Faced with a plan to install a long-anticipated solar array on the Hildreth Elementary School rather than the Bromfield School, the School Committee delayed a decision and set a number of new conditions for the project Monday.
—Bill Blackwell,
Harvard Energy Advisory Committee
The 5.3 kilowatt solar array has been in the works for more than two years. Besides some savings in electricity costs for the schools, the array is expected to generate $25,000 in solar renewable energy certificates for the town over the next 10 years. The educational benefit to the project is for it to be a data acquisition system through which Bromfield students and faculty can monitor the energy collected and the electricity generated in real time.
Funding for the solar array comes from a $35,707 grant from the Massachusetts Renewable Energy Trust, which was awarded in January 2010. Harvard received the grant because a number of residents voluntarily paid a small premium on their electric bills under the Clean Energy Choice program.
On July 12, 2010, the School Committee voted unanimously to award the contract for installation of the solar array to Ostro Electric. The system was to be installed by October 2010.
A plethora of technical and administrative problems have delayed the installation, the most recent of which was the discovery that putting the array on the Bromfield roof would void parts of the roof’s warranty, according to Bill Blackwell of the Harvard Energy Advisory Committee.
Blackwell told the School Committee at its April 23 meeting that the array could be installed instead on the roof of the Hildreth Elementary School gymnasium. That roof, which dates from 1999, is already out of warranty but still has at least two decades of expected life, according to a report from Rockwell Roofing.
The elementary school roof has the proper southern orientation for a solar array, and its slope makes it even more suitable for that use than the flat roof at Bromfield. Moreover, the elementary school roof is less accessible from the ground, making the system less vulnerable to vandalism.
However, moving the planned array to the elementary school would involve new design costs and also some expense for removing a conduit already installed at Bromfield. Blackwell said the additional costs would total at most $5100. Town Finance Director Lorraine Leonard said that $5,000 was already being held in reserve for the project from a previous School Committee vote.
School Committee chairman Keith Cheveralls said he did not want to spend money on a new design plan unless he had some advance assurance that the roof was strong enough to support the array. He suggested asking town building inspector Gabe Vellante for his opinion.
Cheveralls also asked Blackwell to provide a detailed financial statement laying out all costs and to get input from the Planning Board and the Historical Commission in case they had objections. Cheveralls stated that the project had his full support, once these additional conditions were met.
After the meeting, Blackwell told the Press that the three-week delay before the next School Committee meeting on May 14 might jeopardize the project’s eligibility for a $4,250 rebate from the Commonwealth Solar II program, because that program expires in July.
“We have a very short runway to get this project going,” Blackwell said. “It would be sad if this cannot go forward.”
