Swampscott schools solar project delayed

SWAMPSCOTT – A project to install solar panels at the high school and middle school has been temporarily halted while the project’s financier negotiates the value of the renewable energy credits the project will create with potential buyers, town officials said.”The company who is responsible for buying the solar energy (from the town) is still working out the details of how they sell that energy,” said Town Administrator Andrew Maylor on Tuesday afternoon. He noted that the negotiations were not with the town, but on the “business end of the project.”The project is a partnership among the Swampscott Schools, Johnson Controls of Chicago and ReGeneration Finance of New York. The project includes retrofitting the high school roof with 1,666 photovoltaic panels that convert light energy to power and the middle school roof with 294 panels. The panels will produce 455,736 kilowatt hours (kWh) of energy annually for the high school and 81,320 kWh of energy annually for the middle school, according to data from Solar Design Associates, which designed the solar array.According to Maylor and a press representative from Johnson, the industrial technology company will finance the construction and “own” and maintain the panels. In return, Maylor said that the town agrees to buy the power produced from the panels at a specific, below-market rate for 20 years. At the end of 20 years, the town will have the option to buy the equipment, Maylor said.Workers began installing the inverters – which convert the energy produced by the panels to power that can be used by the schools – in mid June, said Schools Facility Director Garrett Baker.But Baker said Thursday that workers couldn’t proceed to the next step of installing the solar panels – which they were ready to do at the beginning of last week – because ReGeneration was still working on the financial agreement. ReGeneration Associate Nick Stoker said Friday that company policy prohibited him from commenting on projects still in development. However, he anticipated that construction would begin again soon.Assistant Town Engineer Victoria Masone said Wednesday that any financial risk of the project – and the delay – would be borne by ReGeneration, as the town has already negotiated the price it will pay for the energy.”(ReGeneration) needs to get a rate for the solar (renewable energy credits) that will make the rate paid by the town affordable to them,” Masone explained.But she noted that the company has a “drop-dead date” of Aug. 1 to lock in the rate and resume construction.”The big crane work needs to be done by the time school starts,” she explained. Otherwise, construction will be only able to occur after school hours and on weekends, which “will increase costs significantly” for the financier.Maylor said that the delay was unfortunate, but not surprising given the nuances of the project – which he noted had caused the negotiations on the town’s end to take much longer than he had expected.”Certainly we hope that we could start tomorrow,” he said, but also noted that it would be alright if it took longer and got everything worked out.