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Welcome to the Autumn Edition of our Southern Tier Clean Energy Communities (CEC) quarterly newsletter.
The purpose of this newsletter is to keep municipalities, elected officials, and others in the counties of Steuben, Chemung, Schuyler, Tioga, Tompkins, Broome, Chenango, and Delaware informed about the great work being performed in the Southern Tier to make our communities more sustainable and energy efficient. As coordinators, our focus is NYSERDA's Clean Energy Communities initiative and other energy-related activities taking place throughout the region. We are available to assist you, your local government, and community.
The Southern Tier region now has six officially designated Clean Energy Communities! Work continues with many other municipalities that have an interest in going all the way to designation, or are interested in getting advice on energy usage. Our coordinators have been working hard to help our communities save both taxpayer money and energy usage, promoting energy efficiency and new technologies that accomplish both!
CEC coordinators are available to function as your municipality's energy advisor. If you're interested in joining the movement towards becoming a Clean Energy Community, or if you have any questions regarding energy usage, please don't hesitate to contact us.
Sincerely,
Tara Donadio, Tom Kowalik, and Terry Carroll - CEC Coordinators for the Southern Tier
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Thomas Kowalik, EdD
CEC Coordinator for Steuben, Chemung, and Schuyler
County Cooperative Extension of Tompkins, Kowalik and Associates
Email: tom.kowalik77@gmail.com
Phone: 607-759-5285
In this issue of the Autumn Newsletter, we are pleased to introduce Tom Kowalik as a contractor helping us bring the CEC program to Steuben, Chemung, and Schuyler Counties. Tom has his own consulting firm out of Corning, is president of the Tier Energy Network and works with Cornell Cooperative Extension of Tompkins County on this project. Just recently, he was responsible for introducing the CEC program to Broome and Tioga Counties. He has been a resident of the Southern Tier for over 35 years, currently resides outside of Corning, and originally hails from Boonville, NY and the Adirondacks.
Tom previously worked for Binghamton University as Executive Director of the Center for Innovative and Continuing Education and has extensive experience in adult education and regional economic development. He received his EdD in Adult Education at Syracuse University. Tom is excited about his role to introduce the Clean Energy Communities program to Steuben, Chemung, and Schuyler communities and will soon begin to reach out to municipal leaders, encouraging them to begin to implement CEC High Impact Items.
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It should come as no surprise to anyone who knows the Town of Ulysses (pop. 5,000) that they were the first small/medium community in the Southern Tier to become a designated Clean Energy Community. The town has been thinking about energy for a long time. Whether it was the push for solar on their own facilities, or adjusting zoning to allow the first community shared solar farm in New York State, the town has been thinking about how they could help promote clean energy for years.
When Terry Carroll first sat down with Liz Thomas, the town Supervisor, and her staff, they were ready to get started. In Liz’s word’s:
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“The Town of Ulysses recognizes climate change as real and we want to be an example of how small towns can be do their part in reducing carbon emissions. NYSERDA and the Clean Energy Communities Coordinator offer critical assistance in achieving energy reduction goal and helping save taxpayer money.
These types of partnerships between the state and local governments are a winning combination and town’s should take advantage of them.”
---Liz Thomas, Town Supervisor for Ulysses
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At that first meeting high-impact action items were reviewed. Those already accomplished were noted, and others that would be of interest to the town were identified. This is the standard process utilized when first meeting with a community or municipality . During subsequent meetings, a plan was developed to collect documentation for completed action, and a timeline was created to accomplish other tasks. Ulysses had already accomplished the Solarize action item, being part of a county-wide campaign in 2014, and hey needed three more actions to become a certified CEC community. The first new action, Benchmarking, was quickly passed before being followed by adoption of the Unified Solar Permit and Code Enforcement Training.
With official designation, Ulysses has become eligible for a $100,000 grant to help continue their work on reducing emissions. The town has decided to use that funding to retrofit their town hall with air source heat pumps and create a green fund that will help residents pursue their own clean energy actions. Although now designated a CEC community, the town has plans to continue their pursuit of clean energy. A new EV charging station will be installed by the beginning of November, and the town is also looking at switching their streetlights to LEDs.
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LED Streetlights
How to Complete an LED Streetlight Inventory
LED Streetlight Upgrades is one of ten action items that can help you achieve designation as a Clean Energy Community. Although this can be a much lengthier process than some of the other action items, and does require investment, the benefits are huge. Switching to LEDs can save about 68 % on energy costs, which can provide a very quick return on investment, and also improve safety by enhancing lighting in areas where needed. The savings alone are worth investigating your municipality’s potential to do upgrades.
When considering updating your community streetlights to LED, the first step your municipality will want to undertake is a streetlight inventory to assess your managed / leased streetlight for proper brightness, location and billing.
Conducting a detailed audit is important for several reasons:
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Lighting level assessment: LED streetlights can come in a range of brightness or “lumens” and understand where lights are located can help you determine where you need brighter (high traffic areas) vs dimmer (residential areas).
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Location assessment: When your initial streetlight poles we installed, it is highly unlikely that they were put in their present locations based on an in-depth audit. It’s possible you have two in an area that only needs one, or that you could use more in some recently developed areas.
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Community Acceptance: Conducting the inventory can help with community acceptance of the new, different lighting system. By conducting an audit, you can show the community that lighting levels and locations were reviewed with an open process prior to install.
