good evening and welcome to the june 18th two thousand and eighteen belmont municipal light board meeting i'm chair adam dash with me is vice chair mark paolillo good evening eat from high above good evening mark and with us also is a board member tom caputo good evening good evening tom and of course chris roy maria aidan from light department and we are here coming to you live from the town hall auditorium up on the stage and we're going to be having a couple of mess community announcements before we start one is belmont light will be at the farmer's market on thursday this thursday june 21st from two hundred to six hundred and thirty pm stop by and chat and also belmont drive's electric is having its next drive event to look at the electric cars and test drive them on june 24th from one hundred to four hundred at the chenery middle school so first item on the agenda presentation of quarter one two thousand and eighteen financials everyone should have an updated version of that and chris maria take it away please maria okay yeah so this is updated though right maria we got it at quarter one yeah it's just we tweaked a little bit of wording okay sure based on our meeting i just wanted to understand that with all that thank you okay so we run the first quarter financials and the results were presented to you in the memorandum and the attached balance sheet and pnl and i want to just guide you a little bit through it but basically were pretty stable there are no surprises in our financials for the first quarter our first quarter revenues increased by seventy thousand comparing to the last year first quarter results the sales skill of our sales revenues was eighty eight thousand or one higher and that's caused by the increase in kilowatt hour sales other revenues decreased by ten thousand due to decline in income associated with the wire recycling in eighteen because we don't do we do it as soon as we like replace the wire we recycle the old wire and it generates the other income purchase power expenses increased by almost seven hundred thousand at twenty two and that was the last there was a decrease in transmission cost due to the savings related to the kind of would from eversource and the elimination of eversource charges purchase power expenses increased by almost eighty four thousand or thirty seven and the significant increases related to increase in forward capacity market charges which like makes most of this amount can you explain what that is ahhh yeah i mean i guess i know you said there wasn't any surprises but this is a pretty significant increase it is we have a seven hundred thousand increase so am i adding this up correctly maria we have seven thousand plus no no no no seven hundred thousand plus eight three nine is a total of eight three nine no the power production expenses includes two line this is energy and transmission oh i see so the total so the transmission goes down but energy for what forward capacity market charges as a part of an energy charge it goes up significantly so total increase in power total increase is seven hundred purchase power what's the eight hundred and thirty nine eight hundred and thirty nine it's a component if you look into the beach yeah it's kind of tiny kind of hard to read four the last page is it seven hundred plus and eight hundred and thirty nine increase or is that just seven hundred it's just seven hundred in total yeah so nevertheless we rephrased it it looks like there is still a confusion on how it is formulated but do you want to no i'll just add so eight hundred and thirty nine is oh eight hundred and thirty nine is minus the one hundred and forty yes sir yes but through transmission cost savings but our power production expenses based on this for like adam asked i have no idea what fcm stands for that's what i'm asking yeah what is that yeah okay now i didn't understand the bulk numbers so thank you just got right back to the same place so that's fine so so that's a pretty significant increase yes so forward capacity market in a nutshell is basically the payments that we need to make that iso sets the rate so the each utility has a set load amount that they monitor and then they set the rates that they set aside a certain pool of money to make sure there's enough capacity on the system to support the regional network needs of iso and so in order to collect that money they have these forward capacity auctions and then the generators essentially bid in into this market this was kind of what was created through deregulation one thousand nine hundred and ninety seven and so they bid in the different market rates and so if you take a look at the graph yeah that's included in the packet there was a graph attached this graph it should be in the a package i'm not sure if it's attached to this no it's not attached to this package here probably as a separate yeah i did see that so what i did i just compared for with forward capacity market charges and transmission charges rates for the period starting two thousand and thirteen up to two thousand and twenty one and looking into the i can give you mine i have it i have it okay somewhere around here somewhere so if you look into the graph the blue line is exactly related to the forward capacity market is the fca is not the same thing as fcm fca is a charge fcm is the markets so for capacity fca is the auction within the market okay and so forward capacity auction number eight is somewhat of a controversial auction that generated this large price spike for every utility in the region and so there was some litigation involved with that where there was some market manipulation and threats by certain generators that said if you know this is all alleged this is not you know a ruling of any kind but basically what the sense was that there was some withholding of generation assets based on results of favorable market rules and so there's been some litigation to try and fix that but i think i don't know if there were settlements and this some of this ties together with the ene strategies agenda item later to be involved in some of this i mean is it you're showing on this chart that it's going to drop down it's going to drop and that's i think due in large part to there's some generation coming online there's folks that recognize fca was kind of an outlier and unacceptable in many ways and so we're looking at it to drop and so tying in with the ppta memo that's also included in the packet it's somewhat of a retroactive approach that we're looking to take but in many cases what we're hoping moving forward is if we monitor these markets more actively we can set a ppta price in advance and so cause everyone's in the same boat it's not an office is it just municipalities that are impacted by this chris every utility that's in iso new england and so we can implement a ppta knowing this is coming down the pike and kind of ramp into it so there isn't a rate shock but so instead in this particular