Town of Sharon, MA

ENERGY COMMITTEE

Minutes

Wednesday, 6/6/07  7:30pm

 

Members present:

            George Aronson, Ed Connelly, Tom D’Avanzo

David McCabe, Rosemary Tambouret, Lynn Wolbarst, Joan Spiegel

Visitor: Silas Phyler

Member absent:

Arnold Wallenstein, Ernest Kahn,

Items Discussed:

1.      Solar installations in Sharon:

a.       Would be helpful to have a list of homes in Sharon with solar hot water or solar heating systems

b.      Would be helpful to know the contractor who installs these systems in Sharon

  1. Update on analysis of town energy use:
    1. Lynn distributed a spread sheet for town gas usage by fiscal year for 05-06
    2. Ed had distributed a spread sheet for the library a few months ago that included degree days and normalization for square footage
    3. Discussed pros and con of the EPA Energy Star benchmarking web site; advantages include intern available to help enter data but the data must be entered manually and it is not clear that there are similarly sized towns with
    4. Ed reports that per Don Hillegas, Sharon has no town server so there is no easy way to enter data for every month, however gas usage can be determined every month from the Baystate website and energy usage can be determined from the NStar website
    5. George proposed a plan

                                                               i.      Enter data: George will devise a master spread sheet; Joan and Rosemary will enter gas and electricity data

                                                             ii.      Benchmark data: Dave will reanalyze the websites of other towns for comparable energy use

                                                            iii.      Special projects focusing on energy audits of one or more buildings

                                                           iv.      Recommendations for reduction (i.e. 3% per year as would be necessary to reach Kyoto goals) or improvements

                                                             v.      Town education, use of town website to disseminate energy information; Tom will draft a letter to editor of the Sharon Advocat to let the public know what the committee has been up to.

  1. Ed Connelly visited an energy affordable home in Colrain, MA on Sat May 5.

Rural Development Inc. About to build 20 units of zero energy affordable housing in Greenfield, MA: double stud walls one foot thick packed with cellulose, windows R5 (typical windows are R2) heat shield, solar orientation of house, long side with windows facing sun, solar hot water with instantaneous heater back up, solar electric, no furnace, poured concrete with heat recovery; cost to build $200/sq ft to build (most affordable housing $150-165)

  1. Will have a field trip during the summer, either to the Hull wind mill or to Brightfields solar field in Brockton.

 

Next meeting:  Wednesday, July 18, 2007 7:30 PM