 Okay, so we're now recording. All right, great. Welcome everybody. Hi, everyone. Hi, Laura. Hi. Hi, everybody. Yeah. Okay, great. In fact, we have everybody don't we know. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Okay, great. So welcome everybody. Thanks again for your time and effort and thinking on this. This is the. October 21st, 2022 solar bylaw working group meeting. For the town of Amherst. And happy to kick things off. Thanks. Stephanie for providing us the meeting packet. We have the agenda. Open or available to us. I presume everybody has that and recently has that in front of us. In addition to the normal. Activities on the agenda, we will also have an update. In an introduction. And some time with our solar. Consultant hired by the town. GZA and welcome them to the meeting. That will, we'll kick off that shortly. And then we will. Start digging into the work plan. And our engagement with the planning department. On the. Developing the, the, the bylaw and the process for, for doing that. I'm looking forward. To. Some background expert information and background on solar development. From Laura. Later. In the agenda. Where's Laura. There you are. Okay. I'm not shocking you. Am I. You're okay. Good. Awesome. So I look forward to that. And then. Some time to talk about the next agenda. Agenda items as well as hear from the public. As we. Finish out the meeting. Before three o'clock. Great. So. Let me. Remind. Bob. You're on on for notes minutes today. So that's great. I do know you need to be promptly at three and my, my. My goal is to, is to. A journey solid promptly at three. So hopefully that's not an issue. And just as a heads up. It would be. Dan. Next. For the, for the minutes on. I think we'll be November 4th. Yeah. Okay. Great. All right. So any. Issues or questions before we get going with the minutes. Can we introduce a guest? Say it again. For the minutes. Can we introduce Steven and Adrian. Yeah. Yeah. Stephanie, do you want to do that now at the beginning or when we get to that agenda item? Well, I was going to sort of wait until the agenda item, but we could do it now. I guess that's fine. Okay. Adrian, why don't you, I'll let you introduce yourself and then Steve, if you can introduce yourself. Great. Thank you, Stephanie. My name is Adrian. I am a natural resource specialist with GCA geo environmental. And I am the project manager. For the Amherst town-wide solar assessment. So we'll be working with. With this group in the town and the public to help develop. A model to understand solar capacity in town. And I'm, I'm Steve Leco also with GCA. I'll be working with Adrian on that project that she mentioned. I'm an associate principal. I'm a planner. And an ecologist. So. Like I said, I'll be working with Adrian on development of that GIS based tool. Thank you. Yeah, thanks. Okay. And we'll get to. We'll get to that in a minute. And learn more about the assessment and the work plan. In a moment. Okay. So first agenda item is to review and vote on the minutes from our last meeting. October seven. That was in our packet. Let me ask if there are any. Questions, comments. Concerns. those minutes. Great. If not, I entertain a motion to accept those minutes. So moved. So moved by Martha. Thank you. Do we have a second? Janet is number two. I'm not sure if we need a voice on that, but Janet will be the second. And then we can vote on them. Okay. So we should have voice votes. Just it's fine. But just in the future, we should probably have voice votes. So I'll, in no particular order, just need your vote on the minutes. So Brooks. Yes. Brugger. Yes. Corcoran. Yes. Hanner. Yes. McGowan. Nice job. Yes. Jemsek. Yes. And Paglia Rulo. Yes. Okay. Minutes are approved. Great. And I did want to thank Laura, right? You did the minutes. So thank you for those. Yeah. Okay. Next on the agenda is staff updates. And we'll go with Stephanie and then Chris. And I like to also add just any quick updates from any of the committees that we represent. I don't have any updates this week. Great. All right. Chris, any updates on your end? We'll be talking about the outline later that you sent around, but yeah. Yeah, I just wanted to thank Janet for the information that she sent me. She had been working on a draft. And she sent me all that information. And that was helpful. Thank you. Yep. Thank you. Okay. I guess I can just give a brief update from the ECAC, Energy Climate Action Committee. We did talk about solar at our last meeting and the solar assessment. And we will also, as that committee will also be, have the opportunity to meet with GZA, maybe at our next meeting. I'm not exactly sure if that's been scheduled yet. Yeah. And we did talk about providing some input to GZA with regard to some scenarios with regard to how much solar siting would as a analytical exercise, how we might go about basing certain amounts of solar hosting, capacity hosting that we would like to see to help meet our climate goals for the town. Probably a couple scenarios on what that hosting capacity might look like and then work with GZA to help us to visualize what the options are for potentially hosting. That type of capacity, that amount of capacity within the town, given the technical potential that the GIS exercise will provide. And so we are in the process of developing those scenarios and we'll make those available and work with GZA on that when we have that available. Duane, could you define hosting capacity just for the lay people like myself? Well, for ECAC, we thought it would be helpful to go through some analytical exercise to pull together a couple different evaluations of how much solar might make sense. These are not decisions or recommendations, but just an analytical exercise based on several metrics to ground in reality some sense of what might make sense for the town, Amherst, to take on as their share, cut in several different ways, looking at it several different ways of what the town might be, it might be reasonable to want the town to host in terms of is it 10 megawatts, is it 50 megawatts, is it a 30 megawatts or whatever. And we thought we would probably not specify a specific goal but provide a sort of low, medium, high range to then be able to provide information to ourselves as a committee, this committee, or working group and to town constituents with regard to if we wanted to host this scale of megawatts of solar within town, what are the different options we may have with regard to the siting options that we do have, rooftops, parking lots, and undisturbed land. So this is different from the GZA, just like how much solar capacity we have and where, is it's a different issue? Well GZ, and we can get into GZA in a moment, but we can let them do that, but I just didn't, I'm trying to understand the nuance between their work and ECAC. Okay. Well GZA is going to provide an analytical tool to enable this type of analysis to take place. Okay. In terms, yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, great. Okay. Martha, sorry. Yeah, well yeah, my question is why is it ECAC that gets to do this and they get to define what targets the solar consultant should consider when our committee was supposedly has that charge and we were told we were not allowed to do that. We're not ECAC, well for one ECAC is the way you presented it, but it strikes me as they're the ones involved and we're kind of not to discuss it. I don't quite understand that. ECAC is charged with developing and have developed a carbon mitigation plan for the town and part of that, one part of that, is to generate renewable energy within our borders and amongst that is solar and primarily solar in terms of what we have available. And so we want to come up with some sense of what it would, what might make sense in terms of helping to meet as a component of meeting our greenhouse gas reductions, how much solar from a, from our climate, given our climate goals that ECAC is recommended and has been adopted by the town, what scale of solar development would make sense to help move the town towards those emission reduction goals. Now, again, we're not, we're viewing this at this point as an analytical exercise and providing information to the town and to the town officials and to the town at large with regard to what it might look like to host this type of capacity in town. We're not advocating for any particular type of development at this point. That is really more, the purview to some extent of this committee is how do we zone for this per solar coming our way in ways that are aligned with the preferences of the town. But we're not, the ECAC exercise is not specifically engaged in what we're doing with regard to the zoning for that solar hosting, but providing some guidance and I think useful information for this committee with regard to how, how we should go about looking at the zoning, the zoning that we're going to be putting together. Maybe just ask then, Stephanie, have the, have our GCA consultants been provided the town managers charge to this committee so they know what we're supposed to be about? Well, let me move on to Laura first and then Stephanie had her hand up. Yeah, I just want to quickly chime in and say thanks for kicking questions in order. But I think that one of the things I'm going to discuss today because I feel like there's a general and understandable lack of understanding and how much available capacity there is in our region of the state. So I'm going to briefly take you guys through how any sort of solar developer would look to see what substations are here, how much capacity is available, and then the work that's entailed to actually confirm that that capacity is available. Because I just think at a sort of a high level here, what strikes me almost in every single meeting is that there's this inaccurate belief that we can say we want solar here and here and here. But in reality, if there's no capacity with the utility, it can't go there at all. So I mean, that's like the critical piece. So anyways, I would just add to that, Laura, maybe is that our charge from ECAC and this committee is not necessarily looking at where solar can go today or tomorrow or in the next five years even, but over more of a long period, I mean 2050 tends to be the goal for the town and for the Commonwealth. And so I think there's expectation that at least Commonwealth wide distribution lines need to be enhanced to support the distributed generation that is expected. So I do see that as a limitation to development today, but maybe less of a constraint as we look sort of forward into time well enough in the future that that sort of change might take place. Stephanie. Do any if I might. So I just want to sort of get to Martha's question earlier and sort of reduce this as to the most basic simple response that I can, which is the ECAC proposed a solar assessment right out the gate back in 2019 when they convened, even before these other issues came to light. And they talked about needing some kind of a solar bylaw. So those are discussions that they had well before this committee even convened. So there's that, but also they're charged with actually trying to identify the amount of solar that we can have. That is something they've been charged with to sort of look at what do we need in town. This group is specifically charged with trying to identify where the restrictions might be to put it. It's more about the the zoning guidance of like where where could we legally put it? Where can't we put it? So you're more the guide. You're creating the guidance of when someone wants to put solar in town. Where does it go? Where can it go? That's what your committee is charged with. They're two different things. They both have a role. They're both equally important. So I just don't want to get hung up on this. What do they get to do when we don't get to do? It doesn't really serve us. I think we're very clear. I think staff is clear on trying to get the right parties the information that we need to sort of move us along. So you have a very vital role, but I think theirs is a little bit different. