001okay good evening everyone it is uh about six o'clock here on february the 4th 2021 we have a meeting of the planning committee for the cheshire board of education vin can you do the roll call please yes i will good evening everyone mr martelly president mrs hallin here mr white nice to see him sorry here mr martella you have a quorum and all your community members present can we please stand for the pledge of allegiance yes we'll bring up the flag okay i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all agenda item number two um audience do we have any comments from the audience emails received then no i just checked there is
002no audience email or comments okay we're gonna move right into agenda item number three this is a pretty light agenda the uh main item tonight is is we have ecg we have michael sam sam who's here to do a presentation did i pronounce that correct song got it uh to do a presentation based on his findings about solar installation uh potential um district-wide so i believe michael you were going to share your screen and walk us through the presentation one second i'm not good at it i don't okay you should see the pdf yeah okay great all right so you want me to just jump in yeah go right on okay this is to be probably an intermediate step um last year we took a look at roof mount systems we are revisiting now looking
003at ground mount systems but there is some combination of ground and roof mount um i will go through the material you have this as well um so i won't get into every detail of it um but the bottom line is that we've looked at four different facilities two of those you have the prospect of being able to meet 90 of your electrical energy requirements at those sites and two of the sites you can meet between 15 and 34 of the energy we can go back and revisit whether we're looking at roof or ground or other areas on the site um and refine this as as we need to refine it so view this as an intermediate step for comment and for any changes that you'd like to make okay okay um what's included in the
004document set is a baseline utility history um for the most part it's based on the eversource uh digital download which does not include all of the details of the utility use but it is enough to establish a baseline um it's important to establish the baseline that you don't want to install more equipment than you need you don't want to over produce in general under net metering you'll get credit if you produce more than you use at any given time any minute any day any month but if you over produce on an annual basis you're compensated at wholesale rates and so it doesn't pay to over produce and so that's the reason for being very careful with the baseline um we began from a site plan markup that had suggested locations and those have been analyzed
005and helioscope is the primary tool that was used uh to do the preliminary systems assessments these should be viewed as preliminary to the extent possible i've optimized the design that you're going to see but we can always tweak and and move systems around so at a high level the baseline utility data summary for the four facilities and the um seven meters that we are considering are ranked in order of production there are two um utility accounts at the high school that are significant and between the two of them the consumption is about uh one and a half million kilowatt hours a year um highland elementary school is next in line as a single facility um doolittle is next in line and norton is next in line the two smaller meters at the high school probably
006don't want um installing renewables on you could certainly look at site rearrangements of supply and meters and service accounts but for this assessment uh those two smaller meters the ball field and the small meter um at the high school have been disregarded uh in going through for each of the facilities um what i'm going to show you is the uh history baseline that we have available the one different is the high school regular account that we got later that's based on 12 monthly statements and analysis of those which is actually very good because it leads to a lot more insight into demand and how the tariffs are being applied for that particular meter um 2020 was an unusual year uh 2021 continues to be an unusual year and so what you'll see is the selected
007baselines include to the extent possible a full energy consumption year which typically is 2019. um 2018 was a little more difficult to analyze because you had a third-party supplier that did not pass through their billing requirements um through the digital download and so you'll see this as we go and there's some incompleteness in the data but we do have full annualized uh baselines for all the facilities beginning from the high school um this is the all electric meter and so this then begins to point out i mean the numbers are there and so you can see the variance from month to month and across the year and graphically it's a little easier to see the trends um can you see my cursor moving okay um so 2020 is an unusual year that there were curtailments
008in the operations of the facilities so it's not representative as a baseline utility use year um in general energy use was reported and is averaged across 2018 and 2019. it gives a good representative annualized it's important to get all four seasons or integral multiples of all four seasons so that you get a good representation of energy use across the year um but the cost of energy was not representative in 2018 um 2019 is more representative you can see that depending on how you use energy and what the tariff is you're paying about 15 and a half cents a kilowatt hour aggregate energy cost of that probably 11 or 12 senses related to energy the balance is related to demand or distribution and so that's important when we look at sizing systems and looking at benefits
009that you can expect that you'll be able to offset some amount of energy but the demand components are much more difficult to offset so i know somebody had raised a question about the possibility of using storage um these would be examples of where storage may be beneficial and right-sizing the storage may be very beneficial in leveling loads it's more apparent in looking at the billing for the regular meter this is the one that we had the full year or 12 full utility statements um what you see in particular in this representation two things the energy is fairly flat across the year so the use of the facility and this baseline period 2019 to 2020 and that's through march of 2020 so before any covered restrictions on the facilities kicked in um you've got a fairly
