 Good evening, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us. My name is Sarah. I am the Events and Communications Coordinator here at RACDC. Thanks so much for spending your Thursday night with us. I know a lot of us are perhaps feeling Zoom fatigue as of late, but we're really excited about tonight's meeting and the program we've put together for you. We have some incredible speakers. We also have some really exciting awards to share with you all, honoring some really amazing community members here in Randolph. And we're really just looking forward to spending the next couple of hours together. Before I hand it over to Bob Wright, our board president, I just want to do a little bit of housekeeping. So we're using Zoom's webinar platform this evening. If you're an attendee, your audio is already muted. You do have the option to connect with us through the chat and we will also have the Q&A function. Those are all available on the lower part of your screen. We will be monitoring the Q&A section to make sure we don't miss any questions and can get those answered throughout the meeting and the speaker series. We're going to start doing the Q&A for the speakers after everyone has ended. So towards the end of the meeting. And then we will also for the business meeting, instead of doing verbal votes or in the chat, we will be using the poll function. So when the slides show up that there is a vote from members, which a reminder you are an RECDC member if you have donated in the last three years or if you have been offered a membership position. So you will see a little pop up screen at that moment when there is a vote happening and you will click on your option. Yes, no or abstain and we will share those results. There's only going to be three polls during the meeting. And then otherwise we will continue on with the program. So again, feel free to reach out in the chat if there's questions or any accessibility concerns that we can help address. And now I'm going to do a little screen share here to get our presentation started and turn it over to our board president Bob Wright. So just a moment. Thank you, Sarah. That was a good amount of housekeeping for us. I don't know if if anybody can hear me or these zoom meetings as you mentioned, do fatigue us from time to time. I do want to welcome everyone for joining us tonight and sincerely hope that next year that we're able to actually meet in public. It's so nice to have a public event that people can socialize and see people face to face. I think we're missing that dearly. I do want to thank Dan Devaux and Sarah for their efforts and work at coordinating this presentation tonight. So thank you for that. Tom airs. I don't know if you're on but I want to thank you for crafting this year's annual appeal. That was very well done and all I had to do is sign my name to it so that's wonderful. Thank you Tom. I do want to have a special thank you to the staff at the Jocelyn House. I'm working very tirelessly obviously through this whole COVID pandemic. First off to keep the residents safe and they've done a wonderful job. All of the residents have been vaccinated. I think they're even getting their boosters, like in the next week or so. But there has been COVID in the last three or four weeks they've been dealing with COVID. But, you know, somewhere up to like eight or 12 of the residents that have had to quarantine and have meals fed to them in the rooms and that type of thing. So the staff has been very dedicated. They're there to make people safe and as comfortable as possible. So a big thank you for the Jocelyn House staff. We've had a pretty exciting year at RACDC this year. Beginning with the move of the RACDC office up to the third floor of the Bar Harbor Bank and Trust. And all the folks at Bar Harbor work tirelessly to make that happen. I think it solved a lot of logistical problems for the bank and has created some very nice workspace for RACDC. This year we've added some several talented people to the RACDC team. I'm going to go to Yorana and Wayne Fontanella have joined Sarah, Shaw, Nathan, and Julie, and they provide much needed capacity of the organization. Peter Reed, the midway through the year, recruited a great facilitator. Pam Mission, who is a PhD and is a professor at Binghamton University in New York, provided a series of monthly sessions with the board and staff to go through a strategic planning process. And directly with the staff, obviously to produce some of the document that you might be reviewing tonight. So that was very well done and a big thanks to Peter for organizing that and getting that going. Also want to thank the board for the support of the organization. In addition to monthly meetings, we have active committees that people work on and they do a lot of work behind the scenes. So thank you for the board members. We do are looking to recruit two to three board members to fill some openings on the board. So we're looking for opportunities to add some folks. Our strategic process also has shown need to activate several committees to support the goals and objectives of the organization. Board members and other members of the community will be crucial to get the representation that we need. We currently have, you know, a housing committee that's working on Salisbury Square, and some other pipeline projects. We'd like to start downtown economic development planning. For the housing, I want to thank obviously the RACC membership. All of our local donors and supporters that help us meet our goals. And some of our institutions in large funders so that we have for some of our various larger projects that we've got going. We've had a number of grants and people that are willing to support in in big ways so really want to thank those folks. One last item for my business is approval of last year's minutes. Normally we would have a motion and a second. And then we would vote to approve last year's minutes that are included in the agenda. So I see that Dan has moved to approve the minutes. Thank you, Sarah. Thank you, Pat. So now we are here to vote on approval. So Sarah guided us through that process so you should have a poll here soon. So with that electronic polling. We'll see how that all works out. I'm going to hand this over now to our VP and Treasurer, Peter Reed. Okay. Well, it looks like we had approval of the minutes. That's great. Yep. Okay, so the, I'm here to report on the financial status of the organization and I am glad to report that we're we're doing a very good job. Things are quite stable and performance has been good. I think our CDC over the five or six years I've been on the board has not because of me but has been steadily improving its financial condition and I think we're in a much better spot now than we were a few years ago. Currently, the revenues for the count or the fiscal year 2021 which ended back in June. The revenues were 1.5 million. And there's a breakout here showing just a kind of high level pie chart of where our revenue comes from it's mostly from rentals with Randolph house being the largest and then other rentals and the other properties and services, especially a Jocelyn house. We received some some grants. As Bob had mentioned, and we're about 3% of our revenue comes from contributions from the community and donors which we certainly appreciate that's a small slice of the pie that we would hopefully like to grow over the next few years. On the expense side, our expenses were 1.4 million. There's a breakdown on the bottom left corner of the major areas of expense with Randolph house again being the largest at over half a million dollars. Randolph house, Jacobs mobile home park Armstrong mobile home park, and then other expenses for various programs that are managed the downtown program and other other things like that, and some some new projects that we're working on. The 2021 revenue was up 16% versus a year before with a positive operating result of $113,000, which was very solid that was up from about $8,000 in 2020. I appreciate the benefit of some some grants due to cove it and things like that, but I will emphasize that, even though we have a strong operating result, all that money is plowed back into new projects, such as Salisbury Square, and I think the better and more consistent financial performance of the organization has allowed us to start offering some benefits to staff this year for the first time, which was a big thing on our action list that's been there for quite a while so we're happy to get that started it's not everything we'd like but it is good start the total assets of the organization grew slightly to 7.3 million. There's basically a lot of real estate that we own. Salisbury, which is basically assets minus liabilities grew 6% to 4.4 million. So you can see from the chart on the bottom right that our assets are growing steadily our liabilities have have started to drop off a little bit. That has led to a nice steady increase in our net equity. So we're, we're doing well where there's always challenges with some of the big projects for working on there's always a little bit of risk of getting the bids in right and making sure that the costs are contained and sometimes we have to be a little more of a shock absorber than we would like but that that's something that we know we have to do and it's it's part of the game of getting these projects done, especially on the housing side. So with that I'm glad to answer any questions people might want to throw in the chat otherwise if there are any more detailed things you might want to know I'm always available glad to receive any any questions from anybody along the way and explain things more detail. So, with, with that I think as the chair of the finance committee I would request your vote on approval of the fiscal 21 treasures report. Move to approve. Was Pat making the motion. Yeah. And I guess I can second, second that. Oh, I'll second that for you. And while we're doing the voting I see there was a question in the chat box. As far as what's in the wings I think our biggest project that is right on the horizon is a rehab of Randolph house and adding a new elevator and some new meeting space and upgrading a lot of the nuts and bolts there it's a nice building but it's not brand new. And the next after that we really are trying to find a way to finalize plans for Salisbury Square to build some rental units there, which I'm sure Julie will talk about and, and also eventually some, some owner occupied housing in that same development. I think our treasures report was approved. And so I will send it back to, I'm not sure who's next on the list. Pat French nominations. Thank you Peter. I'm Pat French, I'm a member of the nominating committee. And for several years you've got to see me every year. And the change this year as we have pictures, and you're going to be surprised how old we actually are when you see us again after COVID. Some of