Powering Up with Solar in Limestone, Maine
The story of a town, a school, and their solar farm
Across America and the world, towns are building, acquiring, and upgrading community solar projects to provide locally-sourced clean electrons. One great example took place in Limestone, Maine, where the town worked together with the Maine School of Science and Mathematics (MSSM) to acquire and upgrade solar projects on the site of the former Loring Air Force Base.
The Weekly Anthropocene learns more this project in a wide-ranging Zoom conversation with Chuck Kelley, Chair of the Limestone Solar Committee, and Rob Constantine, Executive Director of MSSM.
A lightly edited transcript of this exclusive interview follows. This writer’s questions and remarks are in bold, Mr. Kelley and Mr. Constantine’s responses are in regular type. Bold italics are clarifications and extra information added after the interview.
Could you tell me how you first heard about solar development in limestone and how this project started and got going?
CHUCK: Well, first off, I'm a trustee for the Limestone Water and Sewer District, and the Limestone Water and Sewer District got involved with a project which included a power purchase agreement. Because at the time we couldn't take advantage of all of the tax credits available because we're non-profit and tax exempt, so building a project out of our own funds just didn't make sense.
We got involved with an investor company that was going to build a [solar] project on our land, and that project worked out really well for the Water & Sewer District.
So we tried to get the town involved on a similar type of a format. We got together and we put out a request for a proposal, but we soon found out that the capacity on the grid was pretty well used up by three large community solar projects. So there wasn't really any capacity to build more solar without paying for substation upgrades and a lot more costs associated with it. We looked at the solar garden subscription options, 15% savings, but we really felt that owning or having control over the project is where the savings was.
So we wanted to find another option and one of the proposals that came in just happened to be for a couple of projects that were already existing and on the grid at the former Loring Air Force Base and they came up for sale. The Loring Development Authority had an option to buy them and they passed on that option. We pursued it. The Limestone Solar Committee was reviewing proposals and coming up with the plan and picking the best one. The committee presented that one to the town. We had a public hearing and a town meeting to get approval to move forward with the purchase, which we were able to do. Looking at the payback period, we figured it out to be about a seven-year payback at the time, which was pretty decent, with the purchase price and the amount of savings that was going to be achieved.
And as it was developing, we had people from MSSM on our committee. I see Rob just joined us. Hi, Rob.
ROB: Hey, Chuck.
CHUCK: So there was interest there. When we looked at the numbers, it made sense for the size of the two projects would pretty much cover both the town's electrical load and MSSM's electrical load for the dorm and a couple of small accounts that they had. The partnership really made a lot of sense. So we pursued that. When we initially looked at it, the percentage worked up to 43% ownership share for MSSM and 57% ownership share for Limestone for both entities to be able to save 95% of our electrical costs.
ROB: Yeah, we didn't want one of the owners to end up with a lot of dead credits. So we looked at load and then usage, and if we had 50% of the load, we would have a lot of credits that we weren't able to use based on our calculations. So that's how we determine the ownership amount, it's based on our draw from the load, what we would max out at.
I see. This all occurred before the Inflation Reduction Act was passed, but you mentioned earlier that, for example, the Limestone Water and Sewer District couldn't benefit from tax credits because you are non-profit and you're tax exempt. You may be aware of this, but the Inflation Reduction Act, as far as I know, their tax credits actually explicitly have a provision where schools and towns and other sort of tax exempt entities can take advantage.
CHUCK: Yeah, yeah, that's changed. I was aware of that. But, you know, at the time when we were looking at projects there was no capacity on the grid, so it was kind of a moot point. When the town was ready to move forward with the project they would have been able to capitalize on those tax credits too, but there was no option for building in our town.
I see, and that is a really great point because that was my next question.
You guys are a great example of overcoming one of the big remaining obstacles to the renewables transition, which is this grid interconnection problem, this problem of not enough substations, not enough upgraded substations, not enough power lines. There’s a recent project in Minnesota where they’re planning to shut down a coal plant and build lots of solar at the site to take advantage of the preexisting grid interconnection rights.
So how much work was required to upgrade the existing solar project at Loring Air Force Base?
CHUCK: There were two projects that were on the base. One was put up in 2013 and that one is referred to as Solar I. That was a fairly small fixed array project at 45 kW AC. It's got 9 inverters at 5k apiece.
