PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Oak Leaf Energy Partners is still making progress on the two solar panel projects that have been in process for the last two years and routing negotiations are still underway between Eversource and Oak Leaf. 

 

The Airport Commission approved to host two solar arrays with Oak Leaf Energy Partners in 2018 and agreed to a 30-year lease that was expected to bring the airport lease payments and $6.5 million to the city for taxes. 

 

This undertaking stalled when airport leaders realized that the proposed placement of the solar panels was too close to the runway. The commission approved to allocate approximately 5.6 acres along Tamarack Road for the project.

 

Michael McCabe of Oak Leaf provided the commission with an update on the solar panel projects on Tuesday night. 

 

He said the company is hoping the project will accelerate quickly once the issue with Eversource has been resolved. 

 

The second project, at the Doolittle site, is much larger, is still under review and utility is evaluating the project. Oak Leaf could not provide any further updates at the time. 

 

McCabe thanked Airport Manager Daniel Shearer, the members of the commission, and the residents of the city for highlighting the importance of this project to Eversource, which has helped accelerate the conversation Oak Leaf has been having with them over the last few weeks.

 

During these conversations they were able to come up with a variety of solutions and were able to reduce the cost considerably. 

 

"We still have a lot of work to do candidly. But I think we're certainly headed in the right direction" McCabe said. 

 

The cost of the project still remains unclear but Oak Leaf is optimistic and hopes to have and updated price that fits in the budget soon. 

 

"Hopefully, in the near future, we will have an updated set of pricing that finally fits within the budget. It may take another duration. Beyond that it's unclear to me exactly, but hopefully not," McCabe said. "But I think we're making progress. And that's good. But I also do want to highlight there are still several steps ahead of you just because of the number of people involved. It's just hard to predict exactly how this will pan out. But we're optimistic."

 

Commissioner Tom Hardy raised concerns regarding the number that was in the managers report from the meeting that was on Monday. The number is less than what it was but is still high and he questioned whether the routing has been agreed upon. 

 

"I wonder whether the routing has been agreed upon, which is to say, the existing path that goes directly from the road into the high tension lines, and rather than coming from a point way down the road," Hardy said. 

 

McCabe explained that the routing of the project is still under negotiation but Eversource is pushing to have the routing go along South Mountain Road as opposed to McCabe's preference to go behind the solar array through the trees. 

 

Commission members continued to raise concerns regarding the routing and brought up how the dirt road that goes over the hill is a more direct route and seems like a logical resolution the the high cost. 

 

"I am not entirely certain as to why they would not take the shortest point," McCabe said "The discussion we're using now is effectively a bifurcation of responsibility, where Oak Leaf will pay for everything, but we'll build half of it and Eversource will build the other half, will be a cheaper solution than using the shorter path that goes through the existing path through those trees. I think that's the genesis of why they're pushing the South Mountain Road."

 

McCabe said he believes Eversource's reasoning for not using the shorter path is because they believe that it would be cheaper to have Oak Leaf build half and Eversource build another half. 

 

The reasoning behind this, he explained, is that the way Eversource is set up, it would not be able to build as cost effective as a private sector like Oak Leaf.  

 

"The theory is that we'll try to take on as much of that responsibility as possible to lower the costs and help us get to that budgetary number. And I think if we were going through the woods, you'll kind of be behind the solar array. Our ability to do more of that work, I think would be limited is what I think they are coming to," McCabe said

 

Shearer said he pressed this issue during the meeting they had on Monday but that they kept on giving conflicting reasons as to why they cannot use the more direct route. Despite the conflicting reasons there is a theoretical solution in sight. 

 

"I don't know if it's because they have a right of way through the airport property, or they maybe don't understand that the airport owns all the property. They had some issue with who did work where and it seemed to get confusing very quickly," Shearer said. "So I tried to press it, but they kept coming up with reasons they couldn't do it. One of them was they said we had to bury, to go underneath, there's two sets of lines, there's a transmission line, a high voltage transmission line, and then there is a lower voltage distribution line. That's the one we need to connect into.

 

"We have to go under the high voltage transmission line to get to the distribution line. And they said we would have to marry it. Which is a little weird, because the similar lines down the road go directly under the high tension. So we're getting kind of conflicting reasons. But at the end of the day, we did come up with a theoretical solution. It hasn't been fully agreed on yet."