010uniform use of this particular meter at the high school but what you see is that the demand will vary across the year and where you peak will set what you pay for demand for the entire year so the cost basis for demand is this top gray line and you can see that demand will vary from 125 kilowatts to uh 225 and when you peek out that's what you pay for the balance of the year so this is where storage could be useful is in trying to balance this demand variance across the year um you don't want to put too much storage in it's expensive but right sizing the storage may be beneficial and it's something that as a next step we could take a look at um the locations that were identified for the high
011school and this is now looking at combining both of these meters um into the one and a half million kilowatt hours a year consumption it turns out that this area here is sufficient to meet 90 percent of the total facilities energy use for those two meters um a next step in in refinement um and depending on the path that you want to follow uh whether you want to pursue a power purchase agreement or you want to publish an rfp um would be then looking at costing this out in more detail um i have not put together budgetary cost estimates but you can expect that the cost of pv continues to decline similarly the cost of storage continues to decline um and you could expect to achieve favorable rates um so these were the areas within
012a fall sorry question michael yeah let him jump in with a question okay friend yeah thank you andrew uh you were talking about the demand i'm sorry no you were talking about the demand uh before do you uh do you have the interval did you get the interval demand data no we have not done that so that would be an extra refinement step so the last slide in the set or possible next week what we do have our monthly statement so that you may have this particular meter as shown here um what you'd expect to see are more excursions in interval data um um just a general note also these are the tariffs if i may just back on that last slide just really quick um which this one uh there yes so rich if
013i recall correctly your concern with regard to a backup generator at highland was for its use as a critical facility and that would be in august and since school wasn't in session although school wouldn't probably not be in session anyway in a situation like that hurricane or whatever school probably canceled we actually peaked out in august right there probably around 130 or 140 kw right um from this data this is for the high school um the so that's not actually that's 1920 that's not that's probably august 2019. well these are bills through march of 2020 yes okay so i'm off it's i'm off by one year i was wondering about the august 2020 because that's when we used highland school as a critical facility well this is the high school anyway i'm sorry i'm i'm
014mixing apples and oranges i apologize yeah that's that's okay but just i mean just just to expand on that point a little bit um and we we're good until 7 20. i understand so i just want to make sure we get through the material um okay um just just to amplify this a little bit if you look at the one peak and off peak demand whichever is higher um over the 12 month period prior to the current billing whatever month it is sets the demand charge on about half of the demand elements on the utility statement so in this case in october the demand peaked out at about 210 kilowatts that then sets the charge for the whole next 12 months so this is where being able to manage demand through storage um can be
015beneficial it gives you an entire year of benefits and demand costs um so and and the rules in connecticut with eversource are it's a 30 minute interval so whatever your highest demand is in any 30 minute period in the prior 12 months set your costs for the whole next year um okay so uh we had three areas identified at the high school it turned out only one was necessary we i could certainly go back and look at these other two but the focus in this assessment has been more on ground mount than on roof mounted systems um these are the meters again at the high school on the baseline the combination of these two is the target the target for production again to try to be conservative is to pick the correct baseline and then
016to take 90 percent of that baseline as the amount of energy you would want to produce um as an initial design point um and these are these are typical numbers for these types of systems um a photovoltaic photovoltaic module can produce up to about 1400 or 1450 kilowatt hours per kilowatt peak rated nameplate the target set here was 13.50 to be a little bit conservative and as an initial sizing point what you'll see in these systems that we're size is we actually exceed that um and so we could size the systems down a little bit again this is a it's an iterative approach and so this is a first pass through to say does this look acceptable and do you want to pursue this um so the 90 of these annual consumptions are these numbers
017and then the target pv capacity for the amount of equipment would be based on this as a production number just as a as a relative number um 1350 is a is a very good number um so combined it's something like a megawatt of photovoltaic capacity would be the nominal target for the high school um a perspective view google earth and then a 2d view straight down this is the area that we're focusing on and this is the array laid out that achieves those design targets it actually over produces because of the way that it's laid out um it actually produces more than that nominal design target so 1400 instead of 13.50 which means it could be downsized in the next design pass um to be something smaller than this so as a question to you
018um would this be a system you would want to pursue this this array is about 2.8 acres of photovoltaics it would produce 90 of the energy needs at the high school um with this this amount of equipment so is this is this suitable is this too big um is this a target you would want to look for i have a question catherine catherine so all those trees come down i mean we'd have to clear that hole um [Music] about three acres is that right yeah so yes the trees all the trees yes yes yes now what you could do well actually on the next slide what i put up um some alternatives that you could consider if you want to isolate from the road you could leave a band of trees there if you want