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Yeah. I just feel sometimes a kind of a lack of information. But also, you know, I would say that the ECAC has done a lot of good work still doing a lot of good work and conscientious, but their plan was before the state of Massachusetts put out the June 2022 climate plan with the near term goals, which really shifted the emphasis a bit. And so I think that's also something to consider when saying, oh, how much should Amherst have someone? Thank you. And thank you for the comments and Stephanie for the clarification. That's really helpful. So any other updates or comments from for many of the other committees that are represented? Super. Okay. Great. So let's move on to the next agenda item, which is hearing from GZA. And basically, we're looking for sort of an introduction, an overview of their of the project that they are just embarking on now, the scope of work and so forth. And then as we do know, they through Stephanie provided us with a draft set of questions. Importantly, these are questions. These are questions for the department heads are not questions for the public. They those will come later and we'll have a chance to provide some input on those later. And so we can have a discussion on these questions from the department head or figure out how we're going to provide some feedback. But it's in my mind a very different purpose of these questions than the questions for the public. But Stephanie, do you want to introduce the GZA work with at all? Or just should I turn it over to Adrienne? I think Adrienne will do just fine. And Adrian, if I can just ask if you have some slides, can you just get them to me so I can add them to the meeting packet? Oh, yes, absolutely. I'm going to share my screen now. And that's the presentation mode. Great. So as we said in the introduction, I'm Adrian Dunck. I'm with GZA and Steve Letko is also here. So we are working on this townwide solar assessment. I think Dwayne kind of summed it up perfectly that it's an analytical exercise, not focused on, you know, what should be done, not focused on recommendations, but really just quantitative exercise to understand what land is available in town. So we have a primary team of three people. Steve, myself, and then Jacqueline Claver, she is our GIS, so that's the Geospatial Information Systems Specialist. She will be doing the core mapping work based off the information we gather throughout this project. So as a project overview, I really think about this project having three phases. So we're in this first phase of gather right now. And we're going to be gathering feedback from you, from ECAC, from the town government, and also from direct public participation through both online engagement and in-person engagement. Using that information, we are going to develop an interactive map-based tool. So that's where that Geospatial data comes in to help people visually understand kind of what land types are in town and how that relates to solar. And then ultimately, we're going to issue a report which describes our process, describes the decisions made, and also characterizes the data that's available in the map. So the map and the report are very closely related, and they are going to be created based on the data gathering we're doing today, and we're doing in this phase. We view this meeting as just an introduction with your group, and we will be back for a more content-in-depth discussion later as the project progresses. So today our goal is to get, introduce ourselves, and also to get feedback on questions that we have written for the town department heads. So we'll go over those questions, and what we're really looking for is input from your group that's been kind of compiled and given to us through Stephanie. That'll help us have a clear directive instead of us trying to figure out maybe like what one person meant or what a comment means by going through Stephanie. We'll have a nice, clean communication channel. Some of the questions, if you do wish to respond to them, we just ask that that come in writing, but we are certainly happy and open to hearing or getting your feedback at this stage, but do know the questions we're going over today are for the department heads, so they may not feel super applicable to you directly, but we'll be back in the future to gather more in-depth input. So when we meet with the department heads, we want to use these questions to really facilitate our discussion and our conversation with them. So we've issued, we think there's five statements here that they can quickly give us a strongly disagree to strongly agree, and these are really about to help us understand how the town, you know, the town department heads understand solar, how they understand how solar will change their jobs, and how they, you know, how we can make our analytical exercise and our results easier for them to understand and implement and respond to. So these questions are mostly about, if they have already had experience with solar, if solar may change their work or change some of the responsibilities of them or their staff, if they're comfortable using mapping tool, and if they, again, have had that direct experience. We're also inviting them to submit a little bit more of a free-form response. I'm expecting, you know, a couple of sentences max on each one of these from department heads to kind of expand on some of their things that they are maybe concerned about or excited about related to solar development. So we've brought these questions to your group today so that you're informed of what's going on, you're kept in the loop, and if you think that these questions maybe are missing a topic from your experience in town, that's, that would be really great information so that we can know that we're asking good questions to, to start our data gathering. So I'm going to keep sharing this, but I'm going to expand the participants so I can, I can see you all. I think first off, are there any specific questions? I see Robert Brooks, you have your hand up. Yes, I just want to know if this, this slide show will be available on our resource page. I will provide this slide show to Stephanie, but I'm, Stephanie, can you respond to that? Yes, so once it's provided to me, it goes, as soon as I, any presentations that occur during the meeting are put into the online packet. So it's always in the online packet and I'll forward it to the group as well. Thank you. You're welcome. And great, Martha, you have your hand up. Yes, just interested to know what do you expect to learn from these particular questions to department heads? I mean, I picture the head of the recreation department or DEI or various places. I just wonder what they are going to help you to understand. Yes, we're hoping to understand, you know, who's going to be impacted by solar development throughout town and so help us understand, you know, who should be engaged in this process and who maybe this process won't touch so much. Maybe they're not, they're less engaged. And then also to understand in terms of feasibility, if there are planned projects in the town that may make solar more feasible or less feasible to just to help us understand the townwide planning and future development needs. I mean, it seems that, you know, the planning department would be the, you know, main, most important people, the fire department might be concerned about, you know, battery installations, but I just had a little trouble picturing what some of the other departments might be able to contribute to you. Right. And because we, you know, I don't know every department and what exactly what their role is. That's why we want to start very inclusive and get this out to all the department heads. That way they can kind of self-select into continuing to coordinate with us. Because there may be departments that we don't think, we don't realize have a direct relationship to this, but maybe they do. And so that way we're going to start with a wide net so that anybody who would be engaged in solar and other development in town has the opportunity to weigh in. Okay. Thank you. Great. Any other thoughts or comments for Adrienne? Super, Janet. So I'm glad, I'm glad, Martha asked that question because I was a little confused about the goal since, you know, our committee is looking at trying to figure out what the community values are and to prioritize locations that sort of, that's later. I thought that in the second question to the second set of questions was what possibility am I most excited about relative to increasing solar development in Amherst, which is very positive. And then I thought maybe a question that might help you understand what's going on in the community might be what concerns have been raised about solar by staff and residents. And so you might get an answer from the fire chief about what they're worried about. You might get an answer from Christine Brestep, our planning director about the attempt to get a solar moratorium and what people were saying. And so it might give you more background into, you know, whatever. And then we also have a lot of really exciting work going on at the university and colleges on solar. So that might give you some more information on that. So concerns, positives or, you know, past experiences, I think would cover a lot. That's that's my input. Great. Thank you. Yes. I think that's helpful. Great. I just wanted to, in your, before we got to the questions, you talked about the GIS exercise to sort of look at the land and everything. I just wanted to maybe you know comment a bit more about the intent and scope to look at the built environment as well, because obviously that's going to be as very important to this group, ICAC and the town as a whole. Yes. We will be looking at both the built and unbuilt environment. And so we are, yeah, we'll be characterizing what exists and then and then helping contextualize what capacity that that could relate to. But we're not veering into more of those community and value driven decisions. This is kind of a neutral analytical tool that you all can use in decision making. Thank you. Great. So I think if there's no more questions right now, Steve and I can, we'll sign out of the meeting, but definitely if there's any more discussion, I've taken some notes, but any other discussion on adjusting these questions, if that can just be sent to Stephanie. And I know she will get it over to us. We're going to have a very similar meeting with ICAC next week. And then we will begin meeting with the town department heads. Janet, I see your hands up. Thank you. I thought the presentation was going to be longer. So I had another question. So your solar assessment, your first step is just the, just look at us, what's there, rooftops, utility rights away, farms, whatever, open land. And then is there a community engagement piece that you'll be doing later in terms of surveys and questions? So that we're not discussing that right now. That piece comes later. Okay. Okay. So is that later? And then I have a second question. Yes, we are doing community engagement and outreach. And that will be before the mapping is completed. So that information will be used in the mapping. So we're starting, yeah, we're starting with the committees in the town to get some understanding of the technology, of the needs of obviously engaged citizens like yourselves. And then we'll be going to the broad public to everyone in town. So that sort of leads to my second question because I got, I read the UMass Clean Energy Institute kind of solar process. And it seemed to me that the assessment, the solar assessment come first, and then the community would be provided with information and then surveyed. And we are like a very information dense community. And Stephanie will attest to that or anybody who lives here. And so I wonder, you know, have you done that later or have you done this process before in tandem? And how has that worked? The other question is, can we can we see