these pictures are older. There are three things that I'd like to mention first. I'd like to thank the staff for all they've done for us this year. I'd like to reiterate that anybody that wants to volunteer from board position to volunteering in an event. We're very happy to have new people are the same people help us again. So just let Julie or myself know or any of the board members or any of the staff members. And I already told you about the pictures that was the other thing. They're a little out of date, but very nice. We have four positions open this year. And it so happens that the four people that are in those positions right now are interested in continuing Bob right. Who's the current president, Peter Reed, who's the current vice president and treasurer and Bob Moyer, who's the current secretary and Pam Stafford, the four of them would like to be run and be elected again. So that's the nominating committees recommendation that these four people be voted on. Are there any other nominations with that, I will ask the voting now begin. It looks like the slate has been approved. Thank you. This is Julia Flynn, the executive director of our CDC welcome to the meeting. I'm going to take a little tour through the year past and what we're looking forward to in the coming year. As was mentioned earlier, we're going to sort of base our tour on our strategic planning goals. And one of the things I want to mention is that how it is a constant eye opener to us, the talent and generosity of the people in this community. We have talked about permission who is a local new local community member who helped us through this process and help the board and staff to reflect on our aspirations for community, and how our CDC is working contribute to the health of not just our residents and community members but our business community and our social well being as well, like all good plans. We hope this will grow and flex as we do and as we learn from doing. We want to welcome your thoughts and of course your help in overcoming the challenges we face to reach a brighter future. And the next few slides will walk you through the basic elements of the plan and how our current work and future work is going to contribute to that. Go one is that all individuals and families in the Randolph area have affordable housing and the supportive services they need. The way we look at this is that our homes are the platform on which our lives are built. They are where we eat where we sleep, socialize groom and lately where we work and learn more and more. And imagine trying to build a life without a home imagine tackling all the problems that life throws us with no roof over your head, and without enough money to pay the rent or the heat. So our CDC is rededicating itself to maintaining the housing we have as quality safe and affordable home bases for our residents and building more housing to serve a wide range of diverse households incomes and needs to create a really well rounded healthy and resilient community. Now these projects take a long time to develop a great deal of expertise and teamwork and a lot of funding. But like Randolph House, which will soon begin the biggest renovation and expansion it has had since it was constructed 43 years ago. These homes serve our residents for generations. And so it is important that we continue to reinvest in them, as well as to invest in our new homes. More now than ever our homes need to be energy efficient and energy resilient and like the Salisbury Square phase two development that you'll hear more about later we're working with experts to try to build a community of the future that will serve low and moderate income households with cutting edge technology. We were honored recently to have Senator Sanders visit Salisbury Square with us and have both Senator Sanders and Senator Leahy honor our project by choosing it from a long list of applicants for their nationally directed spending requests. If passed through Congress this would provide a $750,000 grant to help make our microgrid plans a reality. Following the V light or Vermont low income trust for electricity planning grant for $75,000 that allowed us to kick off development of the plan that you'll hear about from our speakers. Our investments are very necessary to learn and to put that new wisdom to work where it's most needed. I'm going to go to goal to that the area has a vibrant and diversified economy that contributes to the resilience and sustainability of the community. We were so happy this year to work with CAD models and prototypes. And to help to the bring this high tech prototyping firm into East Randolph with a small business loan, and then to obtain a small grant a $15,000 grant for facility improvements. Now there's no cookbook for economic development. As we all know. We're back at our annual report after tropical storm Irene. The pandemic has been a kind of another crisis inflection point for us. And in that report we identified some lessons we learned about economic development that we're enforced by the pandemic now, and by the example of so many of our local businesses. And a lot of these apply to CAD models and many of the other sort of locally grown businesses that we've been able to work with over the years. And these basically revolve around the proposal that rather than looking for economic salvation from outside our community. These were lessons about how resiliency is really built from the ground up. And our takeaway is that resilience isn't created on the day of a disaster it's revealed. These included promoting from within, in other words supporting our local businesses and our people, focusing on attracting talent, not just business, building on our strengths and promoting what we stand for. In the case of CAD models, whose president grew up in Tundridge grew his business in California but decided to come back here, because of the workforce because of VTCs programs, because of the hardworking workforce, and the support of the community. So these are all excellent cases for why it's important to stick with those, those core values, and then a couple of even more important lessons that I think we learn a disaster and have learned recently is to treat each other with respect and to not leave anyone behind. When we learned after Irene and relearned during COVID-19, good neighbors are literally and figuratively sometimes the bridge that never falls down, and they're always there when we need them. So I want to thank everybody for who helped during COVID to sew masks and deliver meals and and do so many things to help each other and to help our business community through really tough times. The key is that people in the Randolph area come together as a community. This is so important, because a community may be tested in crisis but it's often forged in fun, and in sharing that fun and so, COVID's been tough for that but recently we've, we've enjoyed sort of bringing back the event with those events that you see on the screen the welcome back and track the safe and seen Halloween. They have been modified but they're important places to share to enjoy to meet neighbors to learn and even to share or debate ideas. Without that it's really hard to feel like you're part of something bigger and that's what community really requires. So whether it's holding a Cornhole event festival block party, playing secret Santa to local seniors, helping create our mutual aid group we are committed to cultivating community spirit and community connections is reflected in those smiling faces you see in the picture on the screen. And the next level four is the oh so important RAC DC has the resources to accomplish its mission. And I guess the past couple of years has shown us more than most how important committed staff and volunteers out of the work we do our latest employee and Howard came to RAC DC because she wanted to serve the people here in the community in which she had lived all her life. And we are very impressed with talent expertise and a tremendous capacity for compassion and understanding, and we are very lucky to have her. We need people like and and resource to get and keep good staff to continue to make progress. I want to thank our donors are staff are volunteers for the time the talent and the treasure that they commit to this and every effort. You can see that. You can see our secret Santas on the bottom there delivered to over 100 seniors, these lovely sort of holiday gift bags during cove at a time when so many of our seniors were isolated and it will bring tears to your eyes to to read and hear some of their reactions. And one of them I think at least is in our annual report which I hope you'll take a look through goal five is that our CDC collaborates with the other organizations in the community so that the whole is greater than the some of the parts and I think the best example of this this past has been the Randolph Mutual Aid Network or ramen, as we call it, or to some of our staff the noodle. This is a great example of what we can and should do to support each other during crisis. And without Romans organizations local institutions volunteers and donors so many people who received help would have had trouble dealing with everyday life. We are looking to also work again, potentially with Pam mission is generosity knows no bounds to take to think about the future of ramen and how we move from a crisis to a more resilient and sustainable mutual support organization. So anyway, in just closing thank you for everything people have done to help through a really difficult year or two. So really looking forward to doing more for the community and with the community with your help. Thank you so much Julie and to our board members here. I guess this concludes the official business meeting. But we have some exciting announcements coming up with our award honorees. I get to have the honors of starting us out with the energy rising awards. I feel really thrilled to share these for a couple reasons one because the energy rising award, which has been presented to folks who in the community who show exemplary engagement raise energy and contribute to the spirit of community was first. I guess it's inaugural award was first provided to my aunt in law didi bacon Tracy, whom I think if any of you have lived in Randolph any point in your time know who didi is. She is was our CDC's beloved sash coordinator who many of our sash participants still will speak. So I'm very excited to present this award and similar to last year. We are honoring multiple folks with this award. I think it's pretty beautiful to see that we have so many great folks to to nominate so for everyone's awareness, these nominations coming through the community staff and the board and then they are the nominations are considered and approved by the board. So this year again we have to. Well, it's actually for full participants. And I'll get us started. So first we have