NORTH SALEM, N.Y. - Here comes the sun!
North Salem officials, volunteers, and special guests gathered under a bright blue spring sky on April 24 to announce the completion of a critical sustainability project: the installation of a solar array at the town’s highway garage.
The 288 590-watt, Tier 1 solar photovoltaic modules, coupled with SolarEdge Inverters, are expected to generate more than 200,000 kilowatt-hours of power annually.
That will not only meet the highway department’s needs but will generate extra electricity that can be returned to the grid for a monetary “credit” of about $15,000 per year.
The project was funded entirely through grants, which essentially means that was found money.
(The array will be up and running once the local utility installs its meters.)
‘PRETTY GOOD START’
Robert McGee, a member of the Climate Smart Community Leadership Committee, was a big fan.
“Wherever we can make incremental progress -- certainly to save electrical generation and also to save money -- it’s certainly a worthwhile project.”
Pointing out that the new array isn’t going to “power everything,” Supervisor Warren Lucas said while the town is still looking for other solar sites, “this is a pretty good start.”
The project was funded with $136,000 in federal money, $100,000 through the state’s CREST (Community Resiliency, Economic Sustainability, and Technology) program, and a $215,000 Clean Energy Communities grant from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA).
It’s not the only thing the town’s done to support sustainability. It’s installed LED street lights, hyper-insulated buildings, and is planning to use super-efficient micro-heat pumps in town-owned buildings such as 3 Owens Road (the community center) and Delancey Hall, a historic building that houses some of the town’s offices.
Lucas thanked town Councilwoman Katherine Daniels, program coordinator for the Climate Smart Community Leadership Committee (CSLC), “for all the hard work that she’s done.”
He also thanked Janine Kourakos, his chief of staff and a CSLC member, for making sure that North Salem racked up enough points to become a bronze-certified Climate Smart Community in 2022 via a state Department of Environmental Conservation initiative, and state Sen. Pete Harckham (D-40th District), for his support of energy conservation and efficiency projects.
“I was told a long time ago that when you have a pile of money, don’t piddle it away, get something done that’s important,” Lucas told the gathering, adding that the solar array was “one of those things that we were hoping for for a long time.”
(Lucas is treasurer of Sustainable Westchester, a nonprofit consortium of local Westchester County governments facilitating sustainability initiatives and climate solutions.)
The organization’s executive director, Tom Watson, and Leo Wiegman, its director of solar programs, put together the Request for Proposal, the formal document that’s issued to announce a project, outline requirements, and invite vendors to submit bids for supplying products or services.)
The RFP helped the town “maximize” its dollars and the amount of electricity the project generated, Lucas said, telling Watson and Wiegman they’d done “a great job.”
“Without you, it wouldn’t have been a very fun thing for us to do,” he added.
Lucas praised Ila Gillenwater, vice president of sales, and Mario Martinez, vice president of business development, at Opal Energy Group, a commercial and industrial solar developer that specializes in solar, battery storage, and energy management solutions.
“You guys have been so professional and so wonderful to work with, I have to thank you very very much,” he said.
The highway department also got a big thank you for “putting up with all the noise” while the array was being installed.
Highway workers dug all the trenches for the underground wiring.
Lucas estimated that the array will generate about $39,000 worth of electricity a year.
“The good thing about these systems? Why do they keep on generating more and more value in terms of electricity a year? Because the prices never go down,” he said.
HEALTHIER, MORE AFFORDABLE LIVES
Daniels reminded folks that “the sun beams more energy in an hour than all humans on the planet can use in an entire year.”
“It’s absolutely insane not to take advantage of that,” she said.
“The trees certainly do, so this project does too. As Warren says, it will generate enough electricity to power the highway department and $15,000 to offset other town electric bills. And it helps insulate us from ever-rising utility rates,” Daniels noted, thanking Harckham for helping to secure the $100,000 grant for the project and “for ALL that he does to support the transition to renewable energy.”
Urging folks to check out Harckham’s Earth Day article in The North Salem News, Daniels said that it talks about the Accelerate Solar for Affordable Power (ASAP) act that he introduced last year in the Senate.
The legislation, she said, aims “to protect our environment and make our lives healthier and more affordable.”
Thanking the highway department, the Climate Smart Committee, the Town Board, and others for supporting the project, Daniels said she hoped it would “inspire town residents to put solar on their own houses so we can all be more resilient and not so susceptible to rising electricity costs.”
NO DOWNSIDE
Harckham said that “a kilowatt of solar (power) is cheaper than a kilowatt produced by natural gas or nuclear or coal. And the fact that the town will be generating its own lower-cost power to save the residents of North Salem directly -- and you heard the quantifiable savings -- this is a win, win, win, win, win.”
Stressing the importance of various entities working together to achieve energy savings, he called North Salem “a leader in the sustainability movement.”
“So, congratulations to all of you. This is a wonderful, wonderful day,” Harckham said.
In a statement released prior to Friday’s press conference, the senator said: “Investing in solar power isn’t just a smart environmental choice -- it’s a strategic economic decision. Solar energy reduces monthly utility bills. It’s a practical solution that delivers long-term savings while helping businesses, homeowners and municipalities like the Town of North Salem build a more sustainable future.”
Planning Board Chair Cynthia Curtis couldn’t agree more about the project’s potential benefits.
“I think this is long overdue. Katherine (Daniels) and the CSLC worked their butts off to get this done. They really did a great job. The town is on the right track,” she said.
‘SPIRIT OF COLLABORATION’
Sustainable Westchester has 44 municipal participants and North Salem is one of its founding members, Wiegman said.
The organization’s role, as he sees it, is to be “the go-between for municipalities and the solar industry.”
While Sustainable Westchester is “proud to be part of this,” it’s really the townsfolk who “have done all the work,” Watson said.
“It’s the spirit of collaboration that really brings us here” he said, asserting that the project is “going to pay off in the very near future.”
“It also reminds me of The Beatles song ‘Here Comes the Sun’,” Watson said as Old Sol himself beamed down on the proud crowd.
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