your proposal or maybe Stephanie can send us your proposed like an overall proposal too. But my question is really about sequencing. I was sort of expecting community engagement to come after the assessment. So we've done community engagement in many of our projects. And generally, we work with a more involved group of citizens to help get sort of a draft together to get some of the structural decisions made. And then we use that to develop a prototype or, you know, a draft version that we use to engage with the community. That way the community is involved at the decision making stage instead of kind of after it's completed. And so we find that that that iterative process of having some more targeted engagement, a draft material, and then broad engagement before finalizing our report and mapping and assessment is a great way to go so that people are engaged early and often. And Martha, I see your hand up too. Yes, just following on then. I mean, I guess as you know, our chair here is indeed head of the clean energy extension at UMass. And so have you studied, for example, their report on conducting focus groups for solar planning? Because it seems that, you know, a lot of thinking has already been done. There's no need for you to have to start from scratch if you can, you know, use other material. Yes, we use other material. We've been coordinating with Dwayne. And then we also have done similar outreach efforts, especially around, you know, other resiliency concerns with towns. So we do have experience in doing the outreach and the focus groups on a variety of topics. And we'll bring that that experience to bear here. And I'm always available to help you to talk to you about what we came up with. I think taking some of your expertise, what we've come up with. Can help everybody learn together on how to conduct useful, insightful surveys for the town. Absolutely. And for your actual technical work, I wonder, could you say at this point a little about what criteria you plan to use to judge whether a site is suitable for solar? I know, you know, Laura has already mentioned, for example, you know, whether the, you know, transmission lines and so on are in place. But could you say anything about the criteria? So we're still in the draft, very draft phase of that. So we are working up our final list of criteria. But I think very importantly, we are not necessarily looking at the suitability of a site. We're looking at the feasibility from a physical standpoint. So exactly we will be looking at the grid, the energy grid and its capacity to take solar energy on distance from substations, slope, things that go into the direct feasibility of installing solar panels. But we are not tasked with and we don't want to put our own thoughts ahead of the town and the communities on what is a suitable area for solar. Yeah, thank you. That's a good distinction. Thank you. Laura? So I had a question about that last point. So it sounds as though you're going to do sort of some, I would assume like desktop analysis using GIS to determine leveraging ever source and national grid maps, you know, where capacity is available and so forth. Duane kicked off the call talking about how his opinion, which I'm not as optimistic, with utility upgrades of lines, are you accounting for any capacity upgrades, you know, cost sharing or how deep is your study going on the engineering component? So we have not defined exactly the depth of the study in that area. We will be, that's part of what is going to be in the report is really contextualizing our findings and saying, you know, there appears to be this much capacity in maybe surface area, but these are some limitations or these are some, you know, upgrades that would be necessary to kind of unlock that full potential. So that's more in the reporting final phase is contextualizing the geographic findings. That part's really interesting. I didn't know that was a part of your work. So that's really exciting. And I assume that, so just having developed solar for so long, frequently the maps by ever source and national grid are totally inaccurate. I mean, not totally, you know, sort of high level, you know, and then you dig into the study with utility and it shows something different, but it sounds as though you have access to additional data where, you know, you could sort of assess, you know, potential upgrade requirements costs or, you know, things like that. Are you going to that level or not so much? I don't think it's this time we can go into that level. You know, I think that that would require a lot of information from ever source and national grid that they maybe don't want to share. Yes. Okay. Thank you. So yeah, we don't have any no trade secrets, unfortunately. Janet. So I just love community engagement. And I know it's hard to do. And we have at the same time, we have a lot of resources for it. I've been collecting a list of like groups to send to a survey or putting some thoughts into maybe focus groups. And so I just want to offer that as assistance as the process goes on, because we have there's lots of little networks and, you know, the League of Women Voters has a great outreach and things like that. So I'm putting that, putting that little list together. And I'm hoping that could help you when you're in your more deeper community outreach phase. So that sounds wonderful. Yes, we'll be coordinating that with the town with Stephanie. And so I'm definitely going to note that down. To tap into these existing networks. Stephanie? Yeah, I just wanted to follow up on that. That that would be great, Janet. And yes, you should definitely, because I think we're going to want to look to that information from you all also from the ECAC. I know that they have a list of groups. When we were putting together the climate action adaptation and resiliency plan, we had some task groups that we worked with. So we had a whole list of community organizations and members. So we would just compile one list, but it should all come through me. And then I'll provide it to them. So thank you. That would be wonderful. All right, well, thank you all so much for your time. I will stop sharing here. Any any additional feedback or input? We would love to hear it. So please just get that over to Stephanie. She's been wonderful at getting us information. So we look forward to continuing to coordinate with her and with you all throughout this process. All right, thank you. Thank you, Adrienne and Steven for joining us today and giving that introduction to the work and moving forward, looking forward to continuing to stay abreast of the work and engage in the work. Wonderful. Thanks. Thank you. Okay. So I think we at this point we sort of expressed one suggestion on the on the set of questions. I think they noted that down. I would suggest that in the course of the next week or so, if anybody has any input or thoughts on the questions, this again for the department heads, it's going to be, you know, different than the questions for the general public and engagement. But if anybody has any thoughts on that, do send them to me and Stephanie and we can accumulate those together. All right. Okay, very good. So let's move on to the next agenda item, which is getting down to the to the work at hand for the next few months, which is but certain at a high level and beginning level here of our work plan and and how we as a working group will be engaging with the planning department to develop this bylaw. I'm not sure if it got distributed to the whole group, Chris or Stephanie, but I do see that Chris came up with a an outline to get us going, which is greatly appreciated. And we can take a look at that today if that was the plan. But but I thought we would go through sort of the sort of developing this this this outline and then and then talk a little bit about our deliberative process together over the course of the months in front of us with regard to I thought it'd be helpful maybe just to have a open conversation about some of the high level principles that we want to just generally adhere to and use to balance our our thoughts and deliberations and ultimately decision making and then talk a little bit more pragmatically about how are we going to put pen to paper, fingers to keyboards in this writing process in in coordination with the planning department and and and deliberate on the I wouldn't say innumerable but quite a few like specific decisions that ultimately would need to be made. So do you want me to talk about what I've done so far? Yes, that would be excellent and that was going to be my next thought is you know we're really happy and pleased and thankful and appreciative to be working with the planning department that has a lot more experience than we do on bylaws and and yeah Chris that would be great if you can give us some some of your thoughts and sort of where we're at at this point but before you do that I do see Stephanie stand up so maybe she has something to help us get started. I just wanted to ask Chris if she wants me to share it now or do you want to just discuss it and then put it in for the next meeting? I think it looks like we have some time I wasn't sure if we would have time okay what time do you think Laura will want to start her presentation around one o'clock or so or two o'clock rather? Maybe I defer to Laura for that. I'm flexible guys you have me company. All right so why don't I start talking and maybe talk for 20 minutes or so? Okay so I'll I'm going to share my screen then and share the document so everyone can see it and I'll just tell me when you want me to move along Chris. Okay so generally speaking what we do here in the planning department is we look at a lot of different bylaw examples when we're trying to formulate one for ourselves and you know just kind of pick what we think are the good things from many different bylaws and you know we don't want to reinvent the wheel every time so we base our work on what other people have already done to a large degree and we see whether we like it or not and whether it will fit in with our you know the way we do things here in Amherst and so I've looked at a lot of different bylaws. Janet started drafting a bylaw and that was helpful and then we have the model bylaws from Cape Cod Commission from Pioneer Valley Planning Commission and also from the DOER Department of Energy Resources I believe this it is. So anyway here are just you know some general sections that we would expect to have in our solar bylaw they may not all be in this particular order and things may get shuffled around but we can kind of talk about you know what I've put down on paper to date and then you know we'll be filling in these sections with material that is relevant. So in terms of the purpose and intent you know we want to give a really strong statement about why we're doing this and some of this will help to support any regulations that we have so you know we want to talk about health safety and welfare but we also want to talk about Amherst has an intent to be carbon neutral by 2050 I think and so a lot of different or I shouldn't say a lot of different several things will be put into this purpose and intent that will help to support our regulations and requirements as we move forward because if we don't have a clear statement of what we're trying to do then some of the things we do down the line may appear to be arbitrary or capricious so we want to bring them back to a clear statement of purpose and intent so that's what that's all about and that can be a fairly long section or you know short depending on how many things we want to include and how elaborate we want to get applicability I think applicability is really going to be talking about large-scale solar installations ground mounted solar installations and that was the mandate that we were given we weren't given a mandate to control in this bylaw things that happen on rooftops so or things that happen in residential locations such as single-family homes so we're really going to be focusing on large-scale