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Billing Audit: According to the Mid-Hudson Streetlight Consortium, utility inventory of streetlights, and therefore billing costs, can be inaccurate. There are cases where billed lights no longer exist, belong to another entity (or should belong to them), or wattages don’t match inventory. Marbletown, NY was able to recover $5,500 from the utility in incorrect billings for it’s 80 streetlight inventory.
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If you're considering conducing a streetlight audit here are some steps you'll want to follow:
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Request a street light inventory from the utility - this will show what the utility has on record and they may provide gps or road locations of lights.
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Assemble your Team - have community members and staff help to conduct a field inventory
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Gather materials for your team - you’ll need a smartphone or GPS, digital camera, tape measure and notepad.
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List Data to be Collected - including utility pole number, size of light and much more!
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Log data into ArcGIS - by creating a free account (if your municipality doesn’t already have one): http://doc.arcgis.com/en/explorer/
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Evaluate and review lights to see which ones you will keep, remove, and need to discuss with residents. Also check data vs utility data to ensure billing accuracy.
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If your municipality is interested in switching to LED streetlights - let us know! There are many ways we can help, ranging from doing a cost-benefit assessment, to possibly assisting with the field audit!
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Congratulations to the towns of Danby and Caroline, and the City of Ithaca, all in Tompkins County, for recently being designated as Clean Energy Communities. They are eligible for $100,000 to pursue actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Danby and Caroline accomplished the same set of High Impact Action Items: Solarize - through the countywide Solar Tompkins initiative in 2014; Code Enforcement Training - which helps train code officers on the new energy code; Adoption of the Unified Solar Permit - which streamlines the permitting process for residential solar; and Passing a resolution to Benchmark their buildings - which makes it easy to see how much energy the towns are using and suggesting ways they can look to save money. The City in addition to having a Solarize campaign, and adopting a Benchmarking resolution also installed an EV charging station and passed Energize New York Financing, allowing businesses in the City to apply for Property Assessed Clean Energy.
In Broome County, the towns of Windsor and the town of Dickinson have installed EV charging stations with many others in the pipeline.
Two Level 2 Charging Station Pedestals at the Town of Windsor!
Finally, In Tompkins County, a majority of municipalities have asked NYSEG for a price to buy-back their streetlights to convert them to LEDs while the Town of Union in Broome County announced the switch to LEDs earlier this year. This is something the Cities of Elmira, Binghamton and the town of Horseheads and the village of Groton have already started or accomplished, resulting in huge savings in both emissions and taxpayer spending!
The following graphic summarizes and illustrates accomplishments in the Southern Tier.
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The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has announced the release of the 2017 Municipal Zero Emissions Vehicle (ZEV) and ZEV Infrastructure Incentive for EV Charging Stations and Vehicles. The program, which was available in 2016, provides $8,000 per charge port for level 2 charging stations, or $32,000 for DC fast-charge pedestals, requiring only a 20% match. The match can be met with in-kind contributions, including materials and time spent on installation. The incentive also applies to the purchase of clean energy vehicles, with $2,500 available for vehicles with a range between 10 and 50 miles, and $5,000 for vehicles with a range over 50 miles. More information can be found at http://www.dec.ny.gov/energy/109181.html
The grants are available until May 31, 2018 or until they run out.
For the vehicle rebates, the municipality must simply provide information about the vehicle as listed on the Request for Applications in the grants portal: https://grantsgateway.ny.gov/IntelliGrants_NYSGG/module/nysgg/goportal.aspx
For charging stations projects under $10,000 (most level 2 charging stations) will be provided funding via DEC purchase order, with some basic paperwork required upon submittal, including the invoice showing the station was paid for by the municipality and some additional forms DEC will provide. The purchase order (PO) will be provided by the DEC to the municipality as soon as it goes through the PO approval process internally at DEC, so any municipality may receive it before or after their station has been installed, depending on timing. Municipalities may choose to wait to have the PO in-hand before they start the install, although either way they will pay for the installation first and provide the paid invoice with the PO to DEC to get reimbursed. The municipality will sign and return the PO with their paid invoice and DEC forms.
For charging station projects $10,000 and over (some level 2 charging stations and all DC fast charge), funding will be provided via a contract, with a work plan required, and rebates will be issued after a short report about the project is provided, including before and after photos. For projects $10,000 and over, municipalities must also provide login information for networked data to the DEC.
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A relatively new network of professionals has emerged on the scene in the Southern Tier. Known as the Tier Energy Network or TEN, this group is a regional network of industry, government, community, and higher education with expertise and interest in energy conservation, efficiency and generation, sustainability, finance, venture capital, workforce development, innovation, building construction and marketing.
Founded with the vision of helping the Southern Tier become known for creation of clean energy jobs, energy conservation and efficiency, development and adoption of clean energy technology and services and fostering a venture capital friendly environment for energy innovators, this network meets the third Thursday of each month from 10 a.m to 12 noon at different locations around the Southern Tier.
If you and your organization are interested in aspects of smart energy, improving the energy cost profile and sustainability of the Southern Tier, promoting workforce development and jobs in the Southern Tier, and making smart energy technology a core strength of the Southern Tier, please consider joining this network. For more information contact Mike Straight at mike@cleanenergytechnologyresources.com.
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November 1 - Municipalities on the Move: Energy Efficiency Webinar. 10:30am - 12 noon More info here!
November 9 - Tier Energy Network Meeting in Ithaca. 10:00 a.m. - 12 noon.
November 17 - Local Government Workshop hosted by Genesee Regional Valley Planning Commission in Batavia. All-day More info here!
If you have an event related to energy that you would like others to know about in our Spring CEC Newsletter, please contact your CEC Coordinator.
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