019to isolate from the plain field you can leave a band of trees there if you do that it would have some minor effect on production it wouldn't be terrible um if you want to isolate from the neighbors and i'm not sure what what is this area um you could leave a band of trees there as well um that would have no influence on performance the solar new group coming in from southeast to the northwest so then what our yearly savings from that would be about do you have any ideas tap your head sure i was asking then what would be our savings so i mean i would bounce that back michael i mean did what would be the meetings if we were to do the array and i guess that's well i'll let you answer
020the question how would we calculate that um right now you are paying i would estimate uh something like 12 cents a kilowatt hour for energy if you assume you would have no benefit to demand you would not offset that cost this system would produce 90 of what you need on site um so you could go back to it's about one and a half million kilowatt hours um you would not pay the utility or your third party supplier one and a half million kilowatt hours times uh 11 cents a kilowatt hour um and you would either own the equipment outright or you would pay a power purchase agreement that would then add cost for the energy for a system of this size a megawatt is a good size system you could expect a power purchase agreement
021of six or seven cents a kilowatt hour most likely maybe eight cents a kilowatt hour what about cost of clear cut sorry is that what about the cost to clear cut three acres is that baked into the six or seven kilowatt cents kilowatt i i that's beyond me i don't know okay so it would be something it would be something above it yeah i mean depending on what path you want to follow um you can either issue a request for proposal and have a developer do all these details we would provide this as a starting point they could then do the design development they would put all the costs specific to themselves to this that's one path um you have to allow the time to issue an rfp and then let it stay open and
022then review the results and award it and then do design development along the way we need to be conscious of the z-rec auction that will be coming up in april and this system could either bid into the large or you could be a two um actually i'm not sure you could either bid in probably enter the large uh zero um and that would then have a value of about 60 or a megawatt hour um for production for 15 years these are part of the value streams that would flow so from from my perspective sitting on the board ed i think that the critical numbers to me are produces a million and a half kilowatt hours per year just ballpark it right and i heard you say that we're paying call at 12 cents per kilowatt
023hour we get a ppa my personal feeling is 107 is i'd rather not engage in the tax equity issues here because we're a non-taxable entity rather just my preference would be to ppa to do it simply okay a ppa that's just me but a ppa could come in at 7 cents per kilowatt hour versus the current rate of 12 cents per kilowatt hour so we're saving about 5 cents per kilowatt hour on a million and a half kilowatt hours so that multiplies out to 75 000 a year right and just as a total ballpark as to what we could save i personally am not really interested in clear-cutting that i think that's i think that's a whole other and you know the other thing on top of it is um we've got the whole school
024modernization going on i think for me personally i i don't really want to i realize i know the the wreck officially ends this year by law the wreck being the funding incentive um but i really don't want to get involved in i i i'm not really favorable to doing this at this moment in time even though the incentives are about to disappear i think it's a really big thing that i would definitely want to hear a lot more feedback from people in town because i'd rather hear about i'd really rather hear about like norton doolittle and highland schools that are probably less likely to be touched in the in terms of the school modernization well tim i'm glad you started the conversation because uh i i could tell from catherine's body language as well i
025thought we were going to have a large argument with you i mean i i did for the 75 000 a year i would rather leave three acres untouched and as we go forward with school modernization we redo cheshire high school eventually integrating this type of an array into the construction versus clear cutting with little open space we still have in town yeah we're here thank you though michael i mean this is we're here to support whatever direction you want to go on these so um i mean if you want i could try to quantify what what this savings would be if you wanted to consider it further but we can move on to the other portal yeah i think we've just moved on to the other stuff yeah quite quite the baseline utility expenditures were
026about 225 between two major meters at the high school um i would estimate you'd save 30 to 40 percent of that so the 75 that'd be 75 000. yeah that's probably a good number okay all right um moving um total annual consumption is about 882 000 um kilowatt hours a year and you have a distribution that varies seasonally um we don't have demand data for this this was one of the digital downloads from the eversource portal but this could be taken to a next level of of detail i would estimate that um probably 40 to 45 percent of the cost here is related to demand the balance is related to energy use um the design target so the the this was a challenging design um based on this allocation of space um we can go
027back and look at roof mount systems if you would want to do that we could look at other areas on site um if i i didn't know where else to look um on site but we could certainly refine this this was the initial request was to look at there's an existing um roof i guess over the front door and to look at this as a location for an array um the target design this being the second highest energy consumer of the four facilities that we looked at was to try and reach about 588 kilowatt nameplate rating um or about 800 000 kilowatt hours production annual um that's the perspective view the 2d view so question for you are there other areas on site or adjacent that you'd want to consider for possible pvp tim you