ground mounted solar installations so that's going to be explained in the applicability section here definitions in definitions we're going to have lots of different definitions some definitions that we already have in the zoning bylaw are in section 12 article 12 and those definitions can be used throughout the bylaw but if there are things that relate particularly to the solar world that aren't you know commonly used in the bylaw we would put the definitions in here such as a definition of what exactly is a large-scale ground mounted solar array and there will be other things as well so in terms of general requirements you know we're going to require that whatever is built in addition to following our particular zoning bylaws also follow other laws such as wetlands regs and building code and other regulations that the town has with regard to building things in town so that's what compliance with laws ordinances and regulations is all about and then we're going to require that these installations have a building permit and that they be able to be inspected by the inspection services department there will be fees associated with these these applications and some of the fees are already spelled out in the zoning board of appeals and and planning board excuse me application forms but we may have other fees that are associated with this such as 53 g fees which what chapter 53 g mass general law 53 g has to do with this when a um a board like the zoning board of appeals or the planning board wants to hire a third party reviewer for a certain aspect of a project then um this explains you know how do you go about collecting the fees and what usually happens is that the board determines that they need extra help in a particular area and it could be erosion control it could be the issue of glare it could be the issue of screening number of different issues that we want to get outside help on and then we have the ability to um the board has the ability to require the applicant to put in escrow a certain amount of money to allow this third party review to happen and the town hires the third party reviewer and pays that consultant out of these fees so some of that will be described in this section then we would want to have a section um to describe exactly how these things are permitted by um boards and committees that are related to our department and one type of review would be site plan review by the planning board another type of review would be a special permit by the zoning board of appeals i think most um most solar installations in amherst right now are governed by a special permit by the zoning board of appeals but you do occasionally have um an installation that's not a small installation such as the one at hamshire college which is a an accessory use so that was actually reviewed by the planning board under site plan review so we would have a description of what that is about and then we'd have um a description of exactly what needs to be submitted in order to begin this review process and the submittals um usually require you know drawings by a registered engineer and sometimes registered landscape architects and sometimes architects get involved uh in in electrical engineer civil engineer um and then there are documents related to um how are you going to manage the project how are you going to build it so there's a whole list of documents that would be required to be submitted along with an application and then there may be other required submittals and it's unclear exactly what those would be but it depends on the specific project such as you could require a hazardous materials plan be submitted and an emergency you know a plan for dealing with emergencies so those are other types of submittals that you can require which I think should be required in in the case of solar um and then there would be dimensional requirements um you know what are our setback requirements going to be setbacks from property lines or setbacks from residences um and setbacks could be from side lot lines or from roadways so those things all need to be determined they would also dimensional requirements would also include how much of the lot can be covered with a structure and these solar arrays are considered structures so they come under lot coverage and building coverage requirements um um what else how high can they be um how high can the fence be that kind of thing comes under dimensional requirements design and performance standards so we would want to uh get um information from the applicant about what are his plants or his her plants for screening and fencing of the property those are kind of two different things fencing is obviously to keep the site secure but screening is to keep it from being seen from everywhere um storm preparedness that has to do with making sure that the insulation is done in a manner that if there is a storm that these structures are capable of withstanding you know whatever wind or rain or snow happens to come upon them um then there would be requirements for land clearing what kinds of um things do we want the contractor to follow when he is doing you know trying to keep the site stable um storm water management is also part of that how how will the applicant handle storm water and um that would require you know that there be catchment areas in various locations to contain the storm water to keep it from running off the site um erosion control is another thing obviously during construction erosion control is important but post construction it's also important because you don't want a storm to you know wash out a site after it's been constructed there could be a section on the types of plantings that the town would like to have and how um animals might be controlled and you know sometimes there are particular requirements for using or not using um herbicides and um other mechanisms for controlling animals and plants um but then there's also the question of allowing animals to go through the site so you know how high is the fence off the ground in order to allow the animals to migrate and then um we do know that there are occasions when solar installations um I know of one in particular that has been a problem and so we need to put something in the bylaw to talk about what level of noise is allowed and then if it's greater than that how how does that get mitigated or how to do the noise control requirements get enforced um site control that has to do with the developer proving to the board that's reviewing the application that they actually have control over the site and then that could be in the form of a lease it could be in the form of a purchase and sale agreement or some document that says yes they are allowed um they they have permission from the property owner or they're in uh you know negotiation with the property owner or some something to indicate that they actually have the ability to do this on this property um and there wouldn't be an operation and maintenance plan that would talk about how does this installation how is this installation operated how often would people from the company come out and make sure that everything is in working order and and you know make sure that it's it's operating properly and then maintaining it with regard to you know vegetation clearing or whatever type of maintenance needs to be done um the applicant would also obviously have to prove that he has been in touch with the utility that's going to be connecting to the installation because we don't want something to be built and then not have assurance that it can actually be used um there are safety and environmental standards that we need to deal with such as control of hazardous waste are there hazardous wastes that are generated as a result of the construction or might hazardous waste be an issue um you know as the project is operating and then if there's a fire or an emergency how does that get handled so we would look to the applicant to explain how he would cope with these things and then obviously have those plans reviewed by the fire department and inspection services um the town would want to uh have a monitoring maintenance report or excuse me a program plan from the applicant and then have some kind of reporting and reporting could be done both by the applicant himself with um you know regular site visits and reports being submitted to the town or we could require that there be a third party that could monitor the site and report and that is important both during construction because the ground is going to be disturbed or and also after construction so we want to make sure that the site maintains its stability and doesn't become washed away by by occasional storms and we want to have these things reported to the town and then it's important to deal with the topic of abandonment and decommissioning I noticed I put abandonment twice here but abandonment essentially means that the developer walks away or the operator walks away from the site and then what do we do about that and decommissioning is when the applicant no longer wants to operate the site how how does he have to remove the materials that are there in terms of both of these we would require the posting of a bond and normally what we do here is that we we have a certain time frame that we attach to this so the applicant would come up with an estimate for what how much would it cost to decommission this project and then we project into the future a certain number of years for inflation you know what would this cost in 20 years to take this thing down and the inspection services receives a bond that would cover the cost of doing this if and when it becomes necessary and we would have a section on what happens if the site is transferred from the from the original developer to a different owner and how things might change then some some of the biolas that I looked at have this lapse of approval phrase and it has to do with normally a special permit or site plan so if you don't make you know some progress in that two-year period then your permit lapses that's about and then enforcement who enforces all of these things and in our case it's probably going to be the building commissioner's office and the fire department who would enforce the requirements so these are the things that I am thinking would go into the zoning bylaw but there may be other things as well that will come up over time as we discuss this and so we'll start you know filling in these sections with material and some of it's going to be kind of boilerplate and other things will be choices that the town has to make for instance some towns say you can't cut more than 10 acres of forest and some towns don't have any limitation on the amount that you can cut some towns say you can't have a solar or large scale solar array that is larger than x acres other towns don't have that requirement so those are the kinds of things that details that we're going to have to wait and easily kind of constructed without a lot of discussion so that this is what I'm thinking about now and I'm sure that there will be things that we need to add as we go along fantastic thank you Chris that's really helpful to see this taking shape and your help and leadership in getting us organized in this way let me Stephanie you put your hand down I take it right yeah okay great so I want to go in a little bit in terms of sort of you know that sort of we have Chris's input and thoughts in terms of the outline obviously we want to sort of discuss that think about that anything that we think might be missing in terms of these large categories and I do want to talk a little bit about okay so what is the plan now in terms of putting in putting putting the language in as you say Chris some of its standard language that that you can draw from other other places from your own zoning that we already have or from some of these model bylaws that we can incorporate and start drafting that way but I want to get into a little bit in terms of the pragmatics of actually who's who's doing that is that us or is that the planning