001so there's some email correspondence there that vin i think will run through as well um so vin is going to run the presentation this evening so we'll go through it's going to run us through all the different properties and potential solar installs and then the conversation will go from there hopefully after this what we will come to is a conclusion because there is an application to be submitted if we are going to be moving forward with a project um so with that katherine i just had a really quick procedural question so if we vote in favor of whatever whatever plan it still has to go to the full board correct before you we can submit the application or or does it not the way that i understand it would have to go to the full
002board right so that would be the meeting at the beginning of june because what's the deadline june 14th june 15th i believe is the is the filing deadline okay all right so i just want to keep that time frame in mind if you have a full board okay thank you point of information tim do we have a vin do you happen to know do any of you know do we happen to have a board meeting in may we have a board meeting june 3rd and we do have a board meeting in may okay let me just check the date it should be may the 27th i believe uh 20th 20th may 20th okay so we have a meeting in two weeks right okay and uh and that's a business meeting may 20th and we also
003have a business meeting scheduled for june 3rd okay so we have time i mean we have possibilities too yes deal with this okay sorry for the interruption andrew no no absolutely okay vin okay so and i do want to acknowledge that we have mr clavette mr bombaro who um you know have certainly some familiarity with what we've been discussing and you know dan has actually some um more um experience than i do with some of the z-rec filings and other solo projects so these two gentlemen will chime in where it's appropriate what i'm going to start with i'll share my screen here in a second so at our meeting that we held you know back in february on the 4th um our consultant mr islam walked through you know a variety of different solar array
004options at four schools the high school highland do a little norton and then based on that discussion and the comments that he received from the committee he did go back and and make some adjustments and that's what i'm going to present on screen here in a second so these are adjusted from the first presentation i'm not going to go through the entire 50 slides i'm just going to show you the recommendations he made for each of those schools so um give me one and just the point we do have a meeting immediately following this that starts at 7 30. yes so i know we're on a timeline here so this is the presentation um and i'm going to move right to slide 22 hopefully i don't make you dizzy when i do that okay so
005these are everybody can see this screen right yes okay yes so this is high on school and just to familiarize yourself okay the orientation this is route 10 this is the road that leads into highland so you could see these two blue areas these are the alternate um locations that michael drew and i'll show you on the following slides how much uh power they generate but this is a you know basically at the front of highland school and this array is the ground mount located all the way on the rear field you know it would require you know some some tree clearing you know towards the back of highland school hey vince a question how does that align with the outdoor classroom uh okay yeah let's take a look at that so the right you
006could see my um yes no arrow so that's the portable trailer so you know this is set way back from there towards the pond in the back there's an actual classroom yeah it won't it won't wipe it out but it will be in close proximity to that outdoor classroom you're saying it's down in this area here that's right it's right adjacent to that pond in the in the back at the at the west side of the property line yeah so vin if you go to where that blue box is there and the right hand side of it where that tree line is it's right there yeah i i don't think it encroaches upon it but it's pretty darn close now obviously we can kind of right-size this and make adjustments i think that you know
007the idea here is you know that would be one location and if if we could adjust the size it would just change the power right um but that's a good point andrew i didn't realize that there's you know an outdoor classroom down in this area that might um be interfered were this in that location in that size so here um let me just decrease the size okay so this is more of a of a drawing from an aerial view of what the array would look like and you know here michael laid out the you know there's 264 modules and four inverters and the key thing that i want to focus on here is though this is the rear array and that one's a little bit bigger visually it's a 1056 modules 66 inverters the key
008though is if we were to do both these installs the um right here it would need it would basically account for about 81.1 percent of the energy used for highland so that's that's pretty sizable in terms of the amount of energy that we would be able to harvest from these two arrays and as is noted down at the bottom if this went you know to z-rec it would be bid as a large z-wreck again i'm not the expert in the theory as you know but you know the 81 of energy consumption of these two arrays you know i think you know seems seems pretty sizable for what it is um and so before i move on to doolittle i'll just you know stop sharing for a second and and see if there's any thoughts or
