By Mike Donovan
CHESTER– A solar array planned for the town could have supplied all of its electricity both day and night will not happen any time soon, according to Selectboard Chairman Eugene Bishop.
Bishop has been leading an effort to bring solar power to the town, but negotiations collapsed this week. At the same time, plans for wind turbines have stalled because the only site found suitable so far is privately owned and its value is more than the town can afford to pay.
According to Bishop, six solar companies were originally interested in establishing arrays and all but one has gone out of business. The one remaining, CRS-1 LLC, based in Danbury CT, was “working hard,” he said at last week’s selectboard meeting to make the initial preparations for the site.
“We could get all of our electricity from solar,” he said. “That’s never been done before so we had to invent the wheel.”
He said the town and company had put their proposals in writing and expected preparations for construction to begin shortly. Then it all fell apart. “We were being careful because it’s a 20 year deal,” he said. “I spent a lot of hours on the phone and it was coming together,” but in order to qualify for a large grant to pay for construction, the company had to have an agreement in place by Dec. 31. “We just couldn’t get all our ‘t’s’ crossed and ‘i’s’ dotted,” Bishop said.
Despite the limitation on Solar panel operation to daylight hours, the planned array would have supplied the town both day and night, he said. The solar panels would have produced more than enough electricity to power the town’s electric light department during the day, and the excess would have been fed into the grid. At night, the town would draw electricity from the grid, in effect using the power “saved up” during the day.
The proposed agreement also called for the company to assume all costs of construction.
“The town wouldn’t have had to make any investment whatsoever,” he said. Any profits for the company would have come from the sale of renewable energy credits, or RECs.
But of the six companies originally interested in doing business with Chester, several have gone out of business, including one that had identified buildings where solar panels could have been effective. That apparently wasn’t the problem with CRS-1.
“There were just too many little issues we couldn’t resolve,” he said. “It was a good learning experience and we should do better next time there’s an opportunity.”
He said another company has shown some interest in the plan and might prove to be an alternative.
“They look very solid,” he said, “and maybe we could do something with them next year.”
