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Meeting Minutes
Thursday, May 21, 2009
6:00 pm
In Attendance: Cindy Keegan (Chair), John Hayes, Jeff Barz-Snell, Betsy Horne,
Members not in attendance: Nick Lewis, Rick Nye, Rob DeRosier, Adam Segal
Public: Andy Soll, Paul Marquis
City Staff: Tom Watkins, Michael Adler (Intern), Sarah Williamson (Intern)
Introduction
Those in attendance introduced themselves to each other.
Discussion with Salem State College
The Renewable Energy Task Force was visited by Andy Soll, Vice President of Finance and Facilities at Salem State College. Andy announced that the College is interested in a possible partnership with the City of Salem in exploring wind energy and other renewable sources of energy. He said the College is looking ahead to the federal stimulus money. The Governor has committed $160 million to the State college system. With the stimulus money, the College would finance one time expenditure projects to reduce future costs and thought collaborating with the City on a wind turbine at either Cat Cove or Winter Island might be feasible. The College is also looking at a number of different energy efficiency upgrades in their existing buildings, including their data center, and some of their buildings
they will be redeveloping in the near future, such as the Weir Building property.
Cindy stated that Winter Island was looked at by UMASS and they gave the City a “go” in terms of the site being feasible for a large scale wind project. She also discussed the recent wind study and progress made at the SESD site. Winter Island would present just as good as data if not better. Jeff also mentioned that the South Campus site would also be an ideal location to explore for siting a turbine.
Andy said that a partnership project on a wind turbine at Winter Island would be ideal for both the City and the College. Jeff said there are a number of tax incentives and financing options available. He also suggested studying cogeneration at the College to Andy. Jeff said the next step for Winter Island is to erect a met tower to collect more approximate wind data at the site. He will work on finding prices for met towers and get back to the group on this.
Municipal Energy Data
Intern Michael Adler presented the group his spreadsheets on municipal energy usage and cost data he has collected for all city facilities, including traffic lights. The data covers a one year period from March 2008 – February 2009. He stated that there a number of different meters the City is not using but is still getting charged a monthly customer service charge on them. He said that after talking to John Giardi and Tom about this, he will talk to Doug Wagner at National Grid to negotiate this charge out. They will also work with John and visit some of the meters to see what is going on with them. Tom, John and himself will also be exploring a summary billing system for the City which will help to make the system more efficient and manageable. Cindy will talk to Michael and
get him the square footage of all the School buildings so he can begin to input the data into the EPA’s Portfolio Manager Tool. Michael will also create some pie charts for energy use at the schools and city side for the Living Green Fair.
Living Green Fair
The group was introduced to intern Sarah Williamson. Sarah has been working with Tom and Ben Bouchard of the Chamber of Commerce to help spread the word on the Living Green Fair. She has been busy creating online social networking pages for the Fair and researching items for free giveaways.
Tom John Hayes and Paul Marquis said they will be able to help out Friday afternoon, the day before the Fair to help set up. Betsy said last year there was a problem trying to get people upstairs. Many people didn’t even know there were more vendors upstairs. She said we need to make large posters directing people upstairs. Tom also said we should recruit volunteers to act as greeters at both entrances and have them hand out material and notify people about the upstairs. Tom will talk to SHS teacher Graeme Marcoux about recruiting some high school students to help out with this.
Tom will follow up with Ben on a parking voucher for vendors.
Items for the RETF table:
- RETF Banner
- Cindy’s binder on home energy savings (Sarah will update this)
- Wind map
- Kill-A-Watt products
- John will bring a carbon footprint handout and a handout about the solar energy credits now being provided by state governments to home owners and businesses
- Tom will talk to Adam about creating a handout on RETF accomplishments
Other Business
Tom said the Planning Department is working on the Energy and Conservation Block Grant application which is due at the end of June. He also announced the City is talking with the City of Beverly on the possibility of hiring a regional Energy Manager and will keep the group updated on any progress on both these issues.
Next meeting will be June 16th, 2009
Meeting Minutes recorded by Tom Watkins
Meeting adjourned at 8:20 pm
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