009questions because tim had some alternates which i planned on doing after we get through these three okay um i just one question that i have before we get to tim if that's okay um that backfield rich and vin did they is that ball diamond that's in that back corner is that used still or uh right now it's abandoned the back stop was in uh was it was in poor shape so that has been removed but that field for all intent purpose has been retired and the reason for that is is it just needs to be yeah and reseeded and it needs work or is it yeah yeah we need we need capital funding in order to you know reinvest in in creating that not only for that field but the the one at the uh
010at the east side of the property as well okay and then there's one comment about that um that hundred and that 1381 the way he's got it mapped out here it would be it would be smaller and i would say by maybe a factor of 25 percent only because you're going to be encroaching on property line and then you know just by the just by the the site elevation you're not going to be able to put that footprint in that spot so i would envision once once the investigation was completed it would be a smaller array than what's shown in this drawing yeah would would the i mean would that field is there a need for that field i mean would there be future capital planning where that would be reused you know i the
011answer to that there's just a general statement there's a desire to have more fields in town you know more enjoyable fields right um depending on what happens with you know chapman property and and you know some of the other fields i i know that would probably come under a little bit of scrutiny uh and potential opposition if we try to build a smaller array where there's existing fields um but it's not like we have much choice you know this is an option it doesn't mean we're going to exercise it but generally we've been talking to john bollock who's the you know director of park and rec for the town and we have talked about bringing you know some more fields really to the to a much better level and we need some funding for that
012okay um tim did you had your hand up i'm sorry catherine but tim did have his hand up i don't know if he oh yes uh basically so i'm hesitant now talking about the fields because i know the kids like could use more ball fields so i'm hesitant on that part the one in front right where the police station is i i support that i think it it works there the the basic idea i have and we'll see a visual of it in a few minutes but um carports i i just i just imagine take the solar part out of it for economics for energy reasons i just think that it's sort of an amenity that people would like having covered parking you know it snows during the middle of the day they come out
013they find their car covered in snow or you're getting out of your car and it's raining um so that's kind of where i'm coming from more and more in relation to the parking lots than um fields i i am hesitant on that one um yeah that's all i just brought up the um the diagram you did of highland tim yeah so i don't know if you want to talk through it now maybe we could kind of hit these this way yeah sure thank you ben andrew that's yeah i mean just katherine do you have a question before we move on to this yes like wanting to go back absolutely rich was just saying um so what i heard but maybe i misheard was that the space that is planned in michael sam's thing really isn't
014as big as it is what i'm trying to get to is that mean the uh percentage of power that it would provide would have to be reduced by 25 or whatever the percentage is that you're saying i'm sorry see it's too long for me today no i think you got it you know what i'm saying though yeah i think it would i mean it would reduce that 81 if we made a smaller array you know let's say we get to 70 okay it's kind of order of magnitude fine i just wanted to make sure i was thinking about it the right way okay thanks so basically um this this could be quite a bit and i don't want things to be like you know unaesthetically i want stuff to be aesthetically pleasing but again i
015just go back to you know any uh my thinking is any of these locations could work just a more as a carport i think it's just an amenity that people would probably uh appreciate having covered parking um that or as well as covered sidewalks for when it's raining and stuff i mean i don't know it was just the thought that i had yeah and so this is the um actually this is the roadway coming into highland was this other array that you drew tim yep okay all right so it sounds like there's some general um thought that you know this may not be ideal to use the real ball field but you know do more in the front of the school um kind of along the lines of the pd except you know we want
016actual covered parking because the the array at the police department is not really covered because there are openings between the panels so yeah and i mean from what from two police officers that i know that i've talked to um they don't like the array in the behind the police station because one it removed their area in order to do outside if they have to do any sort of use have a large open parking lot they no longer have that and then second in the winter when it snows and it warms up and snow banks start melting it melts and then it goes underneath and the sun does not get to hit those parking areas so then it freezes so then there's ice underneath the carports and the town can't get its trucks underneath the carports