028have a suggestion yeah the only thing what goes through my mind is basically like carports just cover some of the parking lot i mean if there's a reason you can't do it because of fire truck safety or something like that i get it but i see him around we have it right next door at the at the police station now and all right and this this this google earth photo is actually out of date yeah i know you have and we helped with that back um probably two years ago that's right yeah i mean there's surface parking in that circle that lower circle down um bottom of the image i mean that's not but that's just parent drop off over there that could be covered parking i'm sure um in this area here no and
029then here at the bottom of the screen yep right there um so on that one the clear cutting question are you interested in any ground now arrays um where there are currently trees i there i mean that to me is wetlands that backs up to the pond over there i think a lot of that uh improved playground area almost goes to the wetland boundary sorry okay um i mean to me to me i'm thinking like if you if you look at the the parking lot which is shaped like a d at the front of highland school if you know where that is it's shaped like a d you know anywhere there sort of on the southern part or the the vertical uh north-south parking lot basically running in parallel with the police station carports it
030looks to me like the shading wouldn't be that bad necessarily in all those areas so right all right so if you're interested we can we take another pass with that and do that um so are the roofs out of question here because of the hvac runs i i think it's i mean right now those roofs and rich could give you you know um some more commentary but those those roofs are not new okay so if we're going to do a solar array you'd want to re-roof and that that would add cost to the project which i think you could probably fold it in as part of the overall project cost you know the issue with roofs is always snow load as we you know go through new england winters you know we've had a couple
031of scares you'd want to avoid the really large spans that we have at highland over the calf and the gym in particular um you know that building was built in the 70s maybe not quite i'm not quite as confident in in some of those spans as we are on the buildings that were built in the 50s you know we were doing some value engineering already back in the 70s rich what do you think though you know roof mounted on highland well i mean two things the roof the roof has probably got about a year and a half left on its warranty um so we're you know we're at the sunset on that on the warranty um and then with the installation of the uh rooftop package units um there is quite a in as much
032as uh you know all the ductwork and things of that nature which were elected to run along the roof line interior of the building so i mean is it possible sure it's possible but i think as you stated uh i'd have to be you know a structural engineer would need to assess roof load you know and then uh you know how last but uh sections of the building would be uh you know would be uh strong enough to be able to handle that kind of load including you know what what code requires for snow and what have you right all right just so my two cents i think this probably you know roof for highland at least wrap wrap that discussion into you know the 10-year smc plan yeah when we get to highland because
033i mean walls could come down hyland's relatively new relatively but i that's my that's my take on it and the incentive i know the incentive uh you know is supposed to end sunset now but i think it's just a bigger our the smc is a much bigger question than this solar so yeah and again go back to your statement you know if you're going to renovate as new that that's the time to do it right i i think i think some carport so i just go back to we will into the future we will use these a lot these parcels we will have parking at the parcels and so a carport i think makes sense and can probably be done where it doesn't end up interfering with any serious construction that happens at any of
034the schools okay so in in general the next steps in actually going down through design development would be a structural assessment um even for a ground mount system um whether it's a carport canopy you still need to do the geotechnical assessment as well so there will be next steps in in structural review um as a normal course a normal step in in the process um so based based on the areas that were identified the first pass uh added two canopies over the sidewalk um our target was um second um our target because of the very high consumption was 588 kilowatt name plate pv system these two segments get you 72 kilowatts so it's it's 10 percent of the way not uh um it doesn't add a lot um i mean it's it's it it would
035account for about 10 or 12 percent of energy consumption it would help um but it it it takes a lot more area than that as a second step looking at the adjacent parking on the other side of the drive um that then brings you to a total of 193 kilowatt ac nameplate which is still only about a third of the way to full site energy use it's still useful um so the single canopy gets you about 10 of site and adding the additional carport on the other side gets you to a total of about one third about 34 of the total site energy use um these would be fairly straightforward the the the curvature of the road makes it a little more complicated to lay out the modules but it's certainly doable um and like
036you're saying we could look at other roof areas knowing that the roof replacement or roof um updating wood is is out probably two years in your future or any of the other paved areas if you want to look at um canopy type structures so any any thoughts on further refinement or other areas as a next i step if i could i would i would be interested in looking to see the the line of parking between the police station and the school property bringing extending that i guess you'd be going north on the site to see what that would add to the overall yeah okay i mean could you piggyback some of the geotech work that was already done at the police station for that let's try that say that again you piggyback off the geotech