patty and Travis Burns of Cuyah sandwiches and kitchen. If you've been in their restaurant I'm sure you only have great things to say about their delicious food. I think that feedback and background of the work that they do and why they were nominated Travis and patty first opened for service on February 26 of 2021. I think we all recognize that coven was still very much a huge burden on our shoulders, and it goes without saying that it takes a lot of courage tenacity and perseverance to open a new business and such uncertain times. We've been here spending several years working on the West Coast and owner operated restaurants the burns is landed in Randolph Travis's hometown to manifest a dream worth creating with a globally inspired menu and a locally crafted sense of community patty and Travis have brought an authentic and refreshing energy to Randolph's downtown business community. In the opening they have not only served up amazing food, but have also created a space to feature local artists and musicians in their restaurant with a rotating gallery and music series that has helped amplify the work of the arts community. It's so humbling to witness how they continue to embed their business in the community, and we look forward to seeing them continue to flourish. Thank you so much and congratulations to patty and Travis. If you have not yet visited kuyas head on over to 29 North Main Street and you will not regret it. Congrats to both of you. And next to continue on with our food theme. Our next honorees are Jennifer bird and Adam him and of taco cat cantina and taco truck all stars. The entire board was just thrilled to to see this nomination come through. When the pandemic hit, Jen and Adam found their food truck business and quite the whirlwind of uncertainty with canceled events. And yet they pivoted to doing a series of pop ups along route 66 off the Randolph exit of all places serving up their Mexican inspired cuisine with locally sourced ingredients. After resoundingly positive response from the community, the two began exploring opening a physical restaurant in Randolph's downtown and voila landed at 21 merchants row, the previous black cream tabern location. And not only do the two balance both their radiantly colorful cantina space and merchants row, but also their food truck business. And they maintain a sincere focus on helping others. Since opening taco cat cantina. Jen and Adam have provided meals to those in need through the statewide everyone eats program, which helps provide nutritious meals to Vermonters in need of food assistance via strategic partnerships with local restaurants and food producers. We commend their community centered approach to business and the bright light they bring to our area. Thank you and congratulations, Jen and Adam. We are so thrilled and lucky to have you here in the Randolph community. And with that I'll hand it off to Julie again for the Hutchinson award. Thanks, Sarah. And congratulations to energy rising winners. It's exciting. The Hutchinson award was created a while back in honor of a great character who died too soon but who had exemplified during his life. A really boundless sense of giving to the community. And so this award is named for him, Jim Hutchinson the Hutchinson award for people who live up to that. That incredible level of service to our community in a variety of really different and wonderful ways. So I want to also say that our winner is Roz Burgess and Roz and I spoke were invited to speak this morning and Kevin McAllister as well on WGDR radio about the award and Roz I was able to speak directly to do to the award and we are going to have that on our website that you can listen to that. That will be up and live tomorrow if you want to hear in her words talk about what she has done at this park and what the award meant to her. It was a lot of fun to have that chance to talk to chat together this morning. And again that will, there will be a link to that on our website tomorrow. And so, I don't think there's a much more potent example of the power of one person to make a difference than this year's Hutchinson award winner Roz. The award that she will receive in person, which we can't hand through the screen reads for her tireless efforts to beautify very often inspire countless others to cultivate a true sense of place in our community. The truth of the matter is, I'm sure Roz got tired many, many times, and to be tireless in your efforts doesn't mean you don't get tired. It means you keep going anyway, which is just what Roz did for years, guided by her own vision and desire to beautify this and other little corners are of our community. She dragged stones and tools and plants and even water up to that vacant unattractive corner parcel for years inch by inch and plant by plant bringing it to life with color. But the real miracle of her efforts is not so much in the success of her efforts, although the beauty of this garden is undeniable. The real miracle of her tirelessness and division is what it inspired in others. So Roz needed a place to put her tools and Joe Miller built her a shed and the Rotary Club loved what they saw happen and wanted to help and recognize her work. So they did cleanups and bought benches and tables to the site. And then sunny hole wrote a grant application to recognize her work as well. Marjorie Ryerson asked Roz what she needed to help her out and she said she thought a sculpture would be wonderful. And so Marjorie contacted local sculptor Paul Calter, who donated his time to meet that beautiful lemon lily sculpture that graces the park now. And then town workers help took up a water collection system. So Roz no longer had to bring her own water, and the list goes on. So we each have have it in us to inspire. It may not come immediately and I'm sure if Roz could speak to this herself she would agree that it, it did not, but people can recognize dedication and devotion is what which is what we have seen. And what we now applaud with gratitude in Roz Burgess. Thank you, Roz. Congratulations to all our award winners and thank you for all your dedication and devotion and service. We're now going to turn to the speaking part of our of our program. It's a timely discussion to talk about energy resilience. Last and burden of energy and climate change is in the news this day, and, and many others and, and often threatens those most with the least. And not only do we worry about the uncertainty that faces us, but the opportunities that they present have to be in the front of our minds as well. The rural communities have always been really good at resiliency we value self reliance, we hate waste, we work well together, and we are innovative out of necessity. State and federal investments entrepreneurship technological advances have come very far the past two decades to make solar power net metering and energy storage more affordable and more cost effective. And our speakers are going to help us learn the many emerging ways the energy resilience is now accessible to really everyone, and that it's more powerful, pardon the pun than ever, and that it really has to be successful really has to benefit everyone because it is only by, you know, working together and finding those ways to be self reliant one community at a time and to inspire others to find new ways to address our challenges that we are going to succeed and be successful in our lives and in our economies. So I'm very, very thankful, grateful that we have four wonderful speakers today, Kevin McCollister the first speaker is a principal at catamount solar and one of the founders of that organization. Right here in Randolph, and Kevin's going to speak to some of the things that catamount specializes in in the solar installation world. Jim Miriam is with Norwich solar and the regional solar organization to speak to a program that they have been developing for more institutional and small business supports for solar power and then Peter Schneider sort of magician at efficiency for body helps people everywhere I don't know how he clones himself to around the state has been helping us with the Salisbury Square microgrid project on this and also with our, our net zero home plans and development is going to speak with Gil van de Broek of direct energy partners are consultant on the microgrid product project project about that and what a microgrid is and how it really has the capacity to be a game changer in the future. So thank you all for sharing your wisdom with us this evening we're really looking forward to hearing you your presentations. All right, I am going to stop with this PowerPoint and let Kevin take over and get us started. I think you need to enable my screen sharing. Okay, one second here I will do that. All right, go ahead, Kevin. Can we see my screen. Yes, excellent. All right, let's go. So, thank you for the introduction thank you for the invite to let me present at your annual meeting. As Julian is here said my name is Kevin McCollister. I'm the founder and managing partner at catamount solar, which is Randolph's hometown solar design and installation company. You've probably seen our office which is on Randolph Avenue across from merchants row, shown this slide there the big yellow Victorian house. The warehouse down in print street next to the bowling alley we sublet space from the food shelf. And so that's a nice partnership, residing and working with those guys. 10 to 15 minutes to talk about residential solar residential battery storage, energy resilience in general for focusing explicitly on on residences. We're going to speak a little bit about catamount solar and different things that we do provide a little bit of context for why these technologies are growing increasingly important and, and then some of the options for going solar and potentially adding storage at the residential level on. So catamount solar has three main business units we do quite a bit of residential installation all across the state. We've been in business for 10 years were is that our logo says we're working around cooperative which is an employee ownership structure focusing on workplace democracy and economic fairness among our staff. And as part of our goals as a work cooperative work, a community focused company we donate 5% of our annual profits back to committee organizations in Vermont. So we do residential. We do fair amount of off grid. I'm going to mention when we start talking more about solar about the difference between grid tide and off grid solar sometimes there's some confusion about that. And we also have a fairly substantial commercial business. Photo in this picture is recent project completed in 2021 down at Union arena, which, among other things, in addition to doing solar has become the first net zero ice arena in, at least in the US may possibly further than the US. So it's kind of a big deal. And they're very happy down there with what they've been able to