017because they're too they're not high enough so then they're manually sanding and salting underneath the carports yeah so it causes i mean i don't know rich or dan if if there's any validity to that but um yeah well i mean i think that i think that array is minus a deck that's that's the issue there the reality um i mean those are all those are all things that the police department has you know has come to see as as came into fruition um that project through the uh through the energy commission um in order to you know realized in production um if if it had been realized with a deck to it um the cost per kilowatt hour that you'd be in contract with um wouldn't have a realized savings as such so you'd you'd
018be you'd be in a sense paying a premium for uh potentially paying a premium for a car or cover a covered garage um the the the way that that project came through was without the decking aside from the additional cost of the decking that that affects the cost all the way down to the ground with the steel structure the footings engineering design and so forth so um once you add that decking on there it does drastically affect you know the the cost per kilowatt hour and any realization that the town will be looking at guys so is this going to have decking vayner we haven't gotten that we haven't gotten that far but i think from you know the i guess lessons learned from the pd i don't think we i don't think we should
019do it anyway other than with the decking so that it does provide the protection you know for the cars underneath that would be something that would be simplified in the bidding process proposals for the suppliers in order to have that and when you get the proposals back yeah at that point the opportunity to review them and see if they're found long-term got it tim yeah um so first of all i'm having a lot of difficulty hearing you dan yeah you're breaking up yeah everybody else i'm fine with but your connection is is not great um so it just what i'm thinking is not necessarily uh so i understand the point that makes sense but it could be some could be designed some locations could be designed i'm thinking so that basically the downward angle is
020to the lawn in which case it well no i mean i'm being serious about it if it's in the middle of a parking lot mostly relatively relatively narrow as long as it's pointing toward the lawn which is we don't you have to face it south um but like highland the one that i mentioned that runs parallel to the police station the farthest over the farthest west i would think that you could just design it so the snow just runs you know two feet into the two feet over into the grass where people wouldn't be parking anyway there there are thermal expansion when they design the uh the arrays uh individual panels to allow expansion is that rain coming through the um you know between panels you know next not just in the snow um and
021some of the melt off the upper uh panels through the snow comes through the uh the the panel's not just off back edge okay okay in a significant way or like a minor way well you would need to have a continuous deck in order for what you're suggesting tim to work and that's not that's not what's at the police station it's not continuous so it's gonna you have those constant seams that are interrupting any kind of flow that would drop into the into the grassy area okay i got it i just couldn't hear you dan sorry about that but that makes sense rich what you're saying to me i'm thinking i mean i've seen him like that it's just part of what a you know an rfp would just say a seamless deck all the
022way across and then it just goes the snow goes into the grass if the numbers don't play out right they don't play outright for us but i would think that they could if you're if you're putting it in the grass not into the parking lot right but if it's going to the grass i just don't think it should be that big of a i don't think it would be that big of a concern for most people so if we angled that that would be we'd be pitching the roof towards the police station which would be west so it'd be downward sloped west correct is that right yeah okay so how is that uh tim's you know way more about this than i do how is that for uh gathering the energy oh well i mean
023based on the based on the current rate structure not optimal but if the numbers play out they play out i mean frankly speaking the rate structure it's entirely possible there's a nationwide discussion on the right structures being changed including here in connecticut um that's neither here nor there at the moment uh i think a west facing one it's just the same as the police station where the numbers made sense for the police station so i think it would make sense for highland police department we're having a heart we're getting every other word from you dan yeah it's tough to hear you we want to hear you yeah they had a better connection i would try signing off and sign it back in down that might help i'll i'll shoot back in yeah okay yeah i
024mean in the total calculation i think the the police department already had kind of minimal sight work aside from doing the footings and the foundation work uh highland any kind of carport that we have to consider will be we'll be a little bit more involved in the way of site work because uh we have you know we don't have all clear pavement in those areas so that that's gonna impact the cost as well okay okay then where are we with um like highland school for paving schedule for that area is has that been p i i can't picture in my head if it's been newly done or if it's yeah it's not newly done i can tell you that yeah got it okay yeah how beat up is that that west side of the uh
