NASHUA – The city is taking another stride toward meetings its energy goals with the Lake Street Fire Station by installing more than 400 solar panels atop the building’s roof.

This is just one of three locations the city and ReVision Energy have teamed up to install. City officials and folks from ReVision Energy gathered at the fire station to celebrate this first step Monday.

This project is also the city’s first municipal solar array. The three buildings scheduled for solar installation by the end of the year include the fire station, Nashua Transit Garage and Conway Arena. Director of Market Development with ReVision Dan Weeks said this undertaking is major compared to what other New Hampshire cities have done.

“Certainly as far as what we’re seeing New Hampshire municipalities do, this puts Nashua at the forefront,” Weeks said.

ReVision was selected as the principal vendor for this project, and the buildings are being grouped together in order to provide the city with a better financial deal. Moreover, as the city saves money moving forward through undertaking this initiative, the solar panels will also work toward reducing the city’s carbon footprint, while edging closer toward reaching its energy goals. The city is striving toward achieving 100% renewable, clean energy sources by 2050, which would be obtained for school and municipal systems. Other goals for city officials include reducing school, municipal building and infrastructure greenhouse gas emissions by 25% by 2025, and to reduce municipal vehicle emissions by 25% by 2025.

Last month, city officials added two new electric hybrid buses to their fleet, which are estimated to save 4,000 gallons per year in diesel fuel. Additional savings from those buses includes nearly 50 tons of CO2 emissions that will be prevented from being released into the air. Moreover, the city also hired a new Energy Manager about a month ago, which is a new position that has not existed before. Her name is Doria Brown and during a tour of the solar being installed at the fire station, she Nashua is moving in the right direction.

“I hope to see more projects in the future, like some elementary schools, and if they do move forward on the new middle school, I’d love to see that be solar one day,” Brown said.

Fire Chief Brian Rhodes is also excited to be partnering with officials and community on renewable energy to try to reduce their carbon footprint the best they can. He believes they will be able to tell how this works in a very short order because the building is large, and operated 24 hours per day with a lot of employees inside on a daily basis.

“We’re looking forward to seeing some savings that will, in turn, transfer back over to the taxpayers,” Rhodes said.

The total number of solar panels being installed on the rooftop of the fire station is 409; whereas there will be 297 on the Nashua Transit Garage; and just shy of 1,300 on the Conway Arena. Weeks said with all three sites combined, the savings during the 40-year commercial lifespan will be approximately $3.75 million, while the carbon offset will be $700,000 pounds per year in carbon emission reduction among all three.

In terms of just the fire station’s solar array, it will generate approximately 140,000 kilowatt-hours of clean energy annually, which saves the city money, while offsetting 150,000 pounds of carbon pollution reach year.

The fire station install is slated to be completed this week, and then there will be a few more weeks of final inspections and commissioning. Nonetheless, the Conway Arena, being a much larger project, has been underway for about a month. Weeks said the project has about another month to go, and that the Nashua Transit Garage will see work begin next week. All projects will be complete by the end of the year.

“The solar projects are under a power purchase agreement, whereby the city will purchase the electricity generated from these arrays from the impact investor partner, which is a local family whose mission is to get more solar deployed in the community,” Weeks said. “So, they’re able to take the tax incentives and pass those savings onto the city five years and then the city can buy them out at a discount.”

The city will be purchasing power from two rooftops, the fire station and the garage, which meet the power needs of the buildings at a rate below the current utility rate, which will be at 8.8 cents per kilowatt-hour. Conway Arena, on the other hand, is operated by a separate nonprofit, which is Nashua Ice Center, but is located on city owned land. They have since extended their lease with the city.

“We have a lot of school buildings that we know we could make big improvements on as far as solar use, so we’re looking to do some more projects,” Mayor Jim Donchess said. “We have 12 elementary schools, three middle schools, two high schools, so we want to evaluate those situations.”

Adam Urquhart may be contacted at 594-1206, or at aurquhart@nashuatelegraph.com.

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