Jori Jacobeit and Jonathan Ives of Shoreham enjoy a solar-powered picnic at SunCommon’s Community Solar Array in Orwell during an educational dinner and tour on Thursday evening May 28, 2015. Ives and Jacobeit are members of a SunCommon Community Solar Array.
Project To Be Located Near Albany-Lowell Line
By Jennifer Hersey Cleveland | July 27, 2015
A company that hopes to build a community solar array near the Lowell and Albany town line is seeking a certificate of public good from the Vermont Public Service Board (PSB).
SunCommon seeks to build the 150 kW project on a field owned by John and Eileen Siminger on the Eden Road. While the project is to be situated in Lowell, the Simingers’ house is in Albany.
The array is expected to power 30 homes through a group net-metering system. Neighbors are not directly hooked into the system; rather, they become participants by making monthly payments to SunCommon and in exchange get net-metering credits. Those credits go against the participant’s electricity bill from Vermont Electric Cooperative.
Depending on each home’s energy usage, a homeowner could pay nothing to the co-op. The co-op will determine the value of each participant’s credit, which can be applied to future electric bills if the customer uses less power than the credit’s value.
The credits are just that — credits against electric bills — and can’t be turned into cold, hard cash at any point. Participants are not eligible for renewable energy credits, tax credits, rebates, earnings or capital appreciation.
The project allows homes, schools, businesses and towns that might not otherwise be able to do go solar with no up-front costs, according to SunCommon’s application.
SunCommon also allows customers to opt out when they choose, but otherwise, the agreement is for 20 years.
The nearest electric line is 60 feet from from the edge of the array that will be used to connect the project to the grid.
The 780 modules will be arranged in three rows, each about 360 feet long. The project will be about 12 feet tall, and is screened from most vantage points, according to the application.
The project would be located about 150 feet from the nearest abutter, who, according to SunCommon, does not require additional screening. Some travelers on Eden Road may have a brief view of the array.
“Our missions is to tear down the barriers to renewable energy. We do that by making it easy and affordable for all Vermonters to go solar,” the company’s “good neighbor agreement” states.
In two years, the document states, SunCommon has helped hundreds of Vermonters go solar.
SunCommon engages with a community early on in a project to seek input on where and how the project is situated, the agreement states. But the Albany Select Board just received the application Monday — the day after the 30-day deadline for those in opposition to file comments with the PSB.
The document indicates that it will hold a community workshop “once the pieces of a CSA have come together.” CSA is the company’s acronym for community solar array.
SunCommon’s headquarters are located in Waterbury Center.
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