The town has been informed by the Commonwealth's Attorney General that the municipal wind turbine bylaw passed at the June 2010 Town Meeting has been approved. The town had been waiting for this approval before proceeding and spending funds on the project. The Select Board will discuss next steps at our September 27th meeting.
Those steps may include contracting with a design firm to design the installation.
The discussion may take place in executive sessions until the terms of the contract are worked out or may take place in open session. That has not been resolved at this date.
Something that must be considered as the wind turbine project goes forward is how the entire project will be structured. I favor establishing an enterprise that would provide services to town departments (i.e. electrical energy). This enterprise would be responsible for the notes on the project and would have retained earnings to be used for routine maintenance and any unscheduled maintenance that might occur. Just to put some numbers to the idea, the following may be more or less but are in the ball park. For instance, let us say that the wind turbines are erected and the notes require a $900K payment on the borrowing used to pay for the installation. The routine maintenance yearly cost might be $150K. The turbines output could be worth $1.7 million. The Select Board has indicated that $500,000 be set aside from the net proceeds for the wind turbines to pay ...
... for any unscheduled maintenance and their eventual removal. At least 10% of the yearly net proceeds must be set aside for this purpose. In this example, that would be about $65,000 for the year. That leaves around $585K. That amount would be distributed among the town departments to reduce their electric bills.
That is how I would like to see the project financed and run. What do you think?
Friday, September 17, 2010
Wind turbine bylaw approved by Attorney General
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2 comments:
What happens to the Town's investment if a net metering agreement is not reached with a utility company? Will the Town have a contract in place at the before the turbines are purchased? I am of the opinion that only a small % ( at one time it was 2%) of net metering buyback from the utility company is available. If the Town cannot guarentee a utility buy of KW's from the turbines, then I for one would want another Town member vote to see who wants to take such a significant $$$$ risk! What do you say Town voting members???
Why isn't the Blog manager responding to the question about net metering? It is paramount that a Town turbine rep discuss the costs to the Town for these turbines if the revenue expected from NSTAR for buying KW's is not a guarentee!
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