department that brings that to us just so we can understand that process but before we get into that I do want to you know maybe maybe about just five or ten minutes here because I want to leave enough time for Laura and then public comment let me because this will be something we'll we're going to be working on for the next months but let me just see if there's any initial comments thoughts for Chris and I see Janet so Chris thank you for that unbelievably clear and simple simple explanation speaking of somebody who is in the trenches of looking at different bylaws and trying to follow along with the pioneer valley planning commission draft I you know I said you know the question I sort of had an epiphany wait too late in the process but one of the ideas I had was we're all going to be looking at this language at some point it's kind of you know for the boilerplate you know boilerplate it's like you know you can do this this and that or something and it's usually very numbing to read you know but there's there are a lot of points where it was like you could do this you could do that that will come out of the public process about what's important and things like that but I thought that like in terms of background reading I thought that um the pioneer valley planning commission it's kind of like saying it sort of takes you through these sections and says you can do that you can do this super confusing about site plan review and special permit and that just was really I think not to worry about but I found it very you know I think it'd be confusing to a lay person I thought the Cape Cod commission draft was so much easier to read and better written and like the writing itself was more simpler simple so I would recommend that one if you wanted to get grounded in oh this is what a bylaw can look like here are the main areas and it does have that back and forth you can decide this you can decide that and I think part of the reasons it's better than the pioneer valley commission because the Cape Cod people looked at that one and the DOR and somebody else's and so they had the combined like they were able to simplify it and make it more clear so I think if people on the committee wanted to read something I would probably start with the Cape Cod commission um and then the Athol Tufts thing is I think it's long but it's kind of to me very user-friendly about how you do a community take the solar assessment your community engagement process and how it affects your bylaw I don't think we're going to wind up where they wound up because you know they were super concerned about views and you know keeping their um you know what they considered they're kind of an economic development resource also they got their major ridges had you know projects on it and everybody was agitated so you could sort of see how that you know how there was an assessment there was a community engagement process and then they showed options for the bylaw how to implement that and so I think that's really user-friendly for a land reader about how this process could go how you can shape a bylaw but I do think that you know we're not we're not Athol but you know we might have Athol like aspects to it so I don't know I just I kept on thinking like if you weren't an attorney I mean it was very dense and confusing um but I just thought I think Cape Cod planning commission might be the best thing to read if you were going to read one thing and then Athol Tufts is kind of interested in how they integrated their process into their results and their assessment community process results I wonder if Chris would agree with that or not do you want me to comment on that um if you'd like I don't I don't think we want to get into um deliberations or preferences or perspectives quite at this point because I think we'll we'll have plenty of time and plenty of need to do that when we get to the specifics uh of the uh of the sections that we're writing so you know if you have any sort of just general feedback I would I appreciate what Janet said in terms of uh I wasn't aware that the Cape Cod one was the third was after PVPC and so they had the advantage of seeing that ahead of time so that that that is useful information um I think all of us I mean I've I've looked at um I actually looked at the PVPC one more carefully so I'll look at the Cape Cod one more carefully um as well I think we should have both of those um in mind and available to us as we sort of go through the process um but but I don't want to get into the details of any any sort of preferences or or perspectives yet okay what I would like to do and I do want to uh sort of cut this fairly short because we're going to be in this in the trenches here for a while but just a sense um from you Chris maybe in terms of what what we do versus what the planning department does with regard to sort of starting to put the words on the page um and and then how how uh and then and then um how do we sort of work together as a deliberative body to to uh provide decisions on on on certain things that go in and certain numbers and specifications and so forth that need to be decided upon um and and uh and with that with the outline which is super helpful uh and whether you know that remains our outline or we add some things or not I think we'll we'll we'll work on that as we go forward my sense is we kind of want to I don't know if it's chronological order right from the beginning or the end or whether you go back and you do the definitions afterwards you know what needs to be defined we'll always want to maybe look at the purpose statement not only at the beginning but I suspect at the end as well to sort of make sure that we stay true and in in tuned with that but it's an important section for us to think about I think at the beginning to sort of guide ourselves but Chris what's your thought in terms of of how we might as a body and with the planning department sort of start rolling this out in terms of language to actually um work on and react to and and fill in the gaps so normally what we do is the planning department staff drafts um bylaws and then brings them to whatever body they're working with so that's what I would expect in this case so we would start you know putting filling in those sections and submitting them to you and we could have some parts of these ready for the next meeting which is when when's the next meeting two weeks yeah two weeks from today so okay let's beginning of November like November 5th or uh November 4th I think uh well don't quote me on that uh that's right November 4th I think I can have part some parts of this ready for November 4th okay great great um okay let's um any before I go to Janet anybody else who hasn't had a chance to speak um great let's go with Janet quickly and then I want to turn over to Laura yeah so I don't you know when I was looking at the work plan I thought that the drafting of the bylaw would be starting in January and so I'm not to say that the planning department shouldn't be working on this because it's going to take a long time but to me it you know when I looked at the work plan I thought we're going to be looking at you know looking at the criterion standards I guess but really to me a lot of this you know it was which starts in November it's like a lot of these things we can't make decisions on and we shouldn't make decisions on until we get a sense of what the community values are and also um I think we need a lot more information so like for example on slopes you know all these communities had different things for slope right and so part of that is you know erosion but also part of that you know for Athol was they didn't really want to look at things on ridges right and so you know I was thinking with Athol it's like what if the holy oaks were covered with solar arrays that's how they were sort of feeling about it and so that's a community value or preference and we're not going to know that until after the survey but the slope's question to me is also a question of like how has this worked out like to you know like simply people were saying 10 percent some 13 percent does it matter what's on the ground you know if you're on Cape Cod and you're on a slope maybe it's a sandy slope and so all the water goes in the ground so I feel like I wouldn't want to start drafting this by a lot until we had more background information like maybe some fact information we need and then also to understand what the community wants because that kind of that kind of decision making is not going to is going to be about like what do people want to see screening do they you know whatever I hate to keep talking about the visual but I just sort of it's an easy pick to talk about I think in my mind there's sort of these are separate issues the drafting you know I'm envisioning starting getting the drafting going fairly soon with I'm not sure if you like yellow highlights or whatever but highlighting areas that we need to deliberate on we need to gather information and we need to over time get community engagement and input on and then fill in those gaps as we go forward but the the draft of the text is all sort of there with very clear areas that we have not decided on yet in terms of our role is not deciding but deciding on what we want to recommend to the to the planning department and so I don't want to be stuck with like drafting it and filling in all those gaps in January I'd like to imagine just starting this this drafting process now and just very clearly highlighting those areas with with no numbers gaps so there's no sort of preset maybe maybe there could be some annotation there that's you know refers to three other different bylaws would give us a a sense or some some reference of what other bylaws have said to give us some guidelines or some ideas but clear areas where exactly what you're saying Janet those are the things that we're going to need to deliberate on gather information look at other other town look at our conditions get input from the community to finalize the actual figures or or specifications but Chris yeah I was going to say there are certain parts of the bylaw that I think can be written today you know that we don't need to have a lot of discussion about or we don't need to have a lot of research about and you know that and as Dwayne said other parts of the bylaw we can leave blanks in or we can write notes and say we got to check this out see what we think here but putting the structure together starting now I think it's going to be important because there's you know if we wait till January we don't know what's coming along in January all kinds of things come by our way that we need to focus on so it's better to start now and then you know make incremental progress as we move towards May so I would happily start doing that Chris could you maybe for next meeting I don't want to give you work but suggest like highlight what you think the issues are going to be like you know for you know just what are the issues that we might need more you know factual or science research on and what issues do we think that we're going to will be what is you know we're looking at the community values the community engagement process to get input on because I think you know I'm not opposed to us going through a 23 page bylaw with a lot of stuff but I think it'd be good to focus on where the hard parts where the decision points and in you know for slopes I'd be like I need to know more about erosion or types of stuff or what towns have felt or their experiences have been that kind of thing and so that might be an easier way for us to focus like here's what we think we have to do yeah let me leave that up to Chris I mean obviously I think I think absolutely we want to get start getting fed this information these these issues that we need we as a body need to start deliberating on and researching and so forth I'm not sure if it makes sense for Chris to try to come out with the whole list at the beginning or just as we as she she and her staff go forward with drafting section by section