do. In addition to solar, which is our main work. We install different products and services that are complimentary to solar, and these include cold climate heat pumps, so which are highly efficient electrical heating and cooling for homes and small businesses. Battery backup systems which we'll talk more about. There's the picture of the Tesla power wall. People are more and more familiar with that. And EV chargers, you know they're not a real big part of our business, but when someone wants one, especially when we're our electricians are at their site. Solar install. These level two chargers which you would want if you had an electric car you want one at your house, they require a separate 240 volt circuit, and that's not a big deal to install them but usually you would need an electrician. We're there anyway installing your solar we can certainly put in your EV charger at the same time. Excuse me. Electric vehicles are becoming more and more mainstream. As a business, we're probably going to just start doing this for people, whether they need it or not, because it makes sense that houses should have these. And so when we're putting solar, especially when it when it makes sense and it's not difficult to install, we're putting solar on a garage system, we will just go ahead and put an EV charger in for people. Yeah, so they'll be ready for their electric car, because they are are coming, as I said, so just a bit about the context of why this is all important. Just calling the slide, greening the grid and electrification of society. We're doing this to stave off the most catastrophic event effects of climate change and global warming. And the way that's going to happen is by greening the grid, adding as much wind and solar to our grid as we possibly can, and not not just our Vermont grid but our collective grid, nationally and internationally. At the same time, moving completely away from the burning of fossil fuels and carbon generating combustion to electric appliances, electric vehicles, electric heat, everything is going to be electric in the future. And hopefully that electricity is going to be produced by a carbon neutral grid focused on renewables. So more wind and solar. The problem with wind and solar of course is their intermittent resources and the wind doesn't blow all the time the sun doesn't shine all the time. So the importance of storage systems, particularly either grid scale, probably combination of grid scale batteries, as well as home and business batteries is what's going to carry the day to make this transition. It's, it's going to take a long time for us to get there, but it's already happening now. The prices have come down tremendously for home solar systems. Battery pricing is it's frankly still a little bit expensive. Hopefully it's going to come down more demand is extremely high for lithium batteries, especially for because of the ED market growing. And we are hopeful that they will be coming down for home systems as well. Before I talk a little bit more about solar. I wanted to just explain the difference between grid tide solar and offered solar. So I'm surprised, you know, solar to become much more mainstream. People call us and tell us all the time that they want to go solar and go off the grid and we always ask them first, oh well, are you already connected to the grid. And most of the time or a lot of the time they are, and we need to step back a minute and say well if you're connected to grid you probably don't want to get off the grid because you have power from the utility. So what solar can do for you is provide your power from solar power through net metering, you will make more power in the summer and less in the winter. When you're making more power in the summer, your batter or your meter will go backwards and you will create utility credits that you'll then be able to use at the time so when you're either not using solar or when you haven't been able to make enough power to cover your needs in the wintertime. Off-grid systems are for people that don't have utility connection by and large and there are quite a few people in Vermont that choose to live reasonably far from utility lines where it might cost them $100,000 to $100,000 to bring utility lines to their house site. And in those situations, for sure it makes sense to build an off-grid system. We do quite a few of these. Those systems utilize many of the same components, especially the panels and inverters the grid type system with would use but they're also dependent on batteries by and large and also usually they have a generator. That's the key difference. The batteries that off-grid systems require obviously they're not making power at night and so they have a battery bank to cover their power needs when the sun goes down. They're responsible fully for creating all of their own power. So there's a full range of different types of solar power systems, different sizes, different types. We've done hundreds of them over the last 10 years that we've been in business. What we generally do is go to, when we start working with a new client who somebody's interested in solar, we want to find out how much power they need and what the available space is. And that's pretty much what determines the size of the system and how we're going to go about building it. There are different attachment types for all different types of roof, whether you have an asphalt shingle roof like the upper right, different metal roof standing seam or channel drain metal. We have a partnership with timber homes from on to build carport structures that have solar on them, like the photo in the lower left. And we have them on the ground in even a small sized ground mount. This is actually my neighbor up here in East Montpelier. 12 modules on the ground, didn't want it on his roof, had plenty of space on the ground. Works great for him, but he's very happy. There are also single pole systems where there's not a lot of space laterally but you can go up high and have just a single attachment to the ground with with a large array on top of it. So there are many different ways to customize a system to make it work for your site. One thing to remember is that these systems are completely scalable. So they're not, they're not a cookie cutter where you have to buy something that might be too big for your needs or it ends up being too small if you're hoping it's bigger. They can scale upwards or downwards, depending on your budget and or how much power you need to generate. And that's the, the puzzle that we saw for you when we come out and assess your needs and provide a proposal for you. Two words about battery storage. Things have changed in the battery world significantly. And the picture on the left, old school battery systems used to be made from lead acid batteries that required lots of maintenance. They off gas hydrogen so the systems had to be vented they were a little bit dangerous that way. They had to, they were those batteries have water in them that needed to be checked the levels checked and refilled with distilled water, and they didn't last that long, and they're very expensive. The newer systems on the right are lithium, lithium ion lithium lithium ion batteries. They're contained almost as an individual appliance. We saw photo earlier the Tesla battery. You can tuck them away they don't need to be vented. They don't require maintenance. They last longer than the old lead acid batteries. So there's basically just less to worry about with them, and they that you can discharge them right down to zero without worrying about harming them so they're much more user friendly than battery systems in the past. And the reason you might want to have battery system in your home is is they provide backup power during utility outage quite, quite obviously. And as we know or we're learning. We're going to have more frequent and more severe storms in the future and we're already seeing this and with climate change and warming climate, especially for where we are in Vermont. I'm afraid we're also going to see more ice storms, likely, which may cause additional utility outages. So for security and resiliency, home based batteries make a lot of sense. Another valid great value of batteries, especially when you also have solar is that the batteries will keep your solar power system running when there's a grid outage without batteries in a grid type scenario. The system is going to shut down and stay down while the utility is down because it's a electric code safety issue. We don't want to have power running back onto the grid for line workers who might be working on that outage problem. So, if you have batteries, the battery system will separate your home from the grid, create grid that convinces the solar system that is okay to generate power. So you'll have more, assuming in their son in the period after an outage or if there's an extended outage, the solar system will continue working, generating power both for your home needs as well as power to replenish the battery over time. So it creates sort of a double resiliency effect when you have solar and batteries together. So distributed storage definitely helps the utility and green mound power is a very forward thinking utility and Vermont, they have several different programs that help people to buy down the cost of having these batteries. The programs are too complicated to get into depth in, but there's a leasing program, there's also a program where you can own the batteries. The reason GMP does this is because they want to use that battery power during peak load periods to help them reduce their peak load to avoid having to buy very expensive power from the regional grid. And so they encourage residential distributed storage and make agreements with those customers to share that power when they need it and they pay you for that. And so that helps to finance the cost of putting these batteries in. So just to sum up some of the key points that we talked about here that to mitigate climate issues and the effects of climate change. There will be more and more renewable generation, as well as the conversion of fossil fuel powered appliances and vehicles etc to electric as a way to reduce the carbon burden and hopefully mitigate the most severe effects of climate change. And that there's lots of options for solar to bring solar to your home, whatever type of roof you have as well as different ground mount options. And the big idea I think is that solar plus storage when you have them both that will equal reliable power, because the storage will keep the solar running if there's an outage. That's all I have for now. Of course, we're close by and we're happy to help. Feel free to call us anytime. Even just to chat about solar. We will love to help you out and listen to your ideas. Thank you. Thanks so much Kevin, we will let Jim Mariam take over go ahead Jim when you're ready. Thanks for coming in like Kevin thank you