037work that was done at the police station for that well you would probably have to drill you would have to do step it's a separate site you would have to study you would probably need to do that as a part of the permitting process anyway okay what i would suggest if you look at the uh on the i don't know if you have a slide here slide 21 from the the uh directly above there's uh a bump out two parking sections right directly behind the police station so as part of the project if what um what you were originally stating to put a canopy there that that's parallel to the police department that area area parking as well and extend that line versus putting it in the circle you know yeah that circle mike that's
038where all the buses go in and drop off so i think that if you put it on both sides you yeah it'd be if not not to mention the aesthetics yeah i mean okay the aesthetics will be terrible mike did you when you when you're when you're doing that section along it's the portico that that wraps around the front of the school are you intending that the panels would be on top of that portico uh you would probably replace the entire structure yeah okay that's what that's what i was thinking that would make sense actually yeah i mean you have to account for um it's not just the downward weight of the modules which is going to be more than than a roof by itself but there's going to be an upward um load as
039well yeah a lifting load that's not going to be inexpensive um no yeah in a row i'd say 20 30 premium to do ground melt or cannabis versus or flat roof roof mount systems um now depending on the path you wanted to follow that could move you from a ppa a power purchase agreement rate of um well these these are smaller systems so the rates are going to be higher but it would move you from a ground from a roof mounted flat roof system ppa typical would be 8 to 10 cents a kilowatt hour um to something maybe more like 12. you'd have to look at the the the big picture um whether the whole thing makes sense so just one point in general like what's going through my mind on where to place them
040would probably be sidewalks i i think it has a certain benefit you know when it's raining out now it's sunny out people want to walk in the sun but when it's raining out it's to me at least it's a little bit more annoying like oh i'm getting soaked covered walking covered parking covered walking i think could be nice just getting in and out of your car airport there's a certain benefit to that right if it is raining you're getting out and the rain the snow is not getting in your car while you're trying to organize yourself or get situated right um the one other feature you often see with these types of carport canopies is electric vehicle charging stations so they they integrate well um they're good things to have and you could typically assign
041premium parking um preferential parking near closer to the front door with a charging station so something else maybe to consider um i mean that in and of itself doesn't save you any money but but it's a nice feature yeah i mean i in terms of like the global energy transition we're undertaking i would love to see those offered as adders if we do an rfp just to have that included as an option okay okay sorry making notes all right so adding the second one then takes you to something like 34 percent um i can go back and i can look at these additional areas that you've identified um the straight runs are are simpler to implement so i can look at space along this section here the one thing uh the one thing i'd like
042to add is uh that's not shown in these satellite photos is the uh circle the week's road circle what a call is uh was clear last summer so that is our in the center here week's road yeah it's the drive the parent drop-off circle okay like so that would be right now it's clear-cut yeah i think you should add that area too michael okay all right i mean rich that buses don't use that crack that was that's just parent drop off over there that's correct yes the intent of the clear cut was the phase one approach to potentially reconfigure that area for additional parking because highland highland is you know highland is we don't have enough parking there right now so that's why do you see you're gonna you're just gonna level that and turn
043it all into parking where that that the circle is now yeah to to some degree yeah it would be re it would be reconfigured to allow for more parking um that's why i mean it's more it's more attractive whatever whatever option we select or whatever option the board selects you know that we also you know additional parking in that and that that to the solution would help matters significantly then is that in our 2.6 uh budget coming up or in the year no it isn't right rich nah i think uh if it were it was uh moved to the right yeah no it's not there okay so do you want me to look at a potential ground mount system here or a parking canopy type structure yeah it wouldn't might i mean it's up to
044the board it wouldn't hurt i mean my my thing is with what you're saying though is that if that's going to be turned into i was a highland parent i know the parking needs there and if that's going to be turned into a major surface parking lot which that school desperately needs i'd hate to encumber it with a solar array and the existing layout all right i mean roughly um that would add another 70 or 80 kilowatts roughly um so i mean it's still it contributes to the site energy use but it's it's not huge okay leave it on i don't know how if tim and catherine have another opinion but i mean it's easy enough to do a layover okay so i can go ahead and do that that's fine um okay uh doodle
045catherine do you want to add something no okay basically energy usa too little is about um 300 000 kilowatt hours a year the approximate the location that we're looking at would be a canopy carport along the road here uh the target sizing is about 200 kilowatts ac nameplate and based on the size the area available that's achievable so you could in principle with a system of this size achieved 90 percent uh and 90 was said as a conservative target um 90 of the facilities energy use through an array of this size um this may be a bit wide elements of that could be relocated um to the adjacent parking or this could be downsized but the the one is that you can achieve pretty much all of your energy needs um not demand but energy
