WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — When a solar energy system was included in the design of Williamstown Elementary School in 2002, officials hailed the move.
"With renewable energy and other energy efficiencies, we can build a healthier and more comfortable learning environment for our children — and we can do it economically," the chair of the School Committee said when the state delivered a $58,000 Renewable Energy Fund grant.
Two decades later, the news is less encouraging.
"At the elementary school, we had one of our most surprising discoveries," Williams College senior Alana Lopez Barro Rivera said during a presentation at Town Hall late last year.
"The elementary school has a decently large onsite solar array. However, the inverters that make it so the electricity produced by the solar panels is actually usable, functioning electricity have not been working for at least the past seven years."
Rivera and classmates Gracie Guidotti and Maria Avrantini audited town infrastructure for energy efficiency as part of an environmental planning class at Williams College. The trio worked on behalf of their "client," the town's Carbon Dioxide Lowering Committee, under the direction of professor Sarah Gardner.
In December, the students presented their findings in a public forum that was recorded by the town's public access television station, WilliNet, and available for viewing on the station's website.
Not surprisingly, the students found a number of areas where the town's buildings and vehicle fleet could be more efficient — including at the town's oldest building, where they gave their presentation.
The elementary school, which opened its doors in 2002, is one of the newest. And although the school itself is now part of a two-town regional school district, the building, built when WES was a single-school district, continues to be owned by the town.
Under the 2018 regional agreement between Williamstown, Lanesborough and the expanded Mount Greylock Regional School District, the two towns own their elementary schools, lease them to the district for $1 per year and are responsible for repairs to the buildings with costs that exceed $5,000.
"One of the main priorities for the elementary schools is to fix those inverters so that the solar panels, which are functioning, can produce electricity for the school," Rivera said.
"Then, maybe, in the future explore expansion of the solar array and installation of heat pumps. However, that is not a priority given that their boilers are very, very new."
Henry Art, an emeritus professor of environmental studies and biology at Williams and longtime public official in Williamstown, used the Q&A period at the end of the students' presentation to comment on their finding.
"I'm astounded that the inverters on the elementary school are not working properly," Art said. "Has this been known for seven years or this is a recent discovery? And is that energy being fed onto the grid and we're just not getting it back or is it just doing nothing?"
The students did not have a definitive answer for when the issue was discovered but clarified that the energy captured by the solar photovoltaic panels on the building's roof is not being utilized at all.
"This was also a shocking discovery for us," Guidotti said. "Currently, the energy is not going anywhere. It's just being produced and sitting there. The inverter is the one that would transition that to energy that could be used on the grid."
Town Manager Robert Menicocci, who was hired last spring, said in an email that he became aware of the issue more recently.
"The school district brought the equipment failure to my attention in the fall and we are continuing to discuss this as we develop our respective budgets," Menicocci said in an email last month. "We do not have a plan of action as of yet.
"We are looking at several options from a simple repair to an entire redo and investigating potential funding sources but no, I don't have any cost estimates yet."
The inverter at the elementary school, while perhaps an urgent need, is one of just many items covered by the students' audit. Many of the issues they found align with priorities Menicocci has expressed about doing in-depth analyses of the town's infrastructure and compiling a long-term plan for the town's physical plant.
The trio rated the town's buildings for energy efficiency and categorized them on a spectrum from least to most.
The elementary school, leaving aside the problem with the solar system, scored high due to its double-paned windows, insulation and LED lighting. The Williamstown Police Station, completed in 2019, likewise scored well on those metrics.
At the other end of the spectrum were facilities like the 1937 Sherman Burbank Memorial Chapel at East Lawn Cemetery, one of the town's smaller buildings, and the Department of Public Works building.
The latter was called out for its wood boiler, which, while relatively inexpensive to operate on waste wood, is a large source of pollution, the students noted.
"An outdoor boiler on a residential scale is shown to pollute as much as 1,800 homes heated by natural gas, so these are very harmful to the environment," Guidotti said. "Although this is a very economical boiler, given all the fuel is free, we find the environmental impacts are far worse than the cost/benefit. So we think in the long term, once the wood boiler reaches its end of life, it would be the best option to replace that with emerging technologies."
Similarly, the trio recommended exploring new technology for the town's rolling infrastructure.
The students recommended transitioning to electric vehicles for the town's police cruisers and light-duty pickup trucks. But they recognize that viable electric options do not exist for heavy duty equipment, like snow plows.
Instead, they recommended the town look into converting its heavier equipment to biodiesel fuels.
"It can be used in any diesel engine, and any blends above 20 percent require engine upgrades that have a payback period of less than a year," Guidotti said. "We recommend transitioning to the B100 blend, which is 100 percent biodiesel, in the snowplows, because it can reduce emissions up to 95 percent."
While there are financial costs to most of the recommendations on the students' list, they pointed out that Williamstown has opportunities to defray those costs, including by seeking partnerships with neighboring communities.
"We understand funding is very important at the municipal level," Avrantini said. "Williamstown is a designated Green Community, so it's eligible for funding under the [commonwealth's] Green Communities Grants.
"We had some additional recommendations, and one of them was adding to the town management an energy manager. We know that may be hard, but we were thinking this could be another example of a shared position."
If you would like to contribute information on this article, contact us at info@iberkshires.com.
Your Comments
iBerkshires.com welcomes critical, respectful dialogue. Name-calling, personal attacks, libel, slander or foul language is not allowed. All comments are reviewed before posting and will be deleted or edited as necessary.
No Comments
Williamstown Select Board Inks MOU on Mountain Bike Trail
By Stephen DravisiBerkshires Staff
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — A planned mountain bike trail cleared a hurdle last week when the Select Board OK'd a memorandum of understanding with the New England Mountain Bike Association.
NEMBA Purple Valley Chapter representative Bill MacEwen was back before the board on April 22 to ask for its signoff to allow the club to continue developing a planned 20- to 40-mile network on the west side of town and into New York State.
That ambitious plan is still years down the road, MacEwen told the board.
"The first step is what we call the proof of concept," he said. "That is a very small loop. It might technically be a two-loop trail. It's a proof of concept for a couple of reasons. One is so we can start very, very small and learn about everything from soil condition to what it's like to organize our group of volunteers. And, then, importantly, it allows the community to have a mountain bike trail in Williamstown very quickly.
"The design for this trail has been completed. We have already submitted this initial design to [Williams College] and the town as well, I believe. It's very, very small and very basic. That's what we consider Phase 0. From there, the grant we were awarded from the International Mountain Bike Association is really where we will develop our network plan."
MacEwen characterized the plan as incremental. According to a timeline NEMBA showed the board, it hopes to do the "proof of concept" trail in spring 2025 and hopes to open phase one of the network by the following fall.
Williams and the Town of Williamstown are two of the landowners that NEMBA plans to work with on building the trail. The list also includes Williamstown Rural Lands Foundation, the Berkshire Natural Resource Council and the State of New York.
The Charter Review Committee on Wednesday voted unanimously to endorse an amended version of the compliance provision it drafted to be added to the Town Charter. click for more
Developer David Traggorth asked the trustees to make the contribution from its coffers to help unlock an additional $5.4 million in state funds for the planned 54-unit apartment building at the south end of the Cable Mills site.
click for more
The donors, who wish to remain anonymous, say the gift reflects their desire to not only support Williams but also President Maud S. Mandel's strategic vision and plan for the college.
click for more
Neighbors of a proposed subdivision off Summer Street last week asked the Planning Board to take a critical look at the project, which the residents say is out of scale to the neighborhood. click for more