Northampton Cooperative Livestock Auction goes solar in Whately
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WHATELY - "We're not just in the black by doing this, but in the green," said Don Ellershaw.
Ellershaw, of the Northampton Cooperative Livestock Auction, was speaking to a small crowd gathered at the ribbon cutting ceremony for the new solar photovoltaic array installed on the cooperative's building at 353 Long Plain Road.
The 88-panel array will generate about three households' worth of electricity every month, according to Brandon Doane, project manager for Nexamp, the North Andover-based company that designed and installed the array.
Doane said that the array will generate 18.48 kilowatt hours of direct current that will feed the building with power. The array will generate enough electricity to cover all of the building's needs and should generate surplus electricity that can be sold to the Western Massachusetts Electric Co. to bring in about $170,000 over the 30-year life span of the array, said Doane.
The installation of the array took five days, Doane said, but the entire project took 18 months from inception to completion.
Ellershaw said that he attended a seminar sponsored by the Berkshire Pioneer Resource Conservation and Development Council about energy savings for agricultural businesses.
Once he decided that the auction might qualify, he began to go through the rigorous paperwork process to secure funding.
The array was bought with a $34,500 Renewable Energy for America Program grant from USDA Rural Development and a $61,000 Commonwealth Solar State rebate, according to Nexamp.
Ellershaw said that the auction had been spending about $300 to $400 per month on electricity before the array was activated.
Before installation, Nexamp conducted an energy audit of the building and retrofitted the light fixtures with more energy efficient models and motion sensors, Ellershaw said, to reduce the amount of electricity that would be needed.
Those changes allowed a smaller array to be constructed that would still cover all of the building's energy needs.
Ellershaw said that the auction was able to employ local companies to do much of the construction.
The Northampton Cooperative Livestock Auction was founded in 1949 and has held an auction every Tuesday since then, according to Ellershaw, as a way to help ensure local farmers and receive the best price for their livestock.
