BY THOR JOURGENSEN
LYNN — Mayor Judith Flanagan Kennedy and fellow mayors in Peabody and Revere are sounding an alarm over legislative efforts to change state solar energy policy.
The mayors urged legislators not to adopt the lower wholesale rate for net metering credits. A State House News Service report said municipal officials are worried that a lower rate would discourage cities and towns from building solar projects and create a “pernicious double standard” with power sold by utilities and valued at retail rates.
Net metering allows someone generating solar energy to receive a financial credit for energy they generated but did not use. State legislators crafting solar energy legislation are also hearing from colleagues who want to raise net metering caps and resist cuts in metering credit values that they say could cause irreparable harm to an industry the state is trying to grow.
Critics of the state’s solar policies say the cost of building solar projects have come down substantially, the News Service reported. They are urging lawmakers to resist locking in on “subsidies” that they say will saddle ratepayers for years, driving up already high energy costs and making it more difficult for wind energy and hydropower to take root in Massachusetts.
Even with expensive technology and changes looming in state solar regulation, solar energy can potentially reduce the millions of dollars the Lynn Water & Sewer Commission spends on electricity by up to 15 percent, Matthew Spadi, a project manager at Weston & Sampson, a Peabody-based engineering company, told commissioners Monday night.
Weston & Sampson concluded that Water & Sewer could save more than $800,000 annually in electricity costs by installing solar energy equipment on its largest buildings.
But that estimate and a $2.3 million price tag for installing solar equipment on facilities, including Water & Sewer’s 400 Parkland Ave. offices, sparked the five commissioners’ interest in learning more about solar energy.
The commission embraced alternative energy two years ago when it erected a wind turbine next to its Commercial Street extension waste treatment plant.
The turbine generates about $200,000 in electricity cost savings annually from which insurance, maintenance and other costs are deducted said Robert Tina, operations director at Water & Sewer.
“Solar is still fairly expensive technology,” Stephen Wiehe, a Weston & Sampson project manager, told commissioners. “The key is to combine it with efficiencies.”
Thor Jourgensen can be reached at tjourgensen@itemlive.com.