for letting me attend tonight. I really love Kevin's presentation. And I think it fits with this meeting just from the perspective of how generating your own electricity builds businesses within the community strengthens economic ties in the community. Great pictures of just like people out working those are like our neighbors and I just love seeing those types of presentations. So thank you Kevin. So I'm going to talk a little different thing Kevin tonight about a different option. This one's geared more towards small businesses. And it's a program we have called the small business community solar alliance, which allows small businesses to participate in the savings and the environmental benefits from solar. Even if they don't have the space. One of the benefits of the small business alliance is that it helps small businesses save money. And so right out front, we can help businesses save around 8% on their electric bills and I'll go into that in a little bit more detail. And it also helps them participate in being able to lower their carbon footprint or their impact on reduce their impact on climate change. So to the right, there's a few businesses that we've worked with big ones like King Arthur flower and upper valley aquatic center, and then some smaller ones, like river loose brewery down in white river junction. So how does a net metering agreement work so most of what Kevin was talking about. And I don't want to be sweeping with his conversation is about people owning their own systems. So in this particular case what I'm talking about is a third party owns the system, the solar array, and they sell output. The solar credits that are generated off the array to small business customers, and the small business customers are able to get that power at a distant discount that gives them those savings. So a net metering agreement is the mechanism that allows that to happen. So it is very standard agreement all of those entities on the front page participate in a net metering agreement. And what it does is the each month credits that are generated by the solar array, your local utility. If you want that's green mountain power. And for Randolph is green mountain power. It puts those credits on your bill automatically. And for simple math, if you have $100 worth of credits that are generated. Those go on to your bill from green mountain power, and then what you end up doing is paying $95 of those credits to the system owner, and you keep the $5, which is your savings. In addition, because those $100 of credits offset the need to pay sales tax you generally pick up another 3% in savings so that initial 5% discount helps you generate a total of 8% savings after your electric bill. And so here's kind of like an example. You can see perhaps but still just because it's a little bit complicated to understand you don't own the system. You don't put up any money up front, you basically are just buying credits, they get appear on your bill from green mountain power. And what then you do is you pay back part of those credits to the system owner so the first picture here is a typical electric bill. A little bit of detail here, bypassable charges are the charges we can offset these are regulatory legal terms. So this is the bulk of your bill are things that solar can offset in 2016. There is a change made in the rules such that there are certain charges on your bill that you cannot offset those are called the non bypassable charges. So that's your energy efficiency charge the low income surcharge and a few fees that are on your bill so we can on this particular bill solar can offset the $1,000 on this bill cannot offset the $80 and 86 cents. So if we put credits on your bills we can help reduce that state tax. So, second, second picture here is your bill that shows it in this particular month you got $750 worth of credits. So you're state tax reduced from 64 to 19. And then you get billed by the system owner in this case that's not solar for a portion of 95% of those solar credits that you received. And you pay that portion back to the system owner. So at the end of the, in this example at the end of the month you save $82 and 50 cents. So as I was saying before, the benefit of this particularly for small businesses is that allows them to, with a fairly low touch, be able to, you know, save, save some money, but also help benefit people and planet. And a statistic I like to quote is for every new kilowatt hour of solar generation that occurs in New England, we are offsetting a kilowatt hour of natural gas generation. So it's, it is important new resources coming on the grid have a large impact on being able to reduce Vermont and New England's overall contribution to climate change. So I get to, in the benefit of my role. So I didn't really say that at the beginning so I work at North solar we are based in White River Junction. I'm the CEO there, and I'm also a Brookfield resident not a Randolph resident, but a Brookfield resident. And both of my children attended Randolph Union High School with my youngest child is graduating last year. So in my role I get to go and I get to talk to a lot of boards and businesses, and there's some frequently asked questions that come up. So I like to address those because they're pretty common. So the, the first one is how common are net metering agreements. And the answer is very common. So almost all nonprofits and most businesses utilizing solar utilize net meter agreements for for savings and for profits pursue the net metering agreements because they can save money, but they don't have to invest any capital in in terms of being able to save that money. Not sure. So, so sorry the animation of this one a little off. So another question is, is that for a long time the price of solar has declined over the years. So a fair question is, should we wait, and would we, you know, the opportunity for a bigger discount occur. And the reality is, is from two perspectives. The answer is no. The first one is, we've done a great job collectively, ringing out the cost of installing solar, both from the material standpoint, the panels that you see here in the picture. Those prices have dropped. Oh, 90% or more in just the last 10 years. They've basically stabilized and have gone up a little bit over the last couple of few years. And same with other equipment there. And then from the perspective of labor and the cost associated with installing that's pretty much been flat. And the other aspect is in Vermont, the net metering compensation what you get paid for those solar credits. Since 2016 has declined significantly. And as a result, you can see here in this graph. You can see a decline in the number of applications have occurred for net metering because of the decrease in compensation. So the short answer to this question is, no, you shouldn't wait, and everyone should act. The question is, is there operational risk or capital required from the customer. So in this case, this is owned by a third party. And that third party assumes all of the operational risk. And there is no upfront capital required to participate by the small business. Not all small businesses, but the same is true for schools, or any, any other municipality or business, regardless of size. And if the system does have a failure, which is very rare, because there's not any moving parts that third party owners responsible for fixing that. And the common question, which is a really good question, which is how can the owner afford a discount to the customer. So it, a lot of times you can see when I talk to board as you can see it on their faces like, this is too good to be true. You're saying I'm not putting money out up front, and I can get a discount off my electric bill. What's the catch. And there isn't a catch at all. What benefits the, the owner of the array is, the owner of the array to take a 26% federal investment tax credit. And so that helps provide room for being able to give a discount to the customer. And so the combination of the federal tax credit and the ability to know that over a period of time they've got customers that are going to buy the power off that array, even if it is at a discount, allows them to be able to provide that discount. It allows them to provide financials and assurance to any, any lending institution that they'll be able to pay back the loan. So, while it sounds to be good to be true sometimes the answer is that it's, it's legit. Again, as I'll show you some of the participants that have done this. This is a tried and true method of being able to install or take advantage of solar. You can offer and then Kevin, Kevin what Kevin presented for the most part, nothing to say anything wrong with Kevin's approach. This is just a different way for people to participate in solar, and particularly helpful for people that might not have a lot of upfront capital, or particularly if you're a nonprofit, you can't take advantage of that 26% federal tax credit. So, almost all nonprofits go the route of the net metering agreement and take advantage of this type of arrangement. Another one is, again, sitting where we're talking here in terms of Randolph and RACDC do local communities in Vermont benefit. And yes, you know so each of these arrays pay annual property and school taxes and Vermont income taxes. The array construction supports numerous local contractors provide rent payments to landowners employees, people at Norwich or Catamount. And it keeps I think most importantly our energy dollars circulating within the community. And you can't ignore the fact that you know a lot of our customers are nonprofits, affordable housing agencies, municipalities and schools. Those discounts have a meaningful impact on the community and help every resident in the community, particularly the most vulnerable and helps keep and reduce risk to future escalations and costs for them. And it reduces the state's carbon footprint as well. So just a little overview of some of the clients. A King Arthur was going to make everyone of these animated. So this house on the left hand side here. This is the Randolph house here in Randolph. We did a project with Randolph area Development Community Corporation or RACDC last year. And we did all of their properties, and it's actually this array on the left hand side. What I like about this is this array on the left hand side was at Washington County mental health services so we originally did a project for Washington County mental health. Supplying them within that meeting agreement down in Randolph, I'm sorry down in way River Junction on top of a large warehouse. They got to understand the benefits of it. They came to us and said hey, we have some land and berry that we can't utilize is there a way that we can install solar there. They got a lease payment which helped them extend the mission that they have, and then we ended up being able to build this array, which ended up having RACDC and these