A new, innovative solar array is powering both the Bridgewater Volunteer Fire Department fire station and the Bridgewater Community Center (BCC) — which houses Bridgewater Community Childcare — thanks to the newly completed eight-year Bridgewater Sustainability & Resiliency Project.
Michael Caduto, the former executive director of Sustainable Woodstock who worked with Charles Shackleton on behalf of the BCC to lead the project, told the Standard this week, “This solar electricity system, which is the capstone on the entire project, is a unique and innovative energy microgrid project that Green Mountain Power and Efficiency Vermont are using as a model for other towns.” The project is labeled a microgrid because the solar-generated energy is used directly by the two local buildings, with any surplus fed back into the electrical grid and applied as credits toward future utility bills.
In another sign that the project is not only viable but powerful, the generator that was installed to allow the BCC to function as an emergency center held strong and kept all the building’s lights on during the recent storm and tornado that tore through our area, according to Caduto.
“Part of the whole resiliency component was to make it into an emergency center. One of the first things we did when we started working on the energy systems, including in the first big grant from the Canaday Family Charitable Trust, [is that] we wrote in a significant amount of money to install a whole building generator that would come on automatically and completely supply all the power for the child care and community center, and serve as the town’s emergency center right in the center of town,” said Caduto.
The 59.84 kW (DC) solar array is innovative in that it generates power for two buildings — the fire station and the BCC. “What we really wanted to do was make it so that the power generated by the array, which is on the firehouse roof, is actually being used by the two buildings. It is set up so that there’s 42 kilowatts of electricity going to the BCC. Thirty percent of the power is going to the fire station, and 70 percent is going to the community center,” said Caduto, “proportions based on the average annual usage of each building.” “There are direct current cables running underground from the fire station to the community center. The power is converted to alternating current at the community center, so the power is being used by the two buildings,” he added.
Caduto and Shackleton, working with the town and fire department, interviewed and received quotes from five solar installation companies before choosing Catamount Solar, and were “extremely happy with their work,” according to Shackleton.
For more on this, please see our July 2 edition of the Vermont Standard.
