Brattleboro Housing Partnerships Team
Affordable Housing Provider, Brattleboro Housing Partnerships, Reduces Operating Costs via Solar Net Metering Agreement
Ajah Tier
At the end of October, 2021, Norwich Solar, as part of its Community Impact Group, announced the start of construction of a Community Solar project in Clarendon, VT with Brattleboro Housing Partnerships as the dedicated net metering customer. The Clarendon project will provide solar net metering credits to Brattleboro Housing’s facilities, providing BHP with savings of over $500,000 over the 25-year term of the Net Metering Agreement.
Brattleboro Housing Partnerships solar array in Clarendon, Vermont. (Norwich Solar engineer, Nathan Billings)
This Clarendon project is one in a series of community solar projects for low and moderate income (LMI) housing facilities that Norwich Solar has completed in the last several years through its Community Impact Group program. The Group links mission-minded investors with high impact projects that generate broad benefits to local communities, such as economic development and greenhouse gas reductions. These Norwich Solar projects — totaling over $10M in impact investment — will generate over $30M in solar net metering credits and $3M in direct savings for LMI housing and support facilities in Vermont.
The Clarendon project is expected to generate approximately 1,000,000 kilowatt hours a year of clean renewable electricity that will be fed directly into the Green Mountain Power electric grid. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency’s estimates, that amount of energy is enough to power approximately 130 homes and is the equivalent of taking 154 passenger vehicles off the roads for a full year.
Dating back to 1962, Brattleboro Housing Partnerships has had a mission to ensure the provision of quality, affordable housing opportunities in viable communities for lower income households. The solar Net Metering Agreement will deliver significant financial savings to BHP and help them in accomplishing this mission. There were no upfront costs for BHP and by enrolling in the community solar project they will receive net metering credits on their Green Mountain Power electric bills for all of the renewable energy generated by the solar array. The funding for the project was provided by a solar investor through Norwich Solar’s Community Impact Group. Once the project is completed it will be operated and maintained by RunTime Solar, a subsidiary of Norwich Solar, with no ongoing cost attributable to Brattleboro Housing.
Brattleboro Housing, Brattleboro, Vermont
Projects like this bring investment, jobs, and more local clean electricity generation into the state. Vermont currently generates the least amount of electricity of any state, both on a percentage basis (less than 43% of the electricity used in the state is generated there) and on an absolute amount (less than half of any other state) — despite having the second most land per capita of any state east of the Mississippi River. Vermont’s high reliance on out-of-state energy is a $2 billion per year opportunity (Vermont imports ~$3B of energy each year) to bring jobs and energy independence to the state. Producing more clean energy here at home in Vermont helps us all in our fight against global climate change.
Learn more at: Brattleboro Housing (brattleborohousing.org), Norwich Solar (norwichsolar.com/what-is-community-solar/) and RunTime Solar (runtimesolar.com).
Ajah Tier is the Marketing Coordinator for Norwich Solar, tier@norwichsolar.com.
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