these properties on it. It also had capstone community action, which is the moment from the weatherization work that they do and the low income services they provide, and then it also hosted the credit for Champlain housing trust for a property that they had so through that original connection, it brought us another opportunity and it was able to provide benefits to a lot of great organizations. So you can see from here the client list. There's a range of for profit to schools to municipalities all taking advantage of this type of structure, and we're trying to through this program, extend this down to small businesses that have historically kind of been overlooked in this process. And that is, they're all using the same structure I would say the difference that we're trying to push here with a small business community alliances. We're really trying to make sure that the, you know, kind of backbone of our communities can participate in being able to help the environment and save economically. This is the picture of Norwich. We best places to work in 2020 very proud of. We're local business in the upper valley. We work with dozens of contractors around the state with hundreds of employees through those contractors so it's, it is hard to emphasize enough, the amount of employment that the broader industry brings both in the construction of these arrays but then also just being able to keep more of our dollars local and staying within the economy. We're the largest solar developer in terms of the amount of certificates of public good or permits that are derived in the state of Vermont. We're the employee level wages benefits for everybody. We're in the long process of becoming a B Corp accredited organization. We also have an R and D group within our organization, which has won several US Department of Energy grants. We're working on one of the grants was to help remove snow from panels in a passive way solar arrays in a passive way so there's, we can increase the output of arrays across the state of Vermont and northern latitudes. We also have a grant for when solar is most in demand, in terms of where it's needed on the grid. We also have another one to do some concentrated solar work down in the Southwest United States. We have our own om division, which is called runtime solar, which just helps us make sure that the rays that we build and others build are available and working to be able to provide savings and environmental benefits that we claim. Another thing that we're very proud of in 2020 are solar installations provided $4 million in lifetime savings to low income Vermonters. So this predominantly done through affordable housing agencies and agencies like RACDC that have a mission of providing housing to low income Vermonters. And that concludes my presentation. Thank you very much for for having me. Thank you so much Jim that was awesome on so informative. I will let Gil and Peter take it away. I'm hoping Peter will be joining us I don't see him here yet, but maybe he'll make a surprise entrance. Okay, perfect. Thank you. Just trying to share my screen. I need to rejoin the call in a minute. In the meantime, I want to thank Gil for stepping in D's son, his, his colleague, and his wife had a great time recently a little, a little sooner than expected and so he'll offer to to help out in the pinch, and we appreciate you doing that. Thank you so much. Okay, we're back online hopefully I can now share my presentation. Is this okay for everyone. Yes. Okay, great. Thank you all for for joining today and thank you particularly Julie and Sarah for the organization today and the opportunity to to speak here and share some insights with all of you. Thank you for having heard that the two previous speakers, Kevin, Marion about renewable energy in the communities, as well as incorporating battery storage to improve the resilience of the communities in Vermont. I want to deep dive into actually the electrical network infrastructure that we're trying to upgrade in one of the innovative projects that's RAC DC is performing nowadays, which is the Salisbury square housing residential DC micro grid. I'm here from the book and I'm part of the design team working for direct energy partners in charge of designing and developing the DC micro grid concept for this community, particularly with the objective to improve the resilience of the community. As the previous speakers already indicated, actually resilience becomes more and more important, because our electrical infrastructure is being threatened by natural disasters by climate change. Meanwhile, it's undergoing a significant transition from being a fossil based system towards renewable distributed electrical system. This is the site that we're talking about, which is the Salisbury square DC micro grid that we're now envisioning comprising 21 new units and 15 existing units. And actually this presentation will be about the electrical interconnections between them. You may know or you may not know that currently, and if you plug something into the socket at your house. Actually, when you measure the voltage there. Actually, you'll get an alternating current waveform. That's a difficult terminology to just say actually that the voltage is continuously jumping up and down positive negative and that happens 60 times the seconds typically That's why the voltage looks that way is actually from history. So it's historical reasons that made us that currently we have such a voltage waveform. So what we're proposing here is DC micro grid and as you may have already guessed, we are planning to deliver here to all the different housing units, not an alternating current, but a direct current. So it means that the voltage will be constant over time so instead of jumping up and down will be a straight line. So you may wonder why would we consider doing this, and that's exactly my purpose of today with this presentation to get you up to speed with why this makes sense to improve the resiliency of the community. So I'm going to question the first part of my presentation today and actually to gain some understanding about the why DC micro grids make sense. We need to make actually a trip back in history back in time, back to the early days of electrical power systems worldwide. You're going to discover that the first electrical systems that were being deployed worldwide and in particular for instance in Manhattan where first electrical systems were being installed by Thomas Edison. Actually, those systems, they were powered by direct current. So back then we have typical systems with limited number of consumers typically lighting some small scale rotating machines that need to be powered, and they were powered by local on site small scale generators. So that happened across cities in the very early days of electrical power systems, and we're talking end of the 19th century so about 120 130 years ago. These initial systems were direct current based because that was the most evident choice actually to power them that way generators that were available that back then they operated at a direct current. However, they suffered one major drawback, and the major drawback was the range that they could cover. They can go up to about half a mile. So it's fine if you can power from a small scale generator. Some some some housing units within half a mile in reach, but if you want to transfer more power or wanting to travel longer distances actually direct current was not an ideal solution. So we were constrained in the distance that we could cover. The solution to that in the early days was to just place distributed generators all over the cities, but back then these first team power generators, typically also co fired. So it was a nightmare in terms of the local air quality there. So they didn't prefer that solution of having multiple distributed generators on site. Actually this model of small scale generators continued all the way until the 1930s, 1940s, until the launch of the, the new deal policy following the economic crisis back then, where large infrastructure projects were started large infrastructure projects that also focused on massive upgrade of the electrical infrastructure. And that required not to build small scale generators close to the load centers, but to build large scale and power plants at remote sites, improving local air quality, but requiring long distances to be covered by means of electricity transmission lines. So in the 1930s, this became the predominant model of electrical generation transmission distribution and consumption. We have and that's still the situation that we have today we have large scale power plants. We have transmission lines running to the communities and then we have local distribution infrastructure to cover the last mile of it. The reason why this infrastructure is currently operated by means of alternating current is purely technical, because with DC with direct current we couldn't cover these distances of 2030 40 miles at least with alternating current that was very easy to achieve, because we could step up the voltage by means of transformers. So transformer technology was available back then for alternating current for DC that was simply not possible. There were stick to low voltages, and that meant that back then the end of direct current. The times have changed times have changed in terms of, first of all, the types of loads that we need to cover and supply back then it was lighting it was rotating machines. So basically whether you power it with alternating voltage or direct voltage, it doesn't really matter. They will vote, both run. Today, the picture is completely different. We have electronics, we have multimedia we have LED lighting. We also have also for heating ventilation and cooling we're moving towards the electrical side. It was already mentioned, the future is electric. And also at the level of generation, we're adding distributed assets in the mix like solar photovoltaics. And that trend will only continue in the future because electricity is the most efficient way to power all those appliances, and you can generate electricity in a sustainable manner by means of renewable sources. What you'll notice in all these applications that's indicated by the icon at the bottom, I hope you can see my cursor. So these icons actually indicate what type of current these applications generate or require. And the straight line is a symbol of direct current while the alternating symbol is the symbol of alternating current in this case. And actually, the majority of appliances the majority of applications that we like is direct current nowadays as compared to the lighting and rotation machines we had earlier today. And that explains why if you need to power your laptop, actually you need to have those bulky adapters in between, because those adapters, the role of them is to convert the alternating current from your socket to direct current that goes into