Then the other one, Solar II, was a little larger project. It was a 180 kW and had 30 dual axis trackers on it. That one was put on online in 2014. These projects were existing and they were producing power and the power was being sold through a power purchase agreement to the Loring Development Authority.
So what did you guys do once you procured them? I know there was some community volunteer effort in working on this. Can you tell me, OK, you bought the rights to these two solar projects. What was your next step? What did you guys do then?
CHUCK: Well, the tracker site in particular had had some maintenance issues. The owner was several hours away, and there wasn't a lot of maintenance that was done on those sites or that equipment on the site, so there were some repairs that had to be done.
The first thing we did, even before we purchased it, was bring a group of students—at the time I was an instructor at Northern Maine Community College—and we brought a group of those students over to help us with an evaluation. We went through and checked all the inverters. We took notes. We had a checklist for an inspection. That really gave this group of students some good hands-on learning about the maintenance for these types of sites.
And then once we figured out what needed to be done, MSSM got involved.
One of the first things that they helped out with was a brush clearing workday that they did at the smaller fixed site, they went out and cleared a lot of the brush that was shading some of the panels. That really helped the efficiency, and it got the students on site to see the systems. They had a tour of both systems and get to learn about them. So it was a good opportunity for that as well.
We were looking at some ways to improve efficiency of both sites, including having the trackers all working and tracking because some of them weren't actually tracking. There were major repairs involved with that.
Another activity at the fixed site, we wanted to investigate maybe separating the rows of panels for the snow to come through, looking at ways to prevent snow buildup, changing the angles a little bit so the snow would shed off better.
We really did an in-depth study. I had a little presentation I did for the MSSM students about what the problems were and what they could look at for solutions. They really dug in and put their math skills to task and figured out, we could save this much if we change this angle and we can adjust this and save this much. They did a really nice report on what the benefits would be to making these changes and adjustments. Since then, the solar committee looked at that and looked at the payback and the amount of effort it would take to do those adjustments.
What we're focusing on right now is we've installed some snow fence around the site to cut back on the wind and the drifting of the snow. So we're going to see how that works out, how that plays out. Basically what it does is when the snow is blowing and drifting, it slows it down so that when it hits the snow fence, it kind of drops right there at the fence instead of getting to the panels and dropping on the panels. So it'll hopefully cut back on our snow buildup on the panels and help us with our production a little bit in the wintertime. So that was a direct result of the report that the MSSM students did. That was one of the recommendations they had, and that was about the easiest one, low cost and low labor, so we wanted to try that first. This was just another example of getting the students involved with the project.
Excellent. What a great experience. I would have loved to do that when I was in school.
I don't know if you're involved with this at all, but Limestone recently started to put in some EV chargers as well. Is that at all linked to the solar work? Is that part of a broader effort to install some clean energy infrastructure or is that just kind of an unrelated coincidence that that's also happening right now?
CHUCK: Well, that's actually a project that was done at the Limestone Water and Sewer District. We had installed those chargers, and Rob was actually our first customer with his electric vehicle to use our chargers once we got them installed. They're available, we have four charging ports available. It's more of a service looking towards the future. There wasn't a big demand at the time, but we got a grant from Efficiency Maine to be able to put those in at very little cost to the district, and they're completely powered from the Water and Sewer District solar array.
ROB: And one of the ways that that continues to represent the partnership between the town and the school is that, you know, we're a boarding school, so we're bringing students from across the state and beyond to Limestone. When I was here at graduation last year, we have a science-oriented group, and the number of EV adopters is starting to increase. So we were talking with folks at graduation, and I think we ended up with three Teslas on campus for graduation, and a few other people talking about they had some range anxiety, so they didn't bring their electric vehicle up.
The site where the new chargers are is a short distance from school. We've told people you can come up, charge there, we'll drive a van down there, pick them up.
So if they're going to be here for an event for four hours or something, they can pretty much charge up right while they're here in town. It relieves some of the difficulty of getting to the more remote place where we are for those people coming from downstate that have electric vehicles. Now there's an easy option for us as a school to encourage our parents to use your electric vehicle to get here. And we have, in partnership with the town, we now have a way that we can get your vehicles charged that will coordinate with you.
You know, I grew up worried about climate change. Now that I'm an adult, I'm still worried, but I'm feeling a lot more hope when I see all these cool projects like yours happening around the world, people doing awesome work in their communities to generate some clean electrons. So thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate this interview.