046needs through this single structure now that i think is good yeah that one now that now we're talking michael now we're talking all right and that's the one yeah i mean and that would offer coverage for those cars i mean i don't see i mean rich from an operations standpoint yeah i'm uh i'm not a big fan of carports i'll tell you that right off the bat um i think ultimately like the police department uh project was a good example of uh people thinking that that was gonna be a complete uh covered enclosure which it really wasn't so really the panels i had the roofing structure and there's gaps between the panels so when it's raining or snowing it's not an entirely weatherproof structure i would think that if we do a car porch type
047of structure for here then we would not follow that that design protocol um in this particular case uh this is another high traffic area um i would think that um the utilization of a ground mount system along oak avenue along that property line if you slid that over and rotated it to towards oak avenue that that that area is really not utilized so we would we would save the ball field we would have enough clearance for the outfield and be able to do a fenced in ground mount system right there along oak avenue i think it would be more cost effective than having to construct a canopy um so maybe if you could mark up this slide and send it back to me yeah but but roughly what which what area are we talking about
048running parallel to where you where the array is now right so oak avenue looking at slide 25 oak avenue is uh north south it's marked i think it's marked okay there's a fence line there right now all right so in this area here uh i'm looking at this i i can't see because i'm looking at your presentation on a phone a north south array a north south array running parallel to the north south road right and that would be like that would be in the right being the right uh inclination as well all right so you could this is um i think it was about 15 000 yeah 15 000 square feet um that gets you to the 90 energy use it would be about that same amount of area but distributed um it would
049actually be bigger um because the modules would be further apart but i could do a layout you might have a little bit more flexibility there certainly it would be less in the way of cost tim thanks andrew yeah i'm just wondering michael uh whether it was oak forget about oak for one second i'm just wondering in general why you would use the north south entrance of doolittle rather than the east-west entrance of doolittle unless you're only looking at these pictures and you're not clear that the there is there's an east-west parking lot sort of if you took that blue line use the um southeast corner as the fulcrum and rotate it down there's a parking lot that actually has an entrance exit all the way to that north-south road you can see the sidewalk in
050the visual and i'm just curious why you would not suggest an array over that sidewalk that east-west sidewalk because presumably if it's facing south it will produce more kilowatt hours per panel thus reducing the cost per kilowatt hour so i'm just and then i'm wondering if you could hit the 90 and kind of use that space along with the space that rich proposed and rich i'm not talking necessarily about a carport i believe that uh that sidewalk you know that's adjacent to the parking but you could just put something right over that sidewalk there yeah you wouldn't have a lot of area though you're talking about this sidewalk yes yes all right is that a bad idea yeah i mean i think i think i know what you're saying tim i think the only thing
051that would prevent that east west uh a rag would be the tree line to the south you'd have to assess i'll assess the height of that tree absolutely yeah how tall do you think i'm going to say uh 50 60 feet yeah i think there's standard maples that have been there a while all right all right but at this point the alternative would be in this area here in clear cutting no no he's saying parallel to the blue line mike so of the corner of cornwall and oak avenue so in the outfield of that ball field is what rich was saying before right along oak avenue along right field okay these are very easy layouts to do and to see how big they need to be and um what they are how they'll perform if
052somebody could take this and mark it up and send it back just so i'm clear on where they go okay all right um so this one this one was at 90 um norton uh what is the lowest of the energy consumers it's it's comparable um to doolittle it's in in the same ballpark 285 000 kilowatt hours a year um there is a quite a seasonal variation um even excluding the covet variants in um and so this in combination potentially with some limited amount of storage could be an interesting alternative um the issue was is so this these were the two marked out spaces that were to be considered that's the perspective and the 2d view the target was 190 kilowatt ac name plate um taking this in two steps the first assuming this is a
053ground mount system in what looks like a paved area um this by itself will is about a 72 kilowatt ac name plate and then looking at the roof adjacent to it that was also marked as a possible candidate um that adds that that gets up to a total of 96 kilowatt ac nameplate the reason that the roof does not add a lot um is that there's a mechanical equipment and drains and setbacks around the perimeter that you have to observe um and so you don't get as effective space juice out of the roof as you do out of the ground um the combination of the two the single ground mount can get you to about 12 percent of site electrical energy and adding that one roof section gets you to 17 of say electrical energy
054um other alternatives you know like any of these other sites if you wanted to look at ground mount parking structures canopies other areas um i only extended this far on the ground now that ground now could go further up i don't know where the property boundary lines are so those are all other alternatives so i'm wondering for me personally similar to the high school i'm not really that interested in doing any clear cutting for this but what what i'm wondering about is and we're undergoing the school modernization it's possible that norton got expanded got changed but i i'm just speculating that if anything that expansion would probably be heading out toward the back rather than out toward the front and if if if that is the case then i'm just wondering about basically like the