to highlight it as as as they unveil themselves over time so I sort of leave that to Chris and her staff with regard to what makes the most sense for her work how she likes to run run the staff okay this is great and I'm really excited and about starting to actually look at some bylaw language and so Chris obviously you got a lot on your plate but if there is any language that you can start us off with for in two weeks that would be that would be super okay with that let's I think these opportunities to have some really useful input for issues associated with with solar development decarbonization plan from the Commonwealth that we heard from before are really helpful for us to ground our discussions and deliberations moving forward and amongst us we have Laura who actually knows her way around solar development unlike the rest of us to some extent and so really look forward to the to hearing from Laura on on what she can brief us on when it really comes down to solar development so thank you Laura so what I'm going to do is I just put together some slides last night great and let's let's try to maybe about half an hour and then we'll have time for public input as well can you see my screen yeah can I just jump in real quick we seem to be having some technical difficulty with the meeting there's a lot of dropouts so I'm thinking while Laura is presenting if people could turn off their video during the presentation I think that might be helpful super can you guys see my screen yes and also if Laura could speak closer to the microphone I think that would help thanks you guys will get a close up of my pores so here I am so I you know I see that the topic on this agenda are sort of the more focused on the economics I'm happy to get into the economics but I think just starting off sort of on how solar development works just so everyone understands who the players are the different stages of development the timeline everything that goes into it I think is probably just a good backstop for everyone as we're going to develop these bylaws so maybe what we'll do is you know I prefer an interactive presentation I think I can see hands I'll have to scroll down I think it'll people will shift if they have questions but Stephanie you have your hand up I'm assuming that's an old one right all right good so taking it from the top here just really really high level probably repetitive for for many of you but three sort of general stages or or buckets of criteria when you're developing a solar project and I've developed solar projects across the country have been involved in all different stages from managing teams that do land acquisition to you know developing the projects themselves to financing them owning them operating them and and getting the commercial off takers so I don't do any of that right now which is great which means that you know I'm just going to kind of inform you guys um so you know Christine mentioned site control you know first stage you know sort of a ground level here you know working with a land owner either a commercial landowner or an individual landowner to control the site either through a lease which is about 85% of how all solar sites operate and occasionally through a purchase and sale agreement development and I'm going to get into the nitty gritty of this here you know high level interconnection all the environmental diligence the design the permitting Massachusetts we've got a great permitting system in this state really respective of environmental concerns uh totally a contrast to many other states um that solar is in um tax agreements are our solar owners negotiating pilot agreements with the town you know what's the tax structure and then of course stakeholder engagement and all the local policy on the finance side you're you know every time if I pulled up a project model for you they're extremely complex so there's multiple um sort of inputs that go in to determine whether or not a solar project will be viable or not and I'll start to speak to those but I'm assuming there's a lot going to be a lot of questions on that but it's a it's a fairly complicated model and it includes things like state incentives in Massachusetts and we have sort of two programs you either have the smart program or you have the net metering program so if you're developing solar on in Massachusetts you're going to fall into one of those buckets residential of course always falls into the net metering program sometimes a smart program but primarily net metering and then you know a lot of the commercial systems that we're looking at would fall into the smart program I'm going to pause here a little bit and just say that the smart program in mass it's set up in a way where it's sort of like a we'd call it a declining megawatt block program so Massachusetts has been an early adopter of solar like New York and they you know this is the third program for solar that I've been a part of the first two were called SREC 1 SREC 2 now we're into the smart program so the people who moved early into the smart program had a higher incentive rate as time goes on that incentive rate for solar declines it's called a declining megawatt block program so the later you are the less incentive you're getting and I'll talk about that later on but that's a big driver of the financing and then finally and I'll talk to you about the differences between solar developers long-term asset owners tax equity partners and then you have construction financing so tax equity is a portion of solar development what essentially that means is just like fossil fuels have received incentives for development more so than renewables for years in the solar wind space there are federal tax incentives for developing solar projects so that's a big part of the financing as well move it on unless there are questions and if there are questions all right so this is breaking it down a little bit further and hopefully there's no typos okay so the development process here typically for an average let's call it two to five megawatt system which is probably the max you're going to see in massachusetts um two years of development timeline it can you know it can vary so this includes while you're while you're developing a site I think sort of the higher level is I would estimate that 50 to 60 of all projects get killed in the development phase for various reasons and I'll talk a bit about those so it is it's a sort of a higher risk endeavor meaning that you have to like uncover every stone before you actually have a project that might go through um so you're getting all permits in hand conditional use permits are a big one that's that Christine mentioned any other zoning related permits all of these have been granted during this time any sort of environmental or cultural study historic reviews um any permits um you know you'll you'll do um phase one assessments which is essentially looking at if there's any contamination on the site you'll do wetlands delineation floodplain review endangered species fAA if you're close to any sort of you know airport wanted reflection and then of course that historical and cultural review um so a lot of components there the interconnection I'm going to delve into a little bit more deeply but this is and I have seen um largely speaking most projects fail because of either environmental issues you know there's a wetland and you know the site where you thought perhaps was developable and and then you realize it's not um or um the interconnection piece isn't is a really uh common reason why projects don't um come to fruition so everything else might check out and then the interconnection comes back with a with a really high cost from the utility and the project just can't withstand the uh the economics um during development also you're preparing the alta survey um and a site plan which takes into account you know all the zoning basically everything in the bylaw that we're going to be creating um and you're developing a plan based on all of the permitting constraints wherever you are the incentives that I mentioned so the mass smart program is what we would typically see for a typical ground mount solar project in in massachusetts um when I talk about offtake it's basically who's going to buy the power so um the the most I'd say uh for the most part in this area most projects are what are called community solar projects and um it essentially means that the power that this that a farm um produces half of it would go to some sort of commercial or municipal customer and I think Amherst actually is a is a customer of one of these farms and the other half of the power would typically go to um residential customers in the area and the residential customers would receive a savings on their utility bill you know there are other um sort of contracts arranged where it feeds directly to the utility but all of that sort of that construct fits into that mass program and drives sort of the economics under a solar project so we talked about site control and then financing close so before you proceed to this it's called NTP notice to proceed which is essentially the farm is construction ready you need to have all of your financing in prep in place you need to know who the long-term asset owner is which is called sponsor equity you need to know who your tax equity partner is then you need to have construction financing in place um I want to just pause here because um this is a sort of a misconception in the solar world sometimes you will find solar developers who also own the assets a great example in massachusetts would be next amp um very good developer and they they like to own the projects for the long term many times the entity that's developing the projects are not set up to own the assets so this is more common than not so if for example a borrego which is now called newly for a blue wave solar is developing a project they are going to sell the projects at this point notice to proceed so during this time much the project is de-risked a lot of the work has been done and then you're moving on to construction which typically takes nine months and I think at this point it's you know you're monitoring the site the site's been mobilized equipment's being delivered um you're testing commissioning the site with the utility um and then you reach a point of mechanical completion um yes uh actually hold on let me just finish this live Janet and I'm going to take your question and then once the project is at mechanical completion and the utility comes out and they test the site test the project to make sure it passes all the safety tests it's producing the weight they want it to produce then you declare COD which is commercial operation and at that point in time um uh the long-term asset owner you know they've already stepped in at NTP but um this is when the project is really producing power to the grid okay Janet go ahead so um can you just go back for a little bit and talk a little bit about the incentives secured through the mass smart program net media and tariff just can you just go I know I know that changes but can you go yeah I'll go a little bit deeper on that I think that's great and I appreciate these questions because um I don't want to overwhelm people with information but I can I can go as deep as you want so in Massachusetts you get essentially depending upon what type of project you are you fall into a certain incentive block and right now let's say that for a community solar project again half of the power purchaser is commercial or municipal and the other half is residential let's say your incentive is I don't know 15 cents a kilowatt hour you can do things to increase that incentive so the state requires for example um they give a higher incentive when you have these residential off-takers they'll give you a higher incentive if you're developing on a brown field they'll give you a higher incentive if you're developing a canopy or a rooftop system um and they'll give you a higher incentive if you're providing power to low-income um subscribers so the