025it's uh it's past its intended life cycle uh in addition we have uh we have some parking issues there we need more you know it needs to be really redesigned as far as the site uh to include more uh parking uh that was the reason why the week's road circle was um you know we uh we uh cut the trees and uh and cleared that lot in hopes that we were gonna be able to utilize that as an impermeable surface for additional parking and then on top of that we are looking at uh potentially uh putting an additional lane on the exit side of week's road out to 10 to help alleviate uh the congestion there so you know there is no we have some plans in the work that's it's not readily identified on
026a five-year cap plan but um we are in the planning stages for that well which is good that the parking lot's not newly paved because you know we might be able to incorporate some of that as part of not within the scope of this project but we might be able to get that done yeah i mean if it's if it's past it's you know estimated useful life it's getting beat up it makes sense to me to think about doing it in a holistic manner yep but i mean where would so if all this work needs to be done at highland school to reconfigure the you know the exit turn lane and additional parking and the weak circle that all that work would have to be done pre the install of the solar oh not necessarily
027no okay we have to make sure that it's all designed and right appropriately okay yeah i mean you could do the carport as uh as a standalone and then just take care of the the the uh the asphalt areas in the local area and the rest of it can be done at a later date okay obviously you can see dan's back in um want to try moving to do a little yeah dan you want to why don't you sing us the abc or something i was just thinking the abcs myself [Laughter] it's my bandwidth still bad all right sign language dan can you call in on a phone i've never done it but i know people do it in meetings yeah there's a phone number actually in the google me so all right you want
028to go over to doolittle then because we do it's about seven o'clock yeah that's what i'm looking at okay so do a little same same drill i'm not going to look at any of the stuff that was previously presented um so this is the new array that again to orient this is oak avenue here this is the front of doolittle and so this is the ball field right outside of doolittle school and you see that you know he drew a rather large gray um along you know oak avenue and i'm just going to move to the next slide so this gives you a better sense of how much of that field an array like that would take up again 476 modules 28 inverters believe it or not it would make 90 percent of the site
029consumption target but similar to what we talked about at highland you would lose a substantial portion of the field i don't know how palatable that is um that field's used a lot yeah now that that seems like people would be very upset with that yeah i don't yeah i mean aesthetically too i mean it's i'm not yeah yeah i'm just going to bring up because i know tim um yeah that that seems like i had some alternate proposals so tim was suggesting to move it along the sidewalk leading in from oak towards the school as well as doing some arrays here um so we you know this looks like a it could be a significant size array that might work yeah so you know i if michael some i'm sure he could look at that
030quickly he did an array over along this side um but we i think we talked about this would not work because this is a drainage area right rich that's a great that's a pretty significant drainage swale so you're not doing any ground mounts there what about the parking that's along the other side of the yeah thank you there what about that yeah there too he had done actually had done an array um for that yep okay yeah he's done it he's done that in the previous right yeah yeah you just added i think yeah that was my that was what i drew yep you know i'm not seeing it danny i think catherine just mentioned makes sense i didn't have it drawing it you know this is just a really quick thing i did but
031that makes sense there and the other thing that the other thing that i've gotten huh what's that catherine the only other thing that's running through tim yeah oh sorry okay the only other thing that's running through my mind is what um what you were talking about dan was talking about before which is the runoff um so if it's south facing then can you go back to the visual the image yours or or the one from mine yeah um so with regard to the the largest the largest one there that would be south facing and therefore the runoff would be into the parking lot which you know i i'm not sure the design exactly with the with the police station but that would be part of the consideration if we don't want to end up with
032like ice sheets in the parking lot through the winter um but i mean i've seen them i've seen these enough where i find it difficult to believe it's maybe decking's the answer but there might be other answers to that are not as expensive or put put a you know a carport out of the money where it doesn't make sense you're just paying more for it i um but just generally i mean as well as the one that catherine just pointed out any of those could make sense to me you know if the economics made sense i mean certainly a parkour is more money there's no doubt about it versus the conventional ground amount oh yeah no it would definitely be more money because there's more there's more uh materials involved um but that doesn't do