055front parking lots what's what's possible there um so where are we here yeah yeah um that's that's a possible as well and the utility entrance is here so it was over toward on the west side of the parking lot they'd face east so i don't think the shading would necessarily be that big of a problem for that okay that is off of north brook brookstown yes okay okay these preliminary evaluations are easy enough to grow um so we can we could quantify you know lay them out you could get an idea what it would look like and what it would produce okay um this area here i interpret it as being um paved but it was marked as available so there would not be clear cutting associated with uh is that still a viable space
056this one here i knew nothing about that area back there i've never been back there tim ben no yeah i mean i know it it's just my only thing goes through my mind is the smc i mean something could happen at norton and i don't want to yeah i don't want to create a you know do a structure now that gets torn down in two years and that that's what are you kidding me that's just not going to happen that soon right not right no you know what you know what i'm saying the point the point i mean these are 20 a ppa which is what we would probably do is a 20-year contract okay the smc is looking at a 10-year window so it just they they can flick i mean but i just
057don't think i don't foresee anything happening in the front parking lot i don't see new construction going there because we still need parking no but tim i mean there's been discussion about how norton is one of our larger properties and has a great development potential in the rear of the parcel yeah yeah um so if the rear is developed let's just say just being crazy into a new elementary school you never know what that front is going to turn into if you lose field space in the back well i guess so but there's i mean they still you need parking for teachers and there's it's it's basically sidewalks with very little uh green space other than the playground there's really there's really not much there it's not right a little bit but not much what
058is this weight space here i was curious oh okay of some sort all right so you want me to take a look at a layout here i guess so but i have a question if we can't get to something close to 90 percent oh okay that's right go ahead go ahead i'll check i'm just wondering is there is there it does not make sense if we can't get a bigger no um anything you anything you do will save you money most likely i mean in general the larger the systems the lower the relative cost so if you were interested in that megawatt system at the high school it would have a very very economical implementation because of the scale you get economies of scale as the systems get smaller they get relatively more expensive cost
059per kilowatt to install the systems and 90 is as a limit to make sure you don't over produce so if you make more energy than you use on an annual basis you lose basically if you're paying somebody seven cents a kilowatt hour and the utility compensates you at three cents you lose yeah and so that that's the purpose of that ninety percent okay all righty okay so just some overall conclusions possible next steps so um i'm assuming the clear cutting at the high school is out okay yes okay um do you want to consider any other areas at the high school can i ask the committee a question why is the is the uh reluctance to clear cut due to environmental concern or cost love of trees okay for me it's probably combination of cost
060and environment it's more environmental yeah just a rough order of magnitude costs to clear and grub an acre of land is roughly between six and eight thousand dollars so okay just so you have that really early how was that is that property sloped is it relatively flat for the high school yeah down towards the footprint that footprint wouldn't be that big because of uh the changes in uh an elevation you know it would it would it would be a reduced it would be a reduced footprint okay so it's environmental for me can't be replanted just as a reminder well not in that spot though if you're putting solar panels wow you know that i mean i'm going to add one thing to kind of rich's point um i mean what's amazing is in that that
061area of land you can't produce enough energy to supply 90 of the high school and you know trees aside that is not an area that is being used or contemplated for use it's close to the to the linear trail and all that but you know that's why it was identified as as a possibility so i'm not challenging what the what the committee's decision is but you know it is pretty remarkable that it's there and available and you could produce quite a bit of energy and then from that elevation you wouldn't even it wouldn't even be visible from the linear trail okay so i mean i could be outvoted i don't you know it sounds like the committee was pretty unanimous on on you know not not doing anything the benefit of it is about 75
062000 a year [Music] yeah you have to weigh it i would just be interested to see what that development cost is i mean you're not going to get somebody to build that i mean who's going to pay for the site clearing the leveling i mean you can't just go out there and put it on a slope you'd have to level all that property and then tie it back from there into the high school power grid that's all that's not baked into the cost i mean it's a 20-year contract it's going to cost i don't know it might be you know 3 million for the epc the um the procurement i forget what it's called um it could be yeah i mean the the site at the at the dump i think solar city was three
063million dollars for one megawatt there there would be more clearing involved here but it would still like rich was saying it would be relatively small next to the three million dollar cost for the hardware and the labor of installing it i don't know that's i think that's correct i i just my personal feeling is the environmental i just i don't really i clear clear cutting it's not something i personally want i also think that uh i suspect that i don't know i i yeah i get it i understand the economics i appreciate the economics of it but environmentally i'm not really i'm not really prepared to go there at this moment in time okay i'd like to see something happen especially when you know modernization is saying eventually we're gonna have a brand new or
