Energy committee works on energy efficiency

The Charlotte Energy and Climate Action Committee is in a race against time and the whims of a federal government hostile to renewable energy to get advancements to the town’s solar energy system before financial incentives go away.

The committee, which has changed its name from the Charlotte Energy Committee to broaden its focus, is working to get approval for additional solar panels beyond those already on the town garage before deadlines that would end incentives that make solar energy more affordable.

There are a number of hurdles the energy committee needs to clear before a Dec. 25 deadline when these incentives are set to go away. One incentive would take 30 percent off the cost of adding the additional solar capacity to the town’s system.

Big things that need to happen in order to make the Dec. 25 deadline are getting selectboard approval to hold a town vote on the project, holding that vote and, if approved by voters, starting construction on the project.

As part of that effort, Jim Hodson of the Charlotte Energy and Climate Action Committee and Tim Post, an energy consultant with GreenEdge Energy Solutions, have held two presentations on the town energy modernization project at the library. Hodson said he’s heard the project will be on the agenda for the selectboard’s upcoming meeting this Monday, July 28. Besides an update about where the project is now, he expects there will be a discussion about what next steps should be taken to get news about the proposal out to residents.

The proposal is to add more solar panels to the town’s fledgling solar energy system that, as of now, are only located on the new town garage.

The goal is to produce all of the electricity needs of the garage, the town hall, the library, the senior center and the fire and rescue department by solar energy. Currently, a large portion of the electricity used in these building is being generated by the panels on the garage, but the proponents would like for it all to be. They want the bill for electricity for town buildings to be zero.

According to their PowerPoint presentation, it would take an investment of about $400,000 to accommodate all of these buildings’ electric power needs for the next 25 years, saving the town $563,000 over those two and a half decades while also eliminating 2.3 million pounds of CO2 being added to the atmosphere by fossil fuels.

Post compared that amount of carbon dioxide to releasing more than 35 million balloons filled with CO2 over Charlotte.

He said they have identified five locations where additional solar panels could be added with a minimum of hassle and cost — the town garage, the senior center, the fire station and the town hall. They are waiting to make a finalized proposal until they have a firm assessment of where to add solar panels in order to increase the capacity by 60-80,000 kilowatt hours a year.

In the first year of the existing solar panels’ operation, they produced almost 122,000 kilowatts of electricity, and this was in a year electrical production was almost flat for the month of February because the panels were covered by snow. All of the town buildings used almost 157,000 kilowatts during that time, so it would take just over 35,000 kilowatts to make up the difference.

However, the project proposes increasing the amount of kilowatt hours per year more than this difference because the plan is to install energy-efficient heat pumps, replacing aging furnaces and air conditioners, so the electricity used would go up but the use of fossil fuels like oil would be eliminated.

Post was hired as a consultant as part of a three-phase project with each phase contingent upon selectboard approval before the next begins. The selectboard approved the first phase, or milestone, and the fee for that was paid by a grant the energy committee received.

Initially, Post studied 12 possible sites for adding more solar panels. Now, the project has been trimmed to five possible sites as it enters milestone two. The selectboard has indicated the project should continue. The town will not owe any money for the project until it gets to milestone three, when a contractor is chosen and construction starts.

During milestone two, requests for proposals have been issued to get bids on installing additional solar panels at some configuration of the five sites arrived at during milestone one. Solar panels would not be installed at every one of the five sites, but at some configuration of those sites that should produce the amount of electricity that is wanted.

There is urgency to this effort, Post said, because of changes in the regulatory environment on both the state and national level.

“We have lost quite a bit of some of our most amazing Vermont advantages for going solar,” Post said. “We’re at a point now where a very, very significant jump down in value is going to happen on the solar side over the next six months.”

Nonetheless, he said, Vermont and Massachusetts still have probably the most advantageous net metering benefits in the United States.

“We’re still at a pretty good spot right now, so it’s sort of like use it or lose it time,” he said.

Benefits for adding solar panels to buildings have been going down over the last 10-12 years, he said. More reductions in advantages for going solar are expected as a result of the adjustments the so-called Big Beautiful Bill make to the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, eliminating many unobligated funds. This could include $115,000 a year for five years that had been allocated to Charlotte for this solar project.

One of the incentives that has gone away, or at least diminished, is the ability to build up credits for excess energy that a solar array creates over what a building uses. Over the last decade, the ability to store up credits for unused electricity has gone down.

In the old days before meters were digital, you could actually see a meter spin backward when a solar array was producing more power than a building was using, Post said, and users could store up credits. Now, credits from excess electrical production have to be used within a year. After that they go away, becoming electricity the power companies can sell without any compensation.

So, the energy committee is only proposing producing enough electricity to meet the needs of the town buildings.

The group is anxious to get selectboard approval on holding a vote and then voter approval on the project because, in order to qualify for net-metering incentives, work on the project will need to begin before Dec. 25.

Hodson said the current selectboard has been supportive of the project and understands the time constraints and the need to move it along.

Besides increasing the amount of electricity being created by solar panels, the proposed project calls for switching town buildings from oil to heat pumps.

“Heat pumps are sort of the wave of the future here in the United States. They’re the wave of the past everywhere else,” Post said. “Heat pumps have been popular in Europe and Asia for over 20 years. The technology is very, very, very mature, and people understand that the efficiency of heat pumps is absolutely unquestioned at this point. The data is astounding.”

Heating with heat pumps is 60-70 percent more efficient than fossil fuels, and the same equipment takes care of both heating and cooling.

Reductions in the ability to take advantage of group net metering is another reason the committee and supporters of the project are rushed. The town garage solar panels were installed just before this ability became more restricted. Now, the policy has changed so that only buildings next to or across the street from a solar array can be net metered. The town garage was grandfathered in just before this restriction went into place.

The switch to more solar energy generation is a good long-term investment, Post argued, saying it is a myth that solar panels only last 20-25 years. Panels degrade at less than half a percent per year. After 25 years, a solar array should just have dropped to 90 percent of its original capacity. After 50 years, it should have dropped to 80 percent of its original capacity.

“If you have a system that’s making, let’s say, 25,000 kilowatt hours a year, after 25 years, it’s still going to make around 22,000 kilowatt hours a year,” Post said. “So, solar is a great investment.”

The current focus has been narrowed down to studying the feasibility of adding roof panels on the senior center and the fire and rescue building and ground-mounted sun-tracking solar arrays behind the fire and rescue building and the town hall.

Acknowledging that making the deadline to qualify for having 30 percent of the project paid for is going to be difficult, Hodson said, “We can try. And if we don’t make it, we don’t make it. But at least we can try.”