033an rfp and you find out if it's if it's in the money or not basically yeah yeah the one thing that concerns me right now is the escalation of materials specifically steel and everything else everybody can you know if anyone who has has bought a 2x4 at home depot you know a year and a half ago was a dollar ninety-eight cents for a two by four by eight foot now it's uh closing in on nine dollars so it's the cost of materials is escalating so i'm concerned that that's gonna impact our return on on whatever we we plan on constructing here so i i don't want to get too i don't want to get too into the weeds here but that the economics of this are directly impacted by the size of the array so
034if we keep it to a hundred kw or less we basically get nine cents per kilowatt hour my sense right now is if we get so then the large z rex the medium 0x get less than that they'll probably get four five six cents per kilowatt hour as an incentive if we get five cents per kilowatt hour it's probably in the money for us if we get nine cents per kilowatt hour it's almost certainly in the money for us ignoring the increase in material prices i don't know how that plays out i've already seen that at work where it's like going crazy right going back from reapprovals on stuff because the money's out of control the costs are not out of control but they're they're rising noticeably and quickly so going just going back this
035is the array that um was drawn along the the current parking lot at doolittle and so this one was it's smaller than the bulk field it's 624 modules with eight inverters but you know basically we kind of have that drawn already so if that's if that's a preference then you know we could go with that that's a softball landing paradise right there they're designed for it are they yeah no they're designed for hail for baseballs everything we'll put it to the test all right okay any other yeah questions comments from anybody okay so procedurally um next do we then little guidance here do we um vote to move a project forward or to move to the next phase or have ecg further analyze the benefit of the different size arrays you don't need a formal
036vote if you know the planning committee can direct me to instruct ecg that you know we want to focus on highland school and array in the front do a little school and array over the current parking lot we have to look at norton real quick um and then you know tim had some ideas about the high school so you know because you're not voting to approve anything at this point there's no dollars there's there's no project per se yet you just want to you know provide some direction and then at the next step is when i would think we would need an approval where we would have a project and some recommended dollar amounts associated with it okay do we want to get into catherine and tim do you do we want to get into
037the high school looking at the high school i i'd like to look at it quickly i don't know yeah let's just do it and just for the just for the record i mean norton just makes no sense to me at this point if yeah nora and i wouldn't even okay because of the modernization just for for the record okay so this is what you know he had done a couple of alternate proposals this was along the front so this is route 42 so he he drew a couple of different options it would be a large array um 88 percent of the energy demand but as you said if it's not something that's palatable because we don't know what's going to happen in norton and i think that's the you know the broad you know question
038for the for the planning committee and the board is whatever we select it's you have to assume you want it to stay there for 20 years right because that's the life cycle of these you know these projects right okay so i'm going to flip over to um tim's view of the high school here um tim i'll let you talk through it i'll just move the cursor away you tell me yeah sure so the basic idea here is um you know we haven't really i don't think school modernization really looked at the high school in detail at this point our our peak is starting so the high school is a few years off um but there could be changes to the high school there could be serious you know significant changes so basically all i'm thinking
039here is looking around the edges of the property um assuming the property you know the parcel the overall parcel basically stays the same um if we're using stuff at the edges it shouldn't it probably wouldn't be that big of an impact uh one noticeable thing that where i think we have some property that we could do something is the pump station which is in the back yeah yeah i had a conversation with a very brief uh conversation with our former sewer superintendent dennis devert and his sort of off the cuff remark was you know if we did something down there shouldn't affect him at all including like any equipment heavy equipment does not go down there often but should be able to do something relatively easily that wouldn't really affect the sewers um but there's
040property there that would not need to be cleared as you can see um and then the other places are just you know along the edges basically uh where it might make sense uh upper right yeah sorry upper the northeast corner right um again this goes back to what dan i'm a little bit hesitant now you know in terms of runoff because these would be south facing they'd be sloping down southward facing uh so i don't know where that where the runoff would go the snow would go and then turn into ice i don't want that but i'm just guessing that uh if there was any sort of serious information of the high school probably would not be into that corner so just some thoughts on it yeah i find this one interesting tim um [Music]
