Maryville utility leaders learn the vitality tea leaves and crunched the ability numbers and now they’re contemplating a choice that might change the town endlessly: carry solar energy to their grid.
Public Utility Director Baron Swafford launched the concept to council members in an August work session and spoke about his imaginative and prescient with The Each day Instances final week.
“It’s a course of to search out what I might name a companion,” Swafford defined, discussing how, inside the subsequent two weeks, his division will begin the hunt for a photo voltaic vitality supplier with a request for citation, or RFQ.
He’s not trying to purchase tools, buy land or rent employees. “The one factor that comes out of this can be a buy of energy settlement,” Swafford mentioned.
Which means he’s simply searching for somebody to purchase energy from.
However for the primary time within the metropolis’s historical past, the supply of that energy can be the solar. Swafford defined the town is searching for firms to construct a photo voltaic array in Blount and begin promoting megawatts to restricted areas in Maryville.
That’s as a result of Maryville Electrical is in a brand new 20-year contract with the Tennessee Valley Authority. Previously, the town was on a rolling 10-year contract. However when TVA gave native energy suppliers an possibility to maneuver to the 20-year possibility, it additionally gave Maryville some energy sourcing flexibility.
Photo voltaic is a part of that flexibility. Energy distributors on this new contract can pull 5% of their energy from renewable sources. Although clear vitality advocates have decried this quantity as too small to make important advances in a transfer towards environmental sustainability, Swafford mentioned it could be a superb fiscal transfer for the town.
“There’s no obligation to do that,” he defined. “That is strictly a chance as a result of TVA launched this flexibility modification. … It’s price a glance to see, what are the financial outcomes? Is there financial savings? The folks I’ve talked to say ‘Sure there’s,’ particularly for those who do it within the type of a purchase order energy settlement the place you don’t have something invested.”
However there are numerous unknowns, he mentioned. Really establishing photo voltaic arrays on the Maryville system would contain discovering land, discovering a builder and getting an organization to handle and promote the ability.
Swafford mentioned one of many query marks on this deal is property.
“The most important factor that may preserve this from shifting ahead is discovering a spot to place it,” he mentioned. “Maryville’s system may be very compact: It’s very small, very dense.” He estimated the division is searching for a photo voltaic array that might provide 4.Four megawatts of energy to the system, however that would want a big quantity of house.
“Discover me 40 acres fairly shut inside the town limits or proper outdoors the town limits that doesn’t have one thing sitting on it,” he mentioned, including he thinks what could finally occur is type of house compromise: splitting the mission up.
That will imply discovering smaller parcels of 5-Eight acres to construct a number of arrays, that are{span} a group of a number of {/span}{span}photo voltaic{/span}{span} panels that generate electrical energy as a system{/span}.
Although land could also be more durable to search out, Swafford mentioned he’s optimistic about discovering a supplier.
“I’m fairly assured we’re going to search out what we’re searching for,” he mentioned, noting he’s already talked to 2 or three photo voltaic firms.
The worth tag for such a mission can be minimal for Maryville’s authorities. It wouldn’t even buy the land for the mission, Swafford mentioned.
The one factor it needs to purchase is the photo voltaic vitality, if and when it begins flowing.
Maryville’s grid serves greater than 20,000 residences and companies within the metropolis limits, in Rockford and in different Blount County areas.
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