Great Barrington — The town and Berkshire Hills Regional School District are about to sign off on a solar power purchasing agreement that will save thousands of dollars in yearly electricity costs by generating power from a solar array to be constructed on the old Rising Paper mill property off Park Street in Housatonic.
The Housatonic Solar Project will also add the former brownfield to the tax rolls, among other benefits.
Town Manager Jennifer Tabakin said she is “pleased” to support the “generation of locally produced solar electricity,” particularly on a former brownfield site. She said the project, brainchild of solar developer Kirt Mayland of Reservoir Road Holdings, LLC, could save the town approximately $70,000 to $80,000 per year, and generate, “if approved,” $70,000 in new property tax revenues, which, over the 20-year period of the agreement, may amount to “close to $2 million.”
Tabakin cautioned, however, that given changing electricity rates, all of this could “change over time.”
The Berkshire Hills School Committee last week (January 15) voted unanimously to partner with the town to sign the solar net metering credit agreement with Reservoir Road. Both the town and school district spend close to $300,000 on electricity, and both will receive the same 21 percent discount rate.
The discount will give Berkshire Hills an annual savings of between $70,000 and $90,000, “depending on how National Grid moves their rates around,” said Mayland at last week’s school committee meeting, where he explained how the net metering process works. The system, Mayland said, is unique to Massachusetts, which makes the decision about how to value the credits. In most states, he said, “I put power on their lines, they pay me for it.” In the Commonwealth, he said, he pumps electricity into the grid, and then puts “credits on off-takers’ bills.” The state encourages developers to find public entities for these agreements, he said; the solar company gets a better rate, which in turn, gives public entities a better rate.
The district, he said, uses roughly 2.1 million kilowatt hours — the same as town’s public building usage — and the array will generate about 3.7 to 3.8 million kilowatt hours. Half the credits for those hours will go to the school and the other half to the town. The district will receive about 1.9 million net metering credits per year, Mayland said, and since each credit is worth roughly 4.5 cents, that translates to a savings of about $80,000 per year.
And without so much as a little paper shuffling from district. Berkshire Hills, Mayland added, does not have to do anything except handle monthly invoices. “You will literally see a dollar amount on your bill,” he said to the school committee.
Another perk is for Berkshire Hills’ students themselves, who Mayland said, could visit the site and have a lesson in renewables.
It all seems too good to be true, and committee member Frederick Clark lightly grilled Mayland on this point. “By entering into this agreement, are we giving up any rights, or anything?” he asked. But Mayland, who said he had several other school district and town projects under his belt, explained the system, and noted Tabakin had vetted the 21 percent discount, and found it to be a “good rate.”
The agreements had also been scoured by the town’s counsel, according to Superintendent Peter Dillon.
And Berkshire Hills Facilities Director Steven Soule vouched for Mayland, his project and discount rate, saying this was a “win win,” and that the district could still purchase power at discounted rates from the “lowest bidder.” Currently, the district purchases from the Lower Pioneer Valley Education Cooperative at a rate “significantly lower” than what National Grid offers.
Mayland said his company specializes in “finding environmentally degraded sites” for solar development, and said the state also provides “incentives” for doing so. He recently developed an old 21-acre sand pit in Sheffield for Altus Power; 4,250 solar panels sit on a small portion of the site, said Altus’ Alana Chain. Mayland said all permitting is in place, along with his contract with Neenah Paper, which in 2013 acquired the Rising Paper mill property off Park Street, “remediated and cleaned” it.
“The nice thing about this site is that it’s pretty invisible…closer to the river than the road,” he said. His company will spend roughly $6 million to build the ground-mounted system of arrays on 12 acres of the 72-acre site, on which is “lots of conservation land and some going into a permanent conservation restriction,” that will be held by the Berkshire Natural Resources Council (BNRC). Reservoir Road’s plan is to add a fishing trail along the river, two parking lots along Division Street for a walking trail, and the Housatonic Valley Association HVA is considering a kayak launch for public use.
Also, Reservoir Holdings is buying the old overgrown ball field on Park Street and giving it to BNRC, which, Mayland said, might serve as a nice trailhead for the Flag Rock trails across the street. BNRC’s Director of Land Conservation Narain Schroeder said that the plan so far was for BNRC to own the parcel next year, “but there is no formal contract in place.”
Mayland said this was his favorite project, because, he wrote in an email, “…the community is getting clean energy, $230,000 [annually] in money that was not there before, a LOT of conservation land, and public access for fishing and kayaking on the river.”
