Editor’s note: This article is Tommy Gardner of the Stowe Reporter, in which it was first published Jan. 21, 2016.
[I]n separate but very similar votes, Stowe and Hyde Park residents authorized their electric departments Tuesday to take out loans to build solar farms.
Utilities in both towns said the solar project will save money for ratepayers while meeting new statewide energy standards.
Each town needed voter approval to issue bonds for up to $3.3 million to pay for their individual 1-megawatt solar farms.
Stowe voters approved their bond 162-66. Hyde Park Village voters approved theirs 70-13.
Each utility’s 25-year bond will be repaid entirely from ratepayer revenue, and the interest will be largely subsidized by federal Clean Renewable Energy Bonds the utilities secured last May, after voters gave permission to seek them. Originally, the electric departments thought the federal bonds would take care of all the interest, but that ended up not being the case.
Despite low voter turnout, the numbers were still higher than last May’s vote on the renewable energy bonds. Matthew Rutherford, the director of regulatory compliance for Stowe Electric Department, said the bond vote’s wide margin shows a clear mandate.
“It was very encouraging to see all the people who came out the vote,” Rutherford said. “I think it speaks volumes about the way voters want things to go.”
Carol Robertson, general manager of Hyde Park Electric Department, said she thinks the projects could cost less than the $3.3 million.
“We’re absolutely thrilled,” Robertson said. “We’ll have a lot more to say when the bids come in.”
Two solar farms
Stowe’s Nebraska Valley Solar Farm will be built atop the former town gravel pit on Beech Hill Road, and will serve all 4,000 of Stowe Electric’s customers.
Hyde Park’s Waterhouse Solar will be in a field off Silver Ridge Road, and will serve only village residents hooked up to Hyde Park Water and Light.
According to the Solar Energy Industries Association, an average 1-megawatt solar farm can power 164 American homes.
Although the solar farms are entirely different projects, the two towns have been working closely, and quickly. They were announced to the public last April, with late-May votes coming only days before the application deadline.
Tuesday’s vote also puts the electric departments close to the deadline to get all the pre-project boxes checked off: state permission to apply for the bonds, certificates of public good from the Vermont Public Service Board, final paperwork with lender Union Bank, and selecting a final bidder.
Solar farms are relatively quick builds as far as large projects go, and ought to be online by the end of the year. There aren’t many structures other than maintenance sheds and the like, and there’s no foundation to pour. Rutherford said there is a good chance one contractor will build both projects.
Quick turnaround
Despite some public concerns that both projects were approved in less than a year, the two utilities had spent the previous year researching solar farms before settling on the sites.
Stowe Electric reviewed 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.
The site needed optimal solar exposure with little shading from trees or hills and minimal site preparation for up to a half-dozen acres of solar panels.
The utilities pitched the solar farms as a way to get ahead of state laws requiring stricter renewable energy standards. Last year, the Legislature passed Act 56, requiring utilities to source 1 percent of their energy in 2017 from new, small (under 5 megawatts), and local renewable energy projects. That standard is scheduled to increase gradually up to 10 percent by the year 2032.
The alternative is to pay a noncompliance penalty to the state, based on each electric department’s juice use. Both utilities say solar farms will save them a net of $2 million over the next 30 years.
Stowe Electric estimates if it did nothing to comply with Act 56, it might have to pay $11 million in penalties over the same time it is paying off its 25-year bond.
The Nebraska Valley Solar Farm will account for 2 percent of Stowe Electric’s energy portfolio, putting it ahead of the first couple of years of new state requirements. Act 56 does allow utilities to meet the requirement by buying energy from other electric departments with their own qualifying small renewable facilities.
Hyde Park’s Waterhouse project is expected to provide 13 percent of all the energy needed for Hyde Park Electric, well over the requirement.
“In the early years, we will be selling renewable energy credits and bringing in cash,” Robertson said.
Voter turnout
Although there were some grumbles in Stowe about the electric department “fast-tracking” the project, and about taking on a new liability that might be better handled by the private sector, there simply wasn’t a whole lot of public comment over the past 10 months.
In the end, it wasn’t even close, with 71 percent of Stowe voters approving the project and 84 percent in Hyde Park saying yes to local solar.
Some residents complained about holding a special vote in January, just six weeks before Town Meeting Day, in the dead of winter when a lot of second-home owners aren’t back in town.
But if they were complaining, they weren’t voting in force; only 15 absentee ballots were filled out ahead of Tuesday’s vote.
Only 6 percent of Stowe’s registered voters cast ballots, but that’s almost 100 more than voted last May on federal bonds.
Hyde Park Village voter turnout was much higher, at 25 percent.