ROB: Sam, one thing I'll say too is that as you talk about that hopefulness, climate change is more on the minds of our students. We continue to see it be something that they recognize. When Chuck and I were in school, it was not in the forefront.
And there's also been a trend for recognizing the value of experiential education. A partnership like this gives us a huge breadth of data. Our engineering teacher, Eugene Katsman, who's done a bunch of work with Chuck out on the site and brought kids there, he's looking at all of the data that we're able to gather and how we can incorporate that into classes going forward for a long time. So our kids will not just get “oh we're doing this great thing and our electricity is coming from there,” they'll be able to use stuff and do an analysis and continue to look at that and see data changes over time. It’ll constantly be a tool that we'll be able to incorporate into classes. Which is pretty phenomenal for them to have that, and be able to actually see where the electricity is coming from, go to their dorm at night, see how it's being used, and then sit in their classroom and do a project where they're analyzing the efficiency of it and the savings of it and all of those pieces.
That is great. That also harkens back to the story of a town before globalization, where you could see where your food is coming from. Like in the 80s, your electricity came from coal mines way over there. But now these kids can go see where their electricity is coming from. That sort of deep connection to some of the basics of life being produced in your community is happening here with modern technology, which is pretty cool.
So I don't know if this is confidential, but there like a dollar value on how much this is likely to save the school and the town?
ROB: In general, we will completely reduce our dorm energy costs, which right now run about $26,000 a year. So for us, the savings would be about $26,000 a year, putting a return on our investment in there in the five-year range, which is pretty phenomenal.
That is great.
CHUCK: The town's a little more, it's about $37,000 a year. I've actually been tracking the savings. For 2023 to date, through October, between the town and MSSM, the [solar] projects have saved about $63,000. That's 10 months worth of savings.
“For 2023 to date, through October, between the town and MSSM, the [solar] projects have saved about $63,000. That's 10 months worth of savings.”
That is absolutely spectacular. And you guys also got some support from the Maine Community Resilience Partnership, right? That's an additional source of support that helped you make this project possible.
CHUCK: Yeah, that was a really big boost for us. The initial purchase price was set at $425,000 to buy both sites. We wrote a grant through the Community Resiliency Partnership. We went through all of the requirements to become members with the group. We were awarded a $50,000 grant to go towards the purchase. So that brought our purchase price down to $375,000. So that was a big boost. In March 2022, we got that award.
And then another round came out in September of 2022, we applied and received a second $50,000 to help with the efficiency improvements. So that's been kind of our operating budget to get everything back up to snuff and get it all working as efficiently as possible. And we're still working through that grant. The first grant has been finalized and closed out, but we're still working on the second one. We had budgeted about 50,000 for the repairs and the maintenance at the time of purchase, that we knew had to be done. So that was a big boost.
So right now you've bought existing solar arrays and you've repaired them. Do you have any plans for the future? Solar technology tends to improve pretty fast and if these solar panels are from like 2013, do you have plans of maybe replacing or adding solar panels to boost the existing generation capacity sometime in the next 5-10 years? Is that at all on your radar screen or are you satisfied with just repairing and getting fully efficient the panels that you have?
CHUCK: Well, right now, our plan is to work through and get them as efficient and productive as we can. That's where the biggest savings are. I think at this point though, we are kind of looking at budgeting for the future. You know, things don't last forever. Electronics will break down. The inverters are 10 years old, and that's usually about the lifespan of those. And we don't foresee changing them just because they're 10 years old, but as they start to fail, we'll upgrade them.
We do plan on having a maintenance account. Some of the funding for that we're looking at right now is to sell the renewable energy credits to help fund our maintenance cost. So that's our plan going forward so this thing is sustainable, it's going to be self-sustaining, not just for the savings on our electrical costs. Able to keep itself going.
Great, great. Is there anything else you'd like to discuss? Because you guys are doing lots of awesome stuff.
CHUCK: Well, I guess one thing that I'd like to point out is our volunteerism. MSSM has been great to pitch in and help when it comes to repair, because it's no small feat for the trackers, it's a major repair. We have to get a crane in and lift the boom, lift the array off the stand, have the gears rebuilt, and then put it all back together. We've got the process down now, we're pretty good at it, but it's still a lot of work to do this and to coordinate everything and make this all go. And we've had students from MSSM come out to help with this and it's a good opportunity. It's something that you don't see every day, as far as the repairs and working on this equipment.
