Energy Committee

RECEIVED By City Clerk at 8:31 am, 3/30/22 AMESBURY CITY HALL 62 Friend Street Amesbury, MA 01913 Amesbury Energy Committee February 10, 2022 @ 6:00pm Minutes Members in attendance: Tony Rinaldi, Michael Hogg, Angela Cleveland, Nate Mallard, Nancy Maynes, Barbara Lorenc Members absent: Jon Camp, Mike Browne Others in attendance: Bill Messner 1. Call to Order at 6:12pm. 2. Minutes from January 13, 2022. Angela motioned to approve the minutes. Nancy seconded. Unanimous approval. 3. Public Comment 4. Communications Tony sent out Newburyport’s Energy Action Committee’s website. Good model to start with. Ambitious and a little out of date, but it could be a good model for us. Tony is trying to meet with the City’s staff for lunch to talk about how they are doing and where we might want to go. Real Term Energy reached out to Angela about a combined Microgrid/EV Charging station leasing program. It could require 30B Procurement, but that needs to be explored more. This is a National Grid program. Lots of details to work out, including the size of the battery, details around storage, and whether we want to explore this type of microgrid. 5. Projects a. Municipal Aggregation (Tony Rinaldi) – we have heard anything yet. Newburyport’s have been approved, but they are not ready to proceed. Tony will find out more when he meets with them. b. Energy Generation in the Powwow (Tony Rinaldi) – email from John Milne asking if it was on the agenda. I informed him that we cannot 1  due to fact that the deed doesn’t allow us/the City to generate electricity off the Powow River. We will remove this from the agenda going forward. 6. Other Business a. Energy Committee Action Plan  GHG Inventory: Tony asked if we can hire someone to help with Energy stuff. Angie said we probably can’t make the case for a full- time person right now, but we could combine it with an Environmental Planner position. We could also wait until we get Municipal Aggregation funding to pay for a Sustainability Planner. Nate asked if we are eligible for Green Communities funding to get a grant for a GHG Inventory. Angie will explore that with DOER and ask MVPC if they can apply for a grant on our behalf. LED Lighting: Lighting in schools and municipal buildings – we should explore a performance contract to switch to LED. RISE, Energy Source, Johnson Controls. Look on state contract to see who is listed. Tony will look at DOER and MassCEC. Promoting solar for new construction and encourage retrofits: Focus on education for now on funding, what’s the difference between lease and own. Look at MassCEC’s website. EV Charging Station Sponsorship: Mike and Nancy will continue working on this. Mike needs to reach out to businesses, or give Nancy a list so she can reach out PACE: Angie sent the presentation that MassDevelopment did for the City last year on PACE. This should help folks get a good idea of what it’s about. We can figure out the best way to continue promoting… EV Charging Stations: Tony asked ChargePoint about DC Fast chargers. It’s about $42K each. Angie also talked with ChargePoint and we can easily update the stations to have overstay policies and charge by kWh instead of a $ per hour. The gentleman from ChargePoint also mentioned that we can create Video Ads for each station. We will discuss this at the next meeting when Mike Browne is with us. We need to promote that they exist more. Or do we talk to the dealerships about sponsoring a charging station? 7. Adjourn – motion to adjourn from Michael Hogg, Nancy seconded. Unanimous. 2