your laptop. And the other way around, if you have solar PV, you have solar inverters that do exactly the opposite, converting the direct current into an alternating current compatible with the grid. And that's how we do it today. Now the future is becoming increasingly decentralized. So in a certain manner we're going back to the future we're going back to decentralized small scale power plants so that long scale and issue with direct current is becoming less prevalent. Why is that happening that decentralization that is because big is beautiful no longer holds in case of solar PV systems and battery systems. There are some economies of scale but large scale solar plants make use of exactly the same solar modules and technology, just at larger volumes and numbers. And those are the same as what you would put on residential rooftops. And actually those power electronics will get to the point where you get you get the aha moment of why DC makes sense. If you dive into those those laptop adapters, which we call power electronic converters converting AC to DC and the other way around. And essentially what you notice into these electronics is a distinct part which converts AC into DC and then a smaller part, which adapts degenerate the DC voltage in there. The same holds for your solar inverter at home you have a yellow part that does maximum power point tracking of the modules with kind of control that's in there. So all we convert the DC electricity into AC in the red zone. So, simplifying how our current system is being built up will are building it in a way that we have a lot of DC DC and a lot of DC AC blocks. And since generate solar power we converted into AC and will convert it back into DC to power laptops multimedia lighting and so on. So that's exactly how we do it today. So there are a lot of blocks in the chain that are from technical point of view no longer needed, but just because we're stuck with a legacy AC infrastructure to interconnect all these devices makes that we need to have this additional step in between. So what we're proposing for celibate square is an approach where we adopt DC microgrid will have the community powered from the utility which will still be AC, but will centrally at the center of bookkeeping make DC voltage locally and distribute that to the units on site. And that allows us to eliminate a lot of power conversion blocks in the community. And that elimination of power conversion blocks delivers us a more efficient system. And it delivers as a more cost effective system because less electronics are required in the chain. So it's overall more compressed cost competitive as compared to the AC system we're doing today. Besides this community can operate standalone independent from the overall AC infrastructure. So if something happens at a higher level at a level of green mountain power. Actually the community can still continue to exchanging power between units, you can still share power with your neighbor, you can still make use of your own side generated PV electricity. And that gives you a level of independence. Meanwhile, providing a level of resilience. Besides that, by moving toward DC, we can also put in thinner wires, or equivalently, we can make use of existing conductor material to transfer more power in between the homes that are planned there. An interesting feature particularly looking at the uptake of electric mobility and associated charging needs that come with it. Now DC microgrid technology, maybe for some of you the first time that they're confronted with it, but actually in the last 15 to 20 years, actually it has been introduced in more and more applications worldwide. And through them, all by one to motivate why and how the actually one of the first adopters was were data centers, the Facebook Google data centers there those advantages really are already economically viable today. In the commercial buildings and districts, same type of rationale we have their simplify the overall electronics that are integrated in the power system. Within industry, they use DC, within street lighting applications for public lighting, they use it, because they can cover longer distances basically, and they require less transformer stations in the chain. And in electricity access for rural electrification. There are about 4 million systems solar home systems being deployed in communities that are in developing countries. And then last but not least, our mobile applications like aircraft shipboard power systems, that's where DC is already becoming an important technology. And then moving the move towards a residential DC microgrid at Salisbury Square. So what we're going to do is at Salisbury Square is we're going to interconnect a housing units to DC infrastructure, running at 380 volt DC and 760 volt DC for the solar car ports, providing charging points for the vehicles. So we're going to supply all those houses from the central central building the bookkeeping building, which has a single connection to the utility overall within that building we have also energy storage plant. The advantage of having that energy storage for the community centralized that location is that actually you can provide grid services to green mountain power green mountain power will use those battery assets and times when they have a shortage of transportation on the grid for instance peak load times, and that way they prevent that they need to need to turn on peak your plants which are typically high with with high carbon emissions in there. So we're contributing to the sustainability of the overall power system that way by putting it centrally we can immediately release that power to the utility without actually overloading our local infrastructure or overloading our local infrastructure. In case of the utility outages we from we can from the main building keep on keep the lights on in the entire community. That's our goal. In the homes actually it's pretty simple what we'll do actually we will collect the solar regeneration will convert it locally into creative all DC will route it to the central building. And we'll also have a second connection, entering the building, which will then power the lighting sensors by means of a separate fold server. And in case there is some legacy AC equipment and there are some sockets that still require alternating current. So to be kind of backwards compatible, we will still generate AC within each house. As long as we consider that the kind of transition measure that's in there. In terms of improving the resiliency of the community, actually, we plan for having about one megawatt hour of battery storage installed in there, which enables the residents to cope with an outage of approximately two days without any load shedding or whatsoever. So the main loads can be powered continuously for two days by providing that amount of storage as I already indicated DC micro grids have already entered the markets in particular applications. So you may are may wonder, okay, what makes Salisbury Square so unique. And actually, one of the main points Salisbury Square is the scale, we're cooperating the 36 housing units into a single DC micro grid infrastructure. And that proves to be a challenge from design and engineering perspective so it's really a first of its kind project that we're realizing here. However, it has a tremendous amount of opportunity to scale and to be replicable in other communities. And that way we move from a system where everything is centrally controlled and where you have central failures that may make that entire community cities suffer from blackouts for instance like in Texas, we move from that type of system to a system where we have more distributed small scale cells micro grids that can operate for a certain period independent from the larger whole. So we really take on a divide and conquer approach where each community can take take care of his his own for a certain period of time, while still being interconnected with the larger system in there, but in case of contingencies, they can fall back on their own resources and continue operating generating as they used to. So in the design process, and because we're looking here at low to moderate incomes, we took, took in costs from from day one into the into the mix. So that's another important factor that distinguishes this project from other demonstrations worldwide, which were typically pilot systems, where costs didn't didn't really matter. So this we do factoring costs from from day one. We're also closely collaborating with Green Mountain Power as utility to see how one benefits the other, for instance, providing the battery storage asset to cope with peak demands is one of the main advantages that they see from the DC micro grid towards their system. So we're not only providing value to the community we're also providing value to Green Mountain Power, and in return from for that actually also the financial picture for the community becomes more interesting. Also we involve major stakeholders to get this DC project off the ground. One of the things that I didn't talk about yet is clients manufacturers. We have some AC sockets to power legacy AC infrastructure. Yes. But at the same time we're working with tier one appliance manufacturers that will provide kitchen equipment induction cook tops refrigerators freezers washing machines dryer combinations you name it. And essentially, for them this is this project is also catalysts because they are waiting to get that catch 22 results and let me explain that more in detail. Actually currently, a lot of appliance manufacturers are looking at DC they see the benefit they recognize them, but at the same time they say okay but there are no systems in place yet. Because there are no systems in place yet. Why should we bother serving that market why should we set up a separate production line or modify our existing appliances why should we go that extra mile. If the market size is still relatively minor. Actually there are these type of projects that are highly interested in because it can really be catalyst and initiator to prove towards their upper layer management that they need to start taking DC series. Seriously, and they definitely are. We're really surprised about the response that we got this far, and very likely within the Salisbury Square DC project will get the first DC home appliances from from a major manufacturer in there. Principal benefits in summary for the utility utility grid support already talked about that, but also, more importantly, they're important benefits for the residents in terms of resilience. There is a backup power available on site, which is shared with the community so that also enables to keep the amount of storage limited as compared to providing a storage unit for each and every house individually will have a higher level of power quality. So in case of disturbances that utility side they won't propagate into the