block programs are like it's it's it's dependent upon the time you come in and the utility that you're in and what region of the utility that you're in so if you're in ever source south um you know or ever source west there are certain areas where that block program gets full very quickly from my experience western mass and I grew up in the Berkshires western mass and our region certainly the Berkshires have some of the lower incentive rates because while all of the costs to building a solar project are more or less the same you know panels are going to be the same price we're developing you know outside of boston or in western mass the value of the power is different based on where you are so um but that's how the declining block program works so we're already I think we're in um I don't know we're we're at a the smart program began years ago and we're pretty far out in terms of the blocks and I think my understanding of massachusetts right now is because we're a state that adopted solar early on what you're going to see in subsequent the next slide here is that most of the ideal sites for solar have already been developed because this is you know I started developing projects in massachusetts um I don't know eight years ago um and that was kind of like that was even when srec one had had set has had sunset and we were into srec two so there's a tremendous saturation of solar projects in mass um obviously we need more to reach our carbon neutral goals by 20 by 2050 um but um just to give you a sense of the solar incentives and how we've kind of worked through those over the years that helped janet yeah and then I have a question do you think with the new federal bill and the fact that our state is awash in money for some reasons I don't understand yeah that there'll be more money for solar coming in yeah I'd like to think so right now obviously the ira is a massive bill that carves out 360 billion dollars for um renewables as well as like green hydrogen and you know different technologies that I'm not close to but what I'm seeing um and this is you know I my personal sense is I would like to say yes um but right now and all the lawyers that I know are still digesting the ira because it's a massive document um but I'm seeing a lot of the really large utility scale projects immediately finding value um I think it's going to take some time and when I say are the any project in mass is not the yard but you are the large utility scale projects that I'm mentioning so um for example that project you sent around um janet and I'm actually familiar with that project on the eastern shore of virginia 150 megawatts that's a huge project in contrast projects in mass two to five megawatts are are much smaller so I am not yet seeing the ira give a financial boost to um projects of that scale distributed generation projects as what we call them as opposed to utility scale projects um but I'm sure it will happen over time I mean I'd like to think so but still you know what we'll talk about interconnection I mean it's you can have all the money in the world dedicated to a project uh it just is a matter of is there land available and is there interconnection capacity without a whole you know utility overhaul so any other questions on this slide fire away folks okay so I want to talk a little bit about the interconnection process and this is literally just throwing together some apps in um most states you don't have any visibility into what capacity is available um in different substations feeder lines etc in massachusetts it's required by the public utility commission that you provide maps indicating where solar is available or not solar necessarily you know where capacity is available so if you had looked at these maps years ago on the left for example this is ever sourced it's not nearly as good as national you would see a lot more blue and green so what this does and I'll give you some real life examples um you might have a site with a landowner who wants to develop solar in a community that's supportive and but if you how it works is you do this desktop analysis for interconnection and you you know you look at the ever source maps or the national grid maps I'm happy to provide these links to you guys and you say okay where in Amherst can we develop solar right and you see in Amherst which is primarily ever sourced you're not seeing a lot of availability also ever source is not showing you substations which is pretty annoying then you say okay I think the site is is decent and it has potential based on my desktop review someone would go out and look at the site and it actually confirm um by looking at the lines what the you know is it a three phase line you know what does it look like you know is it 15 kv you know what what is that interconnection point and um and then you would make an application to the utility there's a fee for that application and they would do what's called a pre-study and the pre-study would say roughly speaking you know here's what we see um and you say okay this either meets my criteria or not you know some things that you see regularly are going to be things like well there might be capacity um one of the one of the lines needs to be upgraded and how does the utility think about that do they think about it as there's going to be a cost sharing between the developer and the utility is it going to be you know I've seen interconnections come back anywhere from you know the great $300,000 one to like there was one on my wall in the office it was like this will be a $15 million upgrade like that's never going to happen um so they really they range and um it's not until you do a full study with the utility and you pay the money for a full study do you actually know the timeline for the project to get interconnected how much work needs to be done um and what the cost is so this is what I say that development sort of phase is pretty risky because you're you're putting real dollars out without knowing what the results are going to be so the utilities have a tremendous amount of power here they're not necessarily totally forthcoming um as the consultants indicated with like um so in New York for example they've done things like identified priority zones which is great because you know there's a priority zone here in the state which means that this is where the state wants development to go and that's largely based on the capacity that's available and the load that is there Massachusetts doesn't have that um so so this is a summary of sort of the desktop review and I think what was not surprising but also you know a bit frustrating to me are our utility lines are very old um the transmission system this country I'm sure none of this is surprising to require massive updates so there's not a lot available you're seeing a lot of deep red lines here um where like a lot of the if you think of capacity it's almost like um I think of it as or how it was taught to me you know when I was early in my 20s and working in the energy field it's it's like a highway so um when you say you want to connect at a certain point the utility is going to be looking at how many cars are already on that highway how dense is it can I bring you on as well and how many people are already ahead of you because when you make that the application to the utility to connect your solar system there might be five other projects ahead of you in various sizes so um so you know it's it's about there's there's a lot of studying that goes in to even beginning the development phase of solar um and I'm going to pause there and see if you guys have questions and then we'll just sort of open it up for questions I did it these are probably very basic questions so um so is so is this the does this is this one of the reasons to push for more batteries on site correct you got it so because the utility is like yeah we don't need any more energy from three to five on a summer's day but we'll take it at seven or eleven yep so that's exactly right so batteries have the potential to um to basically take the solar power store it and then deploy it when it's the most needed um and and that's right and I you know you're not going to hear me say that battery technology now is where it needs to be um you know solar is such a mature technology batteries are fairly new um so the big things with batteries are going to be you know we're working on uh so I'm involved in more real estate with solar right now um but I know of these three big projects in eastern mass where there are the these these battery systems that accompany the solar solar has been mechanically complete for a year and because the battery systems are so remote um when you have a remote battery system typically you have a you have like a hard line of communication with the batteries to the utility um and because it's like wireless they're having great difficulty making sure the batteries are communicating with the utility in real time so but you're right that would ease the um congestion on our grid okay thank you yeah hi Laura thanks um just a quick question then a comment um so just so I really understand this this map here the the um caption uh on the left the dg hosting dg hosting are those when it says like one to two three fades is that one to two megawatts uh availability or what is the unit these are the types of these are the lines that are available um so like the the number the number of lines that are like how much so you need to look at the size how much capacity is there available if there's a ton of capacity available you'd see lots of blue you know probably how it was 10 years ago yeah okay as how congestion how congested the lines are so the left is ever sourced the right is national grid national grid provides far more detail um on on what's available and they also provide these little blue dots which are substations so in addition to the capacity that's available another significant driver of cost is going to be how long do you have to run your lines so and and frequently you'll have a solar developer that says hey I want to develop a project I could connect to this substation or maybe I feed into this substation it just depends on what's available and sometimes the utility will give you options great thank you and and let me let me just um we can can actually continue this next meeting um I'm not sure how much more you have but this is really helpful for us but I do want to I want I do want to end at like 250 you can keep going a little bit but at least 250 so we can have some time for public input yeah no I assume there'll be questions from the public so and I know there's a lot of questions on financing I'm happy to address those it's it's fairly I'll make it as simple as possible um but I think one of the things that keeps coming up also in these discussions is this concept of selling a solar facility um depending upon the developer you'll be able to tell immediately when a developer makes an application to the town if they own assets or if they typically if their business model is to develop solar and then to sell at notice to proceed or if their business model is to develop and own the assets and it's and you can find amazing developers that have developed so many projects that are excellent developers and likewise um you'll find many asset owners who are also developers but those tend to be bigger shops so great would you be um willing and would people be interested in largest continuing this in in two weeks as an agenda item let's see if there's any other questions Dwayne I don't want to bore people but yes no we're not at all bored at all we're being well educated quite frankly so thank you um yeah go ahead uh bob though you're muted you're muted bob you're muted thank you laura um this was excellent very technical so I couldn't capture the notes will this be available to Stephanie please yeah yeah I'll thank you to Stephanie yeah and then you guys maybe what we do is you sort of like compile your questions and then we can talk about it more on next meeting well yeah actually if we if