064renovated as new high school and we could cover the entire roof as designed with solar panels and generate ninety percent of the energy needs for the school and not all that woods right um the numbers were um 128 000 square feet would get you to that 90 percent based on current energy use so just just i mean that that's that's a valuable piece that comes out of this preliminary sizing how big does it need to be this is fairly optimal arrangement as well so this this this the way that this was laid out i mean you do this if you if you have a new high school um yes okay so um all right so let's see i gotta jump off of this meeting so it can if you give me three minutes let me
065just go through let's let's agree to what what you'd like to do next um do little with that single canopy can also get to 90 essentially you can get to zero net energy um within margins so that you don't over produce at doolittle as well um and that was the one either rearranging that single straight canopy um or breaking in into a couple of other pieces uh the other two facilities will get you partial coverage um and the other thing that there was a question on uh i think tim was from you was the use of storage and so based on being able to get rate 27 or 837 interval data from the utility uh we would need permission from you to have them give us that data we could look at what an optimal
066storage sizing would be to try and address demand and demand response at these facilities and so these are all possible next steps um in addition to any of these other individual areas at the facilities that we've talked about as assessing so other other requests or other next steps that you're interested in so it sounds like um some further explanation exploration at highland and doolittle are are the next steps and the storage i mean if there's any you know any type of authorization you need you know michael we would provide that rich and i all right okay so we wanted to refine the analysis at highland and google if we could do this if somebody can mark up this slide set and just send it back and i'll take a look at these additional areas yeah
067rich and i'll take ownership of that michael okay excellent all right go ahead i'm sorry i know anybody else have anything cause i know catherine has to go yeah i just the so we i just want to take in the context here which is the we expect that eversource will open up the rfp in april so we'll be moving down a path keeping that in mind yeah and that could be done independently so just very quickly um there are two or three potential paths you could follow if you wanted to own this equipment which i don't think you do you could put at an rfp for a qualified developer um go through all the normal musical procurement steps um and get a developer that would do full design development implement it and then you would
068arrange financing or they would offer it as a power purchase agreement um i don't know if you have looked at options through the green bank but that's a similar parallel path where they would offer a power purchase agreement they have partner developers that would then pick up the details of the design development and they are capable of offering fairly attractive power purchase agreement rates uh we're working with with them on another town right now that their rates are very very attractive um so that that that's another one so outright ownership of the equipment an rfp that would lead to a ppa or possible contact with the green bank if you haven't already done that administratively is the green bank the easiest route um they were a lot auction um they would handle finding a partner
069developer they consider a range of different developers and so they qualify their developer partners um they have other partners that help do the analysis and the pre-development um so that would probably take a lot of the load off as far as going forward probably the most strenuous would be if you did an rfp and intended to own the systems outright right that's the other end of the spectrum so i i guess my my concern is just moving forward expeditiously you know hitting those like the april time frame if we can keeping you know administratively minimizing uh vin's time put on this and then the last point is for people who are watching at home the green bank is this basically it's a state agency it's a quasi-quasi private entity yes yeah so i mean they're
070they're independent and they go out and they prevent the vendors the installers so i think that's what you're saying michael use the state agency to yeah right and i have seen i've been interacting with them a bit and i have seen they have offered ppa rates in the five six uh well six cents a kilowatt hour type of range it again it depends on the specifics of the uh of the systems ground mounts and canopies are more expensive than roof mount systems um one one note on the z-rec auction um the auction opens in april most likely closes in june um awards would happen probably in a july time frame and if you are selected for an award there's a performance assurance payment that's due within 10 business days it's not an onerous performance assurance
071payment so as as far as um reserving the ability to get xerax bidding into the auction there is enough time to work it um and then the the connection date can be i think up to 18 months out from the award so there is time to work it it's not like an april cut off is there anything that we would need to do tonight or the full board venue was anything the full board would need to do um in the you know for next steps i would say send me the markups on this on the site let's do one more pass on site evaluations we'll talk again um you can think about whether clear cutting at the high school is definitely out or maybe out um and i'd say at a next discussion [Music] we
072can look at specific paths forward whether it's an rfp or the green bank um or or whatever okay yeah so you don't need any committee action tonight i think you know there's consensus on what to do next you know to to try and narrow down to what you know what the desired path is right i'd say this was more for information and update on how how big things can be what what works what doesn't work okay michael how much time do you need until you can come back to us with the um requests from tonight's meeting where did you meet again um we don't have another meeting in the books right now so um you're gonna be ready based on where we are two weeks would be sufficient to do these next refinements and talk
073about what you'd like to do next okay we could set a meeting out in a couple weeks okay okay anybody else have anything i do not here i know i have a all right thank you michael thank you rich thank you michael chicken thanks everybody see tonight in a bit okay