Old Meeting House, now
powered by solar. (Doug Kerr, Wikimedia Commons, CC-BY-SA 2.0)

George Harvey

When someone familiar with rural Vermont thinks of a small community, the image that comes to mind might be very like the town of Windham. It is not the smallest town, as several Vermont towns are smaller, but small size is a feature that might come up in people’s imaginations. With a population below 450, nestled in the mountains, it might have all the charm, all the glorious countryside, and all the inconvenience, of what it is.

Windham could be regarded as representative of a certain type of Vermont town, even of some with populations five or six times as large. What applies to Windham might just as easily apply to almost any of them. Certainly, that is true of the installation of solar panels on the town’s municipal office building.

On March 11, 2021, President Joe Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) to help towns recover from the economic slowdown of the pandemic. In Windham, this meant that volunteers started meeting to work out how they would spend the $118,380 that was coming to the town. When they started out, there were about as many ideas about how to use the funds as there were people thinking of them. They drew up a list of ideas and went through several iterations of finding what most people might think the best use would be. Ultimately, they decided to present residents with a package that used much of the ARPA funds, along with other incentives, to put a solar array on the roof of the Windham town office building.

The town decided to build a town solar array that would cover the electricity use of three town buildings. These are the town office building, the old meeting house, and the town garage. One of these, the meeting house, is of historic significance, having been built over a span from 1802 to 1825.
The array was installed on the roof of the town office building, which is made with standing seam metal.

The installer is well known to regular Green Energy Times readers: Southern Vermont Solar (SVS), in Westminster, Vermont. Several weeks back, they finished the array, and we can report that it is working as planned.

The solar array has 39 Hanwha Q Cells, each of 405 kilowatts (kW), with 39 Enphase microinverters. The total is 15.8 kW (DC), which is converted to 13.61 kW (AC). The annual production of the solar system is expected to be 20,760 kilowatt-hours (kWh). The town’s average electric bill was $212.77, but this has been covered by $335.48 of solar savings, meaning that the energy used is offset 187.57%. Clearly, the town of Windham will be generating more electricity than it uses by a fair margin, and some or all of this could be used in the future by using heat pumps instead of old-fashioned fossil fuels.

Solar array on the Windham municipal office building. (Courtesy photo)

With all the incentives and grants, including its part of the funds from ARPA, the net cost of Windham’s solar system came to $31,777. In its system estimates, SVS estimated the return on investment will be 339.99% over 25 years, which is the minimum lifetime of the system. The internal rate of return of 13.99% per year indicates a payback period of 7.1 years. The levelized cost of the electricity is 18¢/kWh, an amount that will not vary with the price of oil, gas or grid electricity.

Victoria Roberts, who owns SVS with her husband, Simon Piluski, gave her opinion of how the solar array came out. She said, “It is a beautiful, beautiful installation.” We suspect she is not alone in this opinion. She also commented on the job, “Working with the town of Windham has been an awesome and rewarding collaboration. I am proud of this small, mighty Vermont-strong town for recognizing a golden opportunity and doing the work to make this renewable energy project happen. I have no doubt the Town of Windham will inspire surrounding towns to join the solar revolution.”

Southern Vermont Solar’s website is svtsolar.com.

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