041because i don't think we considered you know what what we can do in this area that's basically just for clarity that's the that's an access road back there yeah isn't there a warm-up space back there too or a batting cage yeah there is yeah the batting cage is here um yeah i mean this is just right it's not like i'm saying get rid of the batting cage that's not my point it's just i did this but some of this is not frequently used and i don't know maybe you could do an array that you know is part of the way and i i don't imagine we'd ever do much with that area really even if we did you know build or renovate the existing building new or renovate the existing high school hey dan i
042would imagine that um any kind of pv construction still has to honor um code as far as side setbacks front rear and side setbacks is that an accurate statement certainly something further for the ecg to look at on the group's behalf you know any any opportunity to to get the pv system in is great however you know when you look at building setback lines and yeah you know depending on zone um you're going to be looking at you know 15 20 feet off the property line yep generation location in the back of the property around the pump station at tim's point it likely won't affect any of the regular operations at that facility however you're going to have to get a home run electrical service to get all the way back up to the building
043to service that uh because these systems these are behind the meter system that you're looking at for the pv and it has to feed directly into the uh high school commuter system well i'll just add i mean i don't know what the town council would say but if we do an rfp we could we could just include it there and you know if if they end up saving money it's that's a consideration for putting something that far out would be the biggest thing that i would see with that i don't need i don't know if the property in a sense is um you know subject around the pump station easement area to the water they have that's a wetlands area to boot so okay you're talking by the pump station or yeah yeah yeah i
044mean but there's still a ton of detail we'd have to get through i mean because that would require trenching from that pump station back up to the high school proper yeah you'd have to the closest service would be at the rear of the high school that's a 4 000 amp feed so um yeah that would have to be engineered to see what kind of value you could get out of that yeah so that that might may not make any sense for us i mean we could just i mean if we did an rfp just include it and if the council wants it we could feed it into the pump station and say hey you're saving money on it that probably makes the most sense really yeah because that pump station sucks up 100kw i think
045it's it's a decent sized one there you really be able to get your wreck on that location say again that might that would be like an opportunity for a small z-wreck which is a lot more uh a lot more readily available than the larger z-rack yeah yeah yeah yeah but we asked the council for a lot of things so if we gave him something if we gave him a money saver it could be good for relationship building right okay well um i don't know where everybody else stands on this but i'm just gonna kind of take the lead on it so i'm only one of three but um well i appreciate ecg's work and all the other i there's nothing here that i see personally um that i think needs to move forward for rfp
046um and the only reason why i say that is if the goal here is to reduce energy costs at the district for the district as a whole and we have 20 years that these projects have to benefit the district in order to pay back we're moving forward with modernization there's potentially could be two brand new elementary schools and while we're moving forward with the planning of those two elementary schools or the new middle school um ensuring that energy measures are built into those and solar arrays etc are paramount in those designs then we would be achieving that same savings for the district what i don't want to see is you know highly school for instance you know that was my school that i went to i don't want to see the property kind of peppered
047with these solar arrays just to make to save energy costs while removing ruining the aesthetic of the property and you know potentially limiting what work can happen there in the future i know that in modern day in part of the modernization plan it's to move pre-k program to highland and doing capital improvement projects there that could change the whole configuration of the front of that school with parent drop-off areas separating the early childhood program from the general bus areas and so i wouldn't want to put a structure there and then you know three four years down the road have an issue with having to have it removed um but again and when in talking to the police officer that i'm friends with he was like please please don't do that please don't put these all
