whatever the money is...
Or $1,200 in our case, but even there, it's still not quite that simple,
because ultimately, because you're not going to get paid for any power that you export,
and may end up paying for it.
I'm just not seeing the connection.
Well, the connection is, to do all that stuff, you have to address all those issues.
And, in fact, there are very few issues in the permitting and other stuff there,
unless you're going much bigger, putting it up to 5 kilowatt.
on the house, I would argue, doesn't stress the utility at all.
Yeah, I also agree with that.
And there's really very little reason other than to let them know that it's there.
Okay.
You've done, and the safety issues are taken care of by the rules in the UL standards and the ICCI standards and everybody else.
All that is taken care of.
Even if you have to hire an electrician to put it in for a thousand bucks, who cares?
bucks, who cares?
You know, that's still a relatively small piece.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But I'm still, like, for the safety center,
and why?
The safety center doesn't directly reflect anything other than in the total cost of the home.
Why did it cost three times as much as the rest of the world or twice as much as the rest
of the world?
We're not looking at the rest of the world.
Well, because the market is here right now.
Yeah.
And why is it this way?
Why haven't we managed to figure out how to do this thing?
do this thing reasonably priced?
Is it because the early adopters are willing to pay a lot for it?
Maybe.
You know, the same reason that people are paying high prices
is to put on a roof because you can't find somebody to do it.
Right.
Yeah, New Hampshire has...
I mean, I'm sorry, like for me there's a pragmatic part of this,
which is...
If you want the stuff in New Hampshire,
we know the market prices and we have the market prices.
And if we want to wait until those things change,
change.
Then we can wait.
You're going to wait a generation or more.
Because it's your demographics or...
It ain't going to happen.
Yeah, I mean, yeah.
So...
I'm with that one guy in the select board.
A small modular Duke there.
Let's go.
Yeah.
Anywho, we got...
You got to wait for that one.
Yeah.
We're going to close the meeting here.
Does anybody have anything else before we wrap up?
No, just that
Ryan is going to get some information from the vendor,
say that's fees.
something and as an energy committee soon we need to answer three questions and then you
were going to send a note to David just saying hey look we understand some of the
things now and yeah it looks pretty reasonable for the for the CIP if the
CIP committee can please at least include those projects in their
deliberations on Thursday yeah I'll get David that note before Thursday yeah I will
will start to work on the ownership stuff, the net metering question, and...
Yeah, the pieces of that either keep...
Oh yeah, ownership questions in the...
Oh, shoot, I just shut down my computer.
Now it's doing enough to pay...
Um, three things.
Net metering, ownership versus EPA, and...
I have a lot of it.
a couple of personal things that I think we should work on.
I don't know if they were official on.
I think it was just you need to make a recommendation as an energy committee.
On go-no-go or on a vendor?
No, I don't think we're at the point of making a...
Totally agree, that's why I'm asking.
So, um, just do we do the project or do?
Yeah.
Yeah.
So for the note to David, we're saying, yes.
I want it included in CIP.
I think if we got to the point where it was,
there was discussion about finding money to do it now, then I think
And I think there's a whole other effort because I think we absolutely need to cross our T's and dot our eyes and all that other stuff.
Yeah, I don't feel comfortable going forward with anything for real at this point.
Right.
Yeah, we should start...
Just, we...
Our recommendation is that these projects are scoped enough for the CIP committee to deliberate about them.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, I'll include that my note to David.
And there's a lot of other stuff we should work on, I think, longer term.
But for now, I think that's it.
And yeah, I think you've got to figure out as a committee, how do we organize and check away at this stuff outside meetings.
I do a job making time for it.
On the battery issue, one thing to keep in mind is that you can always add it later.
Yeah.
You do an AC couple system that it can go in later.
But it probably is.
going to be important to start thinking about it because much of the world solar always
has batteries with it now and particularly in California where the net metering rules have gone
to a point where you get paid a lot less for your power it's almost essential that you
have batteries and on a system kind of basis just thinking about the issues yeah you want
batteries in it if you don't have a lot of this stuff you need storage it's just exactly
exactly the same issue we had when we were looking and building lots of nukes.
And if you had a whole bunch of nukes in the region, you needed a whole bunch of storage.
And that's where a pump storage came from because the issue was very similar.
Yeah.
But the opposite end of it, where the wind and solar come and go all the time.
The nuke, when it's running, it wants to stay there.
And you build enough of it so that they have to cut into it because there isn't load for it.
Yeah, the man's coming and going all the time.
Yeah.
then you need it in storage.
Yeah.
And so the need for storage isn't new,
but how do we incorporate it?
Is it done at a grid level, you know, at the upstream end of it,
or does it provide more value at the downstream end of it?
So I do have a recommendation for, like, a next meeting on,
this doesn't have to be a monthly energy committee meeting,
but just the next time we have a discussion,
a discussion I think for any of these projects there are like there's the topic and like
the immediate topic itself and what exists today and then there are there's the stuff
adjacent to the topic like a lot of the things that you're bringing up which are
require regulation changes or new technologies or behavioral changes or things
like that that we don't have control over or
in a time frame is beyond, let's call it, like a one-year cycle.
And I think there's a lot of good things that we need to talk about that are adjacent to the topics,
but they're...
They're adjacent.
And they're fun to talk about, but they won't advance like an immediate project
because they're beyond the boundaries of a project, like getting solar on a rooftop.
Yeah, I agree. I think we need to
We need to, I only want to be involved with the committee if there's space for that fun talk.
Because like what brings us together is our energy and like that there should be a space for that.
We also have the pragmatic, we need to get things done, advise, whatever, with our blinders up.
We need to hold all those things.
We have finding them in the DMR space for it.
Yeah.
And I guess one, the sort of practical piece of it is where does the discussion parts of the,
parts of all this other stuff blend with the practical reality today and doesn't influence it.
Right.
So again, the storage issue, do we need to absolutely have to have storage in the battery and the solar system
we put in today?
No.
Because there's not that much benefit today in the usual way of doing stuff.
However, we do now have, even in Eversource, the possibility getting part of that battery system paid for by Eversource.
a lot of it paid for by Eversource if they have partial control of it.
And, you know, those policies are there, they're working, and there's money in it.
And that sort of brings it to the practical side.
I've got to run.
Can we, someone, motion?
Okay, motion adjourned meeting.
All in favor.
All in favor.
All those.
How many do you get, six?
Yeah, okay.
Okay.
all thank you guys