ROB: The other thing that I'll say is, I appreciate Chuck pointing out the efforts of MSSM, but these types of things don't happen without a driver. The town and the school benefit tremendously from Chuck, because really, he's the driver on that solar committee. He's the one thinking of and identifying these opportunities for the town that then spill over into the school and looking at ways to engage all of those different groups. Not to mention the importance of having a person who really is driving these types of projects would be remiss, and our person happens to be Chuck.
CHUCK: Well, I appreciate that, Rob. Thank you for that.
Well, awesome. You're the mastermind then, Chuck. Thank you for making this project happen. This is an awesome story. You guys are part of the great American renewables revolution, building out solar panels in towns across America and the world. So, thank you guys. Thank you very much.
CHUCK: One more thing I would add is that this project is green in more than one way. We're saving green and we're being green at the same time.
“This project is green in more than one way. We're saving green and we're being green at the same time.”
Yeah, that's great! So were there any sort of difficulties to overcome on the community side? There's occasionally some people who are kind of against anything that seems green. Was there any sort of opposition that you had to talk around or explain stuff to?
CHUCK: Not on our particular project. You know, they were already there and they're kind of out of sight, out of mind. You know, we're pretty agricultural up here, and some of the solar farms that are being put up now, the newer ones, are being put on prime farmland. And there's a little concern with that. But not for our project, because our project was in a place where there was no other use at the time for the land that's there.
And even at the Water and Sewer District, we were very careful when we started our project because we put it within our wellhead protection zone. So there was no other use for that land. This was a prime location for installing renewable energy because you couldn't develop that land for anything else. It was within our wellhead protection zone.
That's a great point. That's a great way to align land use, making sure it doesn't overlap with people's concerns. That's very clever.
Do you guys have any thoughts, the view from Limestone, so to speak, of sort of the broader picture? As I've written about in my newsletter, we're seeing some amazing stuff in renewables development globally. 2022 was the first year in history in which there was more investment in solar and wind and batteries and other clean energy technology combined than in oil and gas and coal combined. So we're really seeing an inflection point where clean energy is starting to grow really fast. And you guys are part of that. What is the view from Limestone? Do you have any thoughts on the broader global move towards renewable energy and how that interacts with other issues of the world?
CHUCK: Well, from a taxpayer's point of view, in Maine, solar generation equipment is tax exempt. When the town files its tax evaluation worksheet, there is a reimbursement from the state. It's 50 cents on the dollar, for the value of the tax that the state will reimburse the town because the state made this equipment tax exempt.
And that has made a huge impact on the mill rate for Limestone, you know, because of all the solar development that's gone on. The mill rate is, essentially, the property tax rate. Right now, because not a lot of the bigger [solar] projects are online and producing, it's coming in under a different program. It's coming in under what they call a BETE program, a business equipment tax exemption. So that is also helping with our tax bills as far as the local residents go, because this was equipment that would not have benefited our tax rolls and reduced our mill rate if it hadn't been developed.
It was a little bit of a struggle convincing these people to sign off on it, but once they did and realized it wasn't coming out of their pocket, they gladly signed off on it to benefit the town and that made a huge difference on our tax mill rate this year.
ROB: I think, Sam, one of the things that you see on on a larger scale is that green energy has become politicized and it's associated with a party. My sense is that in Maine, we people in Maine are very realistic. And if something works, they're willing to do it. And it removes that politicization of green energy. You know, we have big forests. We've been doing natural resource kinds of work. That's Maine's history. So if solar becomes an extension of that natural resource work, people in Maine adopt it and they're less worried about whether that's a Republican or a Democrat or a conservative or a progressive thing. It's a real thing and it's an industry. And I think Mainers sort of look at it that way.
I think that is really important. I've done some like public-facing advocacy for clean energy issues over the years, and some of the most common responses I got were “I'm against clean energy because I don't like this totally unrelated culture war issue.” That's not really relevant to whether those solar panels will save you money or not. So I'm glad to see you guys are able to get to that unity place, which I think is really valuable
CHUCK: Yeah, we're a pretty independent bunch, we do what makes sense, not necessarily what might be politically correct or incorrect. If it makes sense to us, we got to move with it.
Great! And renewables are what makes sense more and more. The technology is just getting better and better. So thank you guys so much. It's been a great pleasure talking with you.
ROB: Thanks, Sam.
CHUCK: Thank you.
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