community and won't affect them. In the meantime, we're aiming for an economic return, of course, by providing that utility grid support, while at the same time by means of DC infrastructure, lowering the capital expenditures upfront, and the operational expenditures during the operation of this system will be more efficient. We'll be able to run the system and make use of better use of the on site generation, and that's significant in terms of the numbers that we run this far. We're talking about capital expenditures that can be lowered to about with about 20 to 30% in total so less infrastructure to be put in operational expenditures. We calculated actually we can anticipate about 5 to 10% of energy savings on an annual basis. If you translate that into number of PV modules it makes that you can make better use of your PV systems on site. That concludes presentation for today. I hope I could convince you about the main benefits that DC microgrids bring and the unique innovative project that we're conducting here together with VIC and RACDC. And we hope that this becomes a reality in the upcoming years. Thank you. Thank you so much Gil. We now have some time to have a Q&A. So, I'm just going to share a screen with some of our RACDCs contact information in the meantime but feel free to start asking questions in the Q&A or as in the chat. If you have any other feedback, I see some positive, some positive reinforcements in the chat so feel free to ask questions now while we still have all of our presenters available. I hope people are thinking this is Julie. I just want to give a special thank you to all our presenters for really well done presentations. Thank you so much. We've come such a long way. I just want to throw out two on the I'm just watching the DC microgrid process unfold. And I'm sure this is true for all of our presenters that it's fascinating to see the team run up against real time challenges, like, Oh, no one actually makes this part now. I just want to see how that doesn't stop them, which is another sort of a very Roz like approach to challenges you just keep going. And my hats off to every single one of the folks that do this work and we're so grateful to be working with such talented people. I hope there are questions because this is, you know, it's a rare opportunity to have this kind of wisdom and talent available for for your questions. Thanks so much. We had a more of a logistical question about the event in general about whether the recording of this event will be available and yes it will be. We'll be downloading it and getting it up on our website by tomorrow, Monday at the latest we're thankful that Wayne fontanella who is our housing specialist also wears another hat, somebody with a lot of neat tech experience and experience recording so he may also break it up into sections so people can view just the meeting or they can view just the awards section or they can view just the speaker series so those are all options, they will be available on our website as well as our annual meeting web page, recdc.com slash annual meeting. And we will also have it linked to our homepage as well so folks will be able to access this again I know a lot of great information to be digesting so keep a lookout for that. Yeah I'm happy to do that so going in order they were received. I love the micro good application for low and moderate income. What is the target cost for the micro good on a per house basis. If there's a better way to phrase please do Gil I think that might be for you perhaps. Yeah, I'll take that one for sure. Yeah, we're currently evaluating that we run through the first numbers in there. I mean the ballpark already mentioned during the presentation. I mean if you look at the power conversion infrastructure that you typically need for each house like putting in an inverter putting in possibly an additional inverter for distributed storage. As compared to that we can save about 20 to 30% of the cost on those components in there. However, we're also in part centralizing that infrastructure in the communities which more complicated to like really attribute how you can save that on a per house basis you think need to look really at the community level. So to make a proper, proper judgment and taking all that infrastructure together. That being said, the definitive answer. I don't have yet at this moment, as we're still reviewing and kind of fine tuning and looking how different architectures can improve that results. Actually, in the upcoming month or so we're planning to release a report where we will publish like the data and the simulations that we have performed for these different DC microgrid architectures so to be continued, I would say. Great, we had another question about. Are there any DC microgids deployed or would this truly be a first time project. Are there any deployed at a smaller scale. That's another one for me so and so yes there are other DC microids deployed. Especially in Europe in Japan, we have quite some projects on going there, but in terms of the scale and that's really distribution level so really sharing power between the houses. That's really a first time to our knowledge. So it's really the scale that distinguishes this project from the other ones. In terms of power level there are similar projects being conducted worldwide but not for for residents with so many different consumers connected to the same same system. So that also means that we are facing also other difficulties. For instance, and that's far from the technical side but for instance with Green Mountain power we're discussing okay what will be the terrace that will be used at this microgrid. And secondly, who will own this microgrid is this Green Mountain power that will supply DC into the homes is this something that's community owned or third party finance. Those are all questions that pop up and that we also need to resolve together with them. So we're working hard on that so on all these aspects, the fact that those questions don't have a definitive answer tells us I think that this is really a first time project of its kind. This next question sounds like it could be for all of our presenters comes from Dan, one of our board members. Do you know what the impact could be for solar and things like micro goods with the two bills being discussed in Congress. This is Jim, I'm happy to take a part of that and I'm sure that others might have a additional content, a couple things, you know provided it passes. One for low income and nonprofit one of the exciting pieces of the infrastructure bill is basically changes to under the investment tax credit I think it's section 25 D and section 40. This basically allows low income or individuals without a tax liability. So nonprofits and low income individuals to actually get a grant and lieu of a tax credit. So, you know I talked a lot on this presentation about the only way nonprofits can really benefit from solar is through a net metering agreement because they can't take the tax credit. So there is in this bill, the ability for nonprofits and low income individuals without tax liabilities to actually participate and get a grant and live a tax credit. That's fantastic. And that's eligible for for profit businesses as well so you actually can get a grant upfront, as opposed to waiting for a tax credit. Another one is in that same investment tax credit so that's that 26% for solar that I was talking about that really makes these things makes these projects tick. I believe it's a 30% tax credit is going to be extended for battery storage. And the other one was showing. And for the micro grid. That would be another exciting way to help basically lower the cost of all of these technologies provide a lot of benefits to individuals. Thank you Jim. In the interest of time I want to get to these last two questions that came in. One, how much does this real this I'm assuming micro grids rely on micro chips that seem to be in a vulnerable state of potential short supply. So anything that micro chip shortage could impact with micro grid technology. Yes, for sure it has an impact the overall shortage of semiconductors, but I think that's, that's in general the case for not just micro grids but also for any type of electronics that we put into our power system, as well as for solar products which are in essence also semiconductors on their own. So yes the worldwide chip shortage makes a dent into the development of renewable power and their connection to the grid point I'd like to make is that actually by adopting such a DC infrastructure unit less of the semiconductors overall to put it into the system. So that may make you somewhat less vulnerable to these type of short touches if they would would continue the way they are or if they would reoccur some at some point in the future. Thank you. And last question. Considering the half mile range for DC and the similar size of most Vermont towns. How many towns could be planning smartly for the day when the technology is ready for mainstream is that far fetched. No for sure not know one one important note there is that the limited range of half a mile basically applied back in the early days of power system because the DC voltage was lower. We do have the technology to move towards higher DC voltage consider for instance electric vehicles they can move up to 400 800 volt DC and higher solar PV on rooftops is already typically operated at 600 volt and moving higher to 900 or 1.5 KV. So that limitation back then was primarily because of safety reasons. Secondly, because a lack of these power electronics in between so it's no longer constrained that facing today. Wonderful. Thank you again. Those are all the questions that have come through. Julie, do you have any other last thoughts before we end the meeting. Just thanks to all I did. I did. Check our history books here. And in 2008 at our annual meeting David Blutter store for you may know from energy systems and all earth renewables. And I think that was the first group and told told the audience then in person of course, that the future was electric, and I'm guessing 75% of the people who are there left through I'm thinking he was crazy. And yet today when we say it, I think probably most of us believe that that's the case so hail to our. More clearly than than some of us do and and for the people like our speakers for making it happen. Very grateful and grateful to the staff and the board. Everyone who attended and please spread the word this will be available off the website for others who couldn't attend with us tonight. Thank you so much. Thank you all so much for being here and one last plug our 2021 annual report is coming out soon so keep an eye out in your mailbox and on our website. Give that a look for a more detailed descriptions of all the things we've been working on and opportunities to get involved. Have a great evening everyone and be well and have a great evening.