048over the all over the town and uh so there's there's all those different issues and if i saw one site that i thought was going to generate enough to save the money in order to make it worthwhile then i'd be all in but i just don't see that so but i'm just one of three so tim or catherine well i mean i i would move forward with it with the uh not with all the stuff that i put in there um but i to me to issue an rfp for at least for that site that runs parallel the farthest west the point farthest west on the highland parcel parallel basically with the police station arrays do little probably you could look at i'd be open to you know an rfp for each of those sides
049of the the east side and the south side of the ball field and then uh the high school you know i don't know about setbacks and stuff if there was space like where vin just mentioned or out at the pump station um i'm interested in doing an rfp and finding out what what they say i mean there could be real savings in there there might not be any uh but i just don't think that i don't i just don't see uh modernization having a big impact on those having really any impact on those things that we're talking about um the highland i think i understand what you're talking about like if there was a potential repaving that had to happen in that one strip i think that would be part of a discussion as we
050just move forward in figuring that out because rich said it's probably due for repaving anyway so maybe that gets repaved at the same time i i don't know all right but i'm just saying i'm just saying i think we could just keep moving along with very with very specific sites because it is site specific on all this stuff that's where i am and i guess you know my from an aesthetic point of view i think that like i was at west farms mall the other day and i think that they're they're they're terrible looking so i'd hate to take this you know highland school is this beautiful and start dropping these steel structures all over the property um i don't know what and from a construction standpoint things continuously are changing and i would be
051i would put big money on the fact that in 20 years the technology is going to change in advance so far that we are going to have these monstrosities all over these sites and they're all going to have to be taken down i i just don't see that i mean i'm seeing that they're starting to be able to build this into building materials into you know and then what happens then there's going to be across the district to remove these structures or they're gonna be rusting out in the parking lots um but again i'm one of three so is it my turn um so i i just need to ask uh one clarifying question which is to file a an application for the xerox which i i know i don't understand the process well enough
052what would we what would we need and we needed it by june 15th so you're talking about getting an rfp done by then and then using that to no yeah what is it just answer that one question for me because i'm not sure i'm getting so where the discussion where i feel like the discussion has gone tonight is smaller uh arrays less less fewer arrays total if it is a small z-wreck you don't have to go through the go through that process so if it's 100kw or less the process becomes simplified and dan you can jump in here and correct me where i'm wrong but that's basically it there's no the small xerox are not time sensitive uh in terms of that june 15th deadline the small z-rec incentive funding would run out at a
053moment in time but they do not participate in what is called the reverse auction it's a different you are just given nine cents per kilowatt hour if if you're uh if your proposal is approved by eversource so the time you get thrown out the window in the highland that one that one array at highland was like uh 106 kw is what michael sam said so you could just shrink that down to like 100 kw and then you can sort of visualize it this similar say for doolittle you could just do it under 100kw and then the deadline of june 15th goes away dan am i correct on that i i i i can't speak to the specific deadline of those i think those are all to your point like you said in application and they're
054they're not as competitive at the same time as the larger z-wreck which you have to have the size and the sight i think i i do think that you have to have size and sight in hand for the small z-rex as well however to your point it is more so there's not a formal deadline for the smaller c-rack is that what i'm here i would marry myself to saying that i mean we could look at it further to see uh specific for tonight's meeting i looked at the uh the large rec as to when the termination was i'm i'm like 99 sure it just it takes the deadline off the table for a small c rec okay so so the time pressure may not be quite as severe as what it seemed like at the
055beginning of this meeting i agree with andrew that the idea of a lot of arrays all over the place is unappealing um in terms of aesthetics you know the ideal would have been if we could have put that whatever on roofs you know these the roofs of the schools and we can't do that apparently um and so you know when you start talking about you know carports over here or this over here and that over there i guess i'm not as clear on the um the benefit that we would be getting from the smaller what you're i you know because i don't i don't think this way but if these are all smaller projects is that the benefit worth the the you know what we end up with which and i i agree that i
