[T]he University of Vermont announced Thursday it would work with the city of Burlington to build solar panels on rooftops and over parking lots.
The goal is to build 1 megawatt of solar — about half the size of the largest commercial solar farms in the state — among different projects. Burlington already has about 1.8 megawatts of solar among 81 different projects.
The Burlington Electric Department is part owned by the city government. The utility is asking for proposals from developers willing to build the solar projects. The proposals are due by Nov. 15, and the department will follow up on the proposals they like.
Neale Lunderville, the general manager for the Burlington Electric Department, said UVM is the utility’s biggest customer. The idea for the university to do more solar projects came up during conversations about how the university could further its mission to protect the environment, Lunderville said.
He said the Burlington Electric Department would most likely buy any power produced from the panels, whether through the state’s net-metering law, which applies to projects of 500 kilowatts or less, or through a long-term contract between the university and the electric department.
“In Burlington, unlike a lot of communities, we don’t have a lot of green space that would be OK to turn into a solar array, so we need to be creative in Burlington,” he said. “We’re looking for rooftop and solar canopies for parking areas as ways to utilize our built environment in a more robust fashion.”
“We’re not using up the green spaces we have left here,” Lunderville said. “With the price of solar coming down, some of these solar canopies for parking lots, the prices are becoming more affordable. We’re hoping that we’ll get some interesting proposals back from people.”
Bob Vaughan, UVM’s director of capital planning and management, said the project is still in the exploration phase. The university already has more than 100 kilowatts of solar among different parts of campus, he said. This project would increase the university’s capacity tenfold.
Any tax benefits, including the 30 percent federal Business Investment Tax Credit that expires at the end of 2016, would go to the developer because the university is a nonprofit, Vaughan said. It’s too early to say whether the renewable energy credits would be sold, but all parties are in agreement on preserving green space.
“The idea that anybody would want to propose anything like on our main green or on our open green space on our campus is not attractive to begin with,” Vaughan said. “We value our green space just as much as any other place on campus.”
Burlington Mayor Miro Weinberger said he supports the project as a way to combat climate change. He said solar would also help the utility manage peak loads during summer, when the sun is shining and Burlingtonians are running their air conditioners.
“We really want to see Burlington supporting and driving that leadership (toward renewable energy),” Weinberger said. “I don’t think there’s a whole lot of examples of city-owned utilities out there pushing that kind of transformation.
“I think most Vermonters think that climate change is one of the major societal challenges of our time, and we need to move away from fossil fuel-based energy systems, and renewable energy is increasingly becoming a viable alternative,” he said.
