Municipal Solar?

Shouldn’t Deerfield do the same?

How might a community solar project work in Deerfield?

The Town of Deerfield’s expenses are rising and budgets keep getting voted down.  Anytime money can be saved it relieves some of this pressure.  Other towns are saving money and lowering taxes by installing solar, shouldn’t we do that too?

Many other towns are FINANCING MUNICIPAL SOLAR with little or no cost to the town saving significant money in the process.   This is done with a power purchase agreement.  A group of investors fund a solar project and take the tax credits,  depreciation and  electric supplier.  The town in turn purchases electricity at a discount, and after the investors have gotten their above benefits, the town has the option to purchase the array at a bargain price and get free electricity for 30 to 50 years thereafter.

The initial thought of the energy committee, the first logical place  to install solar a solar project was on the roof of the GBW building.  With that in mind, I got several proposals for a rooftop system.  It turns out the roof will not support a solar array.  We are currently exploring sites for a PV array.  This is one of the proposals I got for a PV system that would have gone on the roof of the GBW building.  It is shown as a model which could be installed elsewhere.

This array would produced 58% of ALL OF ALL OF DEERFIELD’S ELECTRICITY that is supplied by Eversource (The transfer station and the school are both in Co-op Territory) at 13 cents a kW/hr.  If, after 6 years the town chose to buy the array for $150,000.  The system would pay for itself in just under 7 years with a projected return on investment of 14% for the town of Deerfield.