056think we don't know what's going to happen with these schools and i don't think that having permanent structures i am i'm struggling with that a little bit even though i love the idea of solar power and i love like trying to figure out a way to move more of our energy to you know a solar-based um situation but it just feels like it's going to be kind of there's no good solution here there's no solution that actually is compelling um at the same time if it doesn't cost us anything to go out and get these rfps for these smaller projects maybe we do that and see what they come back with and then um you know then try to see if we were going to take it next step i feel like i'm not being
057very uh helpful to this conversation but i got you i hear you uh yeah but but so i i kind of i think probably as i'm talking about it i'm starting to circle in let's maybe do an rfp for highland and doolittle the high school feels to me like not a great idea because i i just don't love it and um and i don't even love like the big arrays at you know but let's just see what they come back with if we tell them what the parameters are so what do you think well i'm hearing two two versus one for the rfp so so that's exact so that's that's with because vin and rich and dan have to deal with that right they have to take time out of their schedule and deal with
058that and so um is that a problem guys well do you feel about that no it's not a problem you know the time sensitivity if we were going to go for for the z-rack by june 15th i think we're you know we're kind of close but you know if that pressure is off you know and maybe dan could speak to this a little bit but putting together an rfp for this we've done rfps for solo before through the town right we did one and we got one at the pd so yeah you know we we start with that as a starting point you know we review we'll put something together we'll run it past the planning committee and then you go to rfp we get the you know we got the proposals back and then
059we would hold a planning committee where you know we could review what the proposals look like and if there's a comfort level in what what the aesthetics would be what the return would be we could take it from there so i wouldn't want to hold up you know a desire to go forward because we've got you know things that are going on i mean we always have things going on which we'll make time for the priorities well it's not as urgent as it was um time wise so yeah but tim you said that the money could run out for the smaller projects is there no it's basically it's a first come first serve as soon as you get you get approved in the money the money literally could be gone today for all i know
060i seriously doubt it is um but it's i think there's every reason to believe that that incentive will be gone um by the end of the year uh i'm not sure if you need to have the project done by the time you get i'm not sure the mechanics of it uh but it's something i mean this is something that could be the whole thing could be uh in the ground and energized by december i mean they're pretty they're pretty vanilla projects at this point um i just want to add i i agree 100 i don't want i don't want these things covering everything i don't i've said it before i don't i didn't want to cut down a few acres in the back of the high school and i don't want every these covering everything
061either but i think at the same time i think one of one of my concerns is that i believe that government can act as a leader and i do believe that this is a we have an on an ongoing energy transition happening and i think it is valuable when people regular people see these things out there um and so i think there's i think there's a value in that hey this stuff works the economics work the electricity works the lights still come on people are probably comfortable with most of that at this point because there's so much there's i mean there's a few hundred houses in cheshire that have it but but i think there is a value in government acting in certain ways um and i think when it comes to the energy system
062i think government needs to be involved it's a monopoly this is basically creating competition for a monopoly so i i think it's uh from from that perspective i i like it too um i i would like it if we could move forward if we could move forward with an rfp not necessarily do it because i totally appreciate where you're coming from andrew about you know it being not aesthetically pleasing i understand that completely but i think we could uh continue the discussion and do an rfp and find out a little bit more on um what would make sense you know that it's entirely possible the materials put this put these projects out of the money at this point because materials are really rising um i mean getting the steel to get the structures up by
063december and i don't know that's true too the supply chain issues right yeah and i don't know that it needs to be done by december i'm just saying i'm not sure that could actually be a problem but i i doubt it but it's possible i'm not sure of all the details on it okay so i see real i see real problems you know or hurdles to overcome but at this point i'd like to just proceed all right so what what i could do because you have two minutes i guess but well rich and dan and i will get together you know take a look at the rfps we had i was talking to rich earlier today too we've done a lot of work with jk energy they're an approved um provider under the eversource incentive
064programs i don't know if they do solar but we could talk to them about that so let's chase it down and then you know we'll come back to the planning committee with uh with a plan does that sound reasonable perfect absolutely happy with that yeah yeah yeah emotional journey all right um thank you everyone could i have a motion to adjourn so it moved second all in favor all right tim i'll see you guys in a minute