we um if we can distribute the slides ahead of the meeting we can sort of uh go through them uh to finish up at the in two weeks but also have questions um uh set up ahead of time so that'd be great thank you laura okay uh yeah I guess we can uh show ourselves again okay all right um Janet one question is that for uh laura yeah it's in the map that you showed for um national grid were the black lines the maxed out lines um I couldn't I don't understand the um the units like when you you were showing like on the left side was ever sourced in the right side I think was national grid hurt yep so the black lines are the maxed out lines or yeah the black lines are those that are like um overwhelmed okay with capacity yeah yeah yeah okay great so um let's um put this on pause um and continue in in two weeks um but let's move to the next agenda item uh which is um basically just to schedule the next meeting um and I block it on exactly what we had decided uh but you know the the primary option front of us is to continue at this time which is one o'clock to three o'clock uh on on every on on two weeks Friday um I'm fine with that but I I just want to toss out there uh because I do have a conflict for the rest of the semester at least it happened my my department meeting got scheduled for this time slot um and I can meet miss those but if I don't need to that'd be great uh but I don't want to mess mess up a good thing here but let me just ask um if if people are available instead of starting at one to start at 11 30 on Friday no that nobody's that has a problem with that yeah Laura sorry I just did the look I just need to look hold on so it would be the um fourth at 11 30 yeah and and just continue that for the next at least through the semester works for me awesome okay so that we can feel free to bring a lunch and uh eat a long uh so Jack are you okay with that or another comment yeah um I won't be available oh I have yeah some personal issues that would be able to make it so okay would that be the case for the one o'clock as well yeah yeah I'm I'm in California okay had a death in the family so okay sorry to hear that yeah okay okay um okay so we'll miss you one way the other uh in two weeks um but uh but yeah let's let's put in the minutes that we'll meet at 11 30 uh two Fridays from now and then just block that off for the next several Fridays uh every two weeks uh and we'll go 11 30 to 130 and I'll be able to go to my department meeting at least uh zoom into it so that'd be great appreciate that okay uh with Stephanie's help can we Chris do you have a comment I just wanted to ask Stephanie um I had in my notebook that we were going to discuss the memo from Jonathan Murray on the fourth and um discuss the memo without Jonathan Murray being here and if he is going to be here do we need to check with him that 11 30 is okay we can we can check with him okay okay okay let's yeah let's check with him and then and then um hopefully confirm that that works for him and then and then we'll stick with that that doesn't work Stephanie let me know okay uh great uh and we'll put that down as an agenda item for uh next uh in two weeks okay um Stephanie do you want to um open it up for any thoughts or comments or questions from the public sure so if anyone from the public has um any questions for the committee or follow-up comments please digitally electronically raise your hand and mute you yeah Stephanie do you want to say for the record how many attendees we have well we have eight I think so it said we had nine at one point but I think we had at least two people showed up twice unless they shared their link with someone else but in any case it says I'd go with eight safely go with eight thank you okay Mike Lipinski I have unmuted you you're free to speak so you have to unmute yourself you have to unmute yourself hi uh Mike Lipinski 167 shoots Ferry Road and uh great presentation I really enjoyed it I have one question for you about that later if I get a moment but um I just want to rewind back to the very beginning of the meeting the ECAC portion of it and I just want to alert members of the solar by-law committee that anytime you hear a member of ECAC use the words our share of solar that alarm bell should be going off in your head in the past members of this group have generated estimates of Amherst share of solar based on what I consider false assumptions and very questionable formulas a simple analysis of their formulas that they have used to determine the Amherst share of solar made it clear that their estimates were not based in reality and unfortunately in the past some of these ECAC estimations have been referred to by members of various town boards in print and at public meetings and one of those numbers thrown around is 300 acres of ground mounted solar as Amherst share of statewide decarbonization goals in fact that 300 plus acre number was used as an argument against the temporary moratorium on ground mounted solar early in the year that number was used by opponents at various meetings and it was also used by town council members as a reason to vote against failed proposal the reality is that there's no simple formula for calculating the town of Amherst share of ground mounted solar as Laura has explained quite well citing for ground mounted solar it's an extremely complicated exercise much more dependent on grid capacity and geography than what some individuals in town view as Amherst share this attempt by ECAC to work low medium and high levels of ground mounted solar scenarios into the solar siting study it's just another version of this need they have to try to determine Amherst share in my opinion adding these solar scenarios to the study makes little sense and I would hope that the solar by-law working group would agree that it is well outside the scope the scope of the solar siting study and then I just have one question based on Laura's presentation that perhaps you could clarify something can I ask that now sure yeah please okay Laura in one specific case which is curious because it deals with a real life situation here in Amherst the the shoots very road project that was withdrawn a year ago it's very clear based on the on your map that you showed of the ever source three phase line that the three phase line is nowhere near that 167 shoots very road site it's at least a mile away in both directions my understanding is that the cost for that is probably about a million dollars per mile for three phase and probably going up do you have any insight into why a company would propose a site so far away from a three phase connection that they would have to spend you know upwards of a million dollars to put it in yeah I think I would respond sort of a two-pronged response the first is these maps are totally not accurate I mean like they are a general view but the power resides in the utility I don't know if they conducted a pre-study already but the maps are to be used as like guides but certainly not definitive you know you know this is why you have to engage the utility this is why when the consultant said oh well look at cost upgrades I was like wonderful you figured out a way to do this I've been in this industry for 18 years and I haven't met anyone with the with the Oracle and the second piece is a million dollar interconnection is not bad I mean to be honest with you I mean it's really depending upon like the project itself in Massachusetts that would not be atypical so just for for reference okay thank you Rene Ross I have a lot of you to speak please unmute yourself hi everyone um wonderful informative meeting today I just want to put in a strong comment about just encouraging the the consultants and the committee to really have robust community engagement and to really I think somebody had mentioned in the beginning how you know certain groups in the community would be engaged to you know to to to you know public you know for access to to give input into this and I would hope it would be really inclusive and the outreach will be very obvious and um you know all groups all individuals will will will be included in this I think it's so important I was wondering if there's a way for the public to actually help um with the decision as to what questions will be asked in a general survey to the public so it's just strongly urging you to include the public because we know this is Amherst and we have to have a lot of concerned people um and yeah so basically that's it and again thank you for a very informative meeting great anybody else from the public attendees uh Rene it looks like you raised your hand again because I know I lowered your hand so I'm going to oh okay is there anyone else um just yeah just seeing the public first but um does not look like the public has any additional comments great okay well thank you uh for for the comments uh that were made that's very important thank you okay um I see Martha's hand up and then we can move to adjourn yeah so just just to follow up on Rene's question Stephanie is there a potentially a way that members of our community could submit um you know questions they would like to see raised or other things who is there any way to submit that to the website or any way for you to distribute it or anything like that yeah I'll have to work with the consultants on that because I think it's also a matter of what capacity they have you know we'll we probably could maybe have something um unengaged Amherst which we've done with other okay where we can ask people to submit comments um that could be one of the ways and we could also again I think we'd have to work that out with the consultant but I'm sure there are ways we can do that yeah so is that something you could follow up then as they go yeah it's something I would yeah I would absolutely I mean I'm very much about wanting to engage with everybody in town not just yeah the people who live next door are homeowners like renters have a lot of stake in them yes yes yeah thank you all right good um Janet you're lucky we got two more minutes I'm sorry to ask them any questions it's one of my qualities um could we see a cut Stephanie could you send us a copy of the GZA like I don't know if it's the proposal or their work plan because I was um trying to educate myself by looking at um Dwayne's website and so I thought that was a great background in terms of questions and process and I would love to see what they're planning to do I learned a lot about a solar assessments and so I just love to see that document sure um I just need to our procurement officer has been out this week and I think I had mentioned that I'm not sure but I can't send it until I double check with them to make sure okay but once I once I get the clearance I will send it great okay well great meeting everybody and um I don't think I need an emotion a motion to adjourn before I think everybody will be fine with that um but let me just say thank you again this is a great a great group um and great um thoughts and and um expertise to bring to this uh table uh Chris thank you so much for the engagement with the planning department and your leadership on on that uh drafting and so forth I'm really looking forward to getting engaged in the actual language and and figuring out what the hard questions are we need to talk about and so forth um and get into that over the course of the next number of weeks and months Laura just thank you so much for your putting that together and starting that presentation I do want to revisit that and continue that in in in two weeks we'll also hear from KP Law if I understand correctly Lauren Chris is in in response to the questions that we put forward to them with regard to um uh just guidelines on what what canon might not be able to go into zoning bylaws and so forth uh so that's really going to be helpful to us as well uh so with that um thank you everybody and see you in two weeks uh we'll plan to convene at 11 30 Stephanie will send out all those information uh unless we hear differently but plan on 11 30 okay thanks everybody bye