Editor’s note: This article is by Tommy Gardner of the Stowe Reporter, in which it was first published April 16, 2015.
[S]towe Electric Department wants to spend $3.5 million on a 1-megawatt solar panel array in the town’s Nebraska Valley gravel pit.
The project would get a jump on a legislative proposal to require utilities to produce much more of their own electricity in the next two decades.
The Stowe Selectboard unanimously approved asking voters to approve the solar project, but the May 14 bond vote warned Monday night had to be scrapped because there wasn’t enough documentation.
Time is of the essence for Stowe Electric to pursue a zero-interest bond to finance the solar array, but there’s still time to set up the vote. The select board can warn the bond vote at its meeting April 27, or at a special meeting.
The lack of documentation? “That’s the risk of an expedited process,” Town Manager Charles Safford said Wednesday. “It’s better to do it right, get the i’s dotted and t’s crossed, than get something out there that can’t be legally pursued.”
If voters approve the bond, the utility would likely lease 6 acres of the reclaimed portion of the gravel pit for 30 years, the expected life span of the 1-megawatt solar project.
According to the Solar Energy Industries Association, on average, one megawatt of solar photovoltaics would fully power 164 American homes. Stowe Electric has 4,000 customers.
Matthew Rutherford, Stowe Electric’s manager of regulatory compliance, said the plan is to get ahead of a Vermont House bill that seems likely to pass this legislative session. The program would require Vermont’s utilities to meet two new renewable-energy standards by the year 2032.
First, utilities would need to get 75 percent of their energy from renewable sources, such as solar, wind, hydro and cow power. Stowe is now at 55 percent.
Second, 10 percent of the portfolio would have to come from “community-scale distributed generation,” from projects that pump out, at the most, 5 megawatts of power.
What’s being called the RESET program also comes with an option to pay a “compliance” fee of 6 cents per kilowatt-hour per year. According to the electric department’s proposal, that would equal about $11.5 million in compliance payments over the next 30 years if the utility does nothing.
On the other hand, just the 1-megawatt solar facility could offset that by almost $3 million over that same period.
The solar facility would put Stowe about a quarter of the way toward meeting the RESET standard, and the utility could find other ways over the next 17 years to get to that 10 percent mark, through more of its own projects or buying power from someone else’s small-scale generator.
“This is the low-hanging fruit,” Rutherford said of the town solar plan.
If voters approve the bond, Stowe Electric Department will seek a zero-interest loan from the Vermont Economic Development Authority. Kevin Weishaar, the utility’s controller, is confident Stowe will get the loan, even though the authority just recently announced its zero-interest Clean Renewable Energy Bonds, and the deadline for applying for them is June 3.
In fact, his confidence comes partly because of that quick turnaround. Stowe Electric has already been looking for a place to build an alternative energy generator.
Stowe Electric visited three other potential town-owned properties for a solar array; each had its own problems. The Kirshner property on Route 100 is a popular deer hunting spot; the town’s stump dump faces north and is rocky; the former highway garage is in the floodplain.
“This was the fourth place that was brought to us, and it just works,” Ellen Burt, Stowe Electric’s general manager, told the select board Monday.
Not for everyone
It doesn’t work for everyone, though. Liz Soper lives on Beech Hill Road, which was once the entry road to the gravel pit. When the pit was used up, the land was filled back in and a new entrance built farther into the remote Nebraska Valley.
Soper said that generally, as a schoolteacher, she is a champion of solar power, and even favored putting solar panels in a more visible spot, such as the Mayo Fields.
But she said she and her neighbors have “been burned left and right” by the town in the past when it came to the gravel pit, and she would just as soon see it remain a reclaimed field.
Now the electric department “wants to put it in the slum of Stowe, where the working people live,” Soper said.
Chad Farrell, the principal at Encore Redevelopment, is taking the lead for designing the proposed solar project. He said it would be fairly unobtrusive, with low-profile structures about 8 or 9 feet tall at their highest point, with no moving parts. The whole 1-megawatt project would take about two months to build, followed by twice-a-year visits by a technician in a pickup truck.
“It’s remarkable how quickly these things are built,” he said.
On the other hand, Chuck Baraw — head of the town planning commission and president of Stowe Area Association board of trustees — preferred that the solar panels be more out of sight, out of mind. He pointed to an array visible from Route 7 that “destroys the farm setting” of that area.
“An open field setting like Mayo Farm would be a disaster,” Baraw said.
The Stowe Town Plan supports commercial or utility-scale solar power facilities as long as they “provide a clear, direct benefit” to the community and meet certain standards:
• Meet the minimum setback requirements for the zone they’d be in.
• Not be installed on farmland, or at least be along field edges.
• Not interfere with scenic views.
• Be screened from view, either by existing buildings or vegetation, or newly planted screens.
Gravel in those hills?
Despite the unanimous vote to put the $3.5 million bond before voters in the next six weeks, some board members worried that there might still be some use for even the old, reclaimed portion of the pit.
Board Chair Billy Adams said a dwindling supply of gravel is a concern for the town, which estimates 10 years’ worth left in the operational part of the pit, adjacent to the proposed solar site.
After the town depletes its gravel pit, it has to either find another pit or buy gravel from a supplier; neither is a cheap option.
Adams and board member Adam Davis would like to see if there’s still gravel underneath the reclaimed portion of the pit. Before the town filled in the area, crews had dug down only about 25 feet before they ran out of gravel and hit clay.
But Public Works Director Harry Shepard said he is confident there’s nothing worth the effort under the reclaimed portion of the pit.
Added board member Neil Van Dyke, “Let’s wait to see what the community says before digging down 50 feet to see if there’s gravel.”