case just because that wasn't an established initially we're looking at a ppta recommendation for discussion here yeah of two mils basically two tenths of a penny and so what we're hoping to do is leverage you mentioned the downward curve we're hoping to leverage the downward curve to keep a ppta in place even though prices go down we can kind of retroactively collect is this going to be something that we're going to experience the same number every quarter or is this like the worst quarter and then it goes down immediately or it's not going down until the next year it's an annual so it'd be going down next year so you're going to have this thirty seven increase every quarter for this year in this item i think that thirty yeah so but if the forecast was each quarter yes there would be thirty higher each quarter how is that not going to impact the rates by the end of the year well so that's a good question wait so part of this so with the ppta with the two tenths of a penny so if you maria included a calculation in that memo that shows for annual forecast i hope they don't mind i'm jumping in yeah yeah that's all right and so this annual forecast shows that thirty seven increase results in just under seven hundred thousand in additional costs that we would have to recover what are you looking at there is a second memo with a it's called purchase problem transmission adjustment rate review part of the package you gave us it should be probably it it looks like this oh that's it that's in the same alright i was looking for a different packet but it was in this one so if you follow so just to give you the noteworthy line items the most noteworthy the top line item that starts in green green is actuals and then once it turns white these are forecast and numbers or actual sales and so basically based on those figures you know we've forecast the expenses and so then the line forecast purchase power cost that's where you'd see this increased forward capacity market charge that's now incorporated into the model and then that gives you the resulting last line there prior period over under recovery following that through to the end that's six hundred and ninety one thousand for the year for the year and so that's what we're looking to collect over a certain amount of time and that that period of time and the collection amount is subject to the ppa ppta discussion so that 37ish percent or maybe a little lower is gonna be the number then correct is what you're saying correct for the year for the year not for the quarter correct it wouldn't it's not a compounding i was getting a little scared there yeah good to hear that i'm glad to hear that so again this is affecting every utility correct experiencing the same things there does that mean that most utilities will be changing their rates this year as a result or is this absorbed into budgets more easily or are we disproportionately impacted so the one i had involvement been involved with this and my prior experience we it's the same discussion except in advance so we ramped up rates in advance and so folks wouldn't notice it over eighteen months in anticipation of this year this would more be a retroactive implementation and we have a rates tab fund yes and we're planning to use it as well and the general speaking we are trying to change an approach to ppta in general and just use it like use a small collect a small amount of money every month instead of just charging the actual based on the calculations and either collect it and use rates stabilization fund to offset what is under collected throughout the year or transfer whatever we over collected through ppt to raise stabilization fund and just to keep the rate more less flat instead of changing ppt rate you know every few months as we used to do so i see you've got the so that you've got on the panel you've got three million in the rate stabilization reserve yes where in the budget is it showing that coming out i didn't see it like how much of it are you planning on using it's in the memo so what the memo says we are this is just quarter one yeah yeah it's just quarter one and it's you know like i'm truing up expenses and it changes we don't know how july would be and what would be the august like weather wise and how much we will collect and what would be the purchase power cause so it's it's like ask tonight what's the projection projected amount you'd be taken out of the stabilization fund right now we're looking into three hundred and then i need to discuss it with my auditors whether we will roll forward down the collection for this year to the next year and continue collecting certain amount of money through ppta or we will again offset from the rate stabilization fund and the amount would be i would say like another five hundred maybe less to make up for the six hundred and ninety to for recovery right the full six hundred and ninety one yes right yeah over and just expenses for the year correct so our net it's not expenses it's the net loss in net loss absolutely yeah and that's i'm sorry is that something that can be predicted this sort of rate i mean this cost of purchase power is that something sure the auction prices i'd have to double check i'd get ahead of that i believe the auction price the auction the forward capacity auctions are held two years out so you would know three years thank you three years in advance so we should know say another price by cap happens today we should be able to ramp up a rate stabilization fund now so you wouldn't see it three years from now yeah but to ramp up the rate stabilization fund that means you increase rates correct how does one take money out of the stabilization fund is it the same as with the town side where there's has to be a vote i think we've haven't we voted in that i haven't had to deal with taking money out of this rate stabilization fund i thought we drew that down to reserve that we or you or i think the board you presented to the board and we approved it you approved the transfer to rate stabilization fund is that something that on the one hundred and sixty four you do or that's my question i just want to know does it come back to us i don't know adam i'm asking you know i thought we had done it before but yeah not since i've been on the board for sure sure my thought was somewhat i guess it's indirect so we were bringing a recommendation of increasing to males so by association you would have to take the remaining under collection from so i guess by by approving a two mil increase subsequent to that it would be an approval i think when the money comes when you're looking to take the money out of the stabilization fund you probably should come to us for the vote sure i believe so yeah i guess we get an approval from you to transfer to rates tab so logically yeah i was just trying to find the procedure and we anyway we'll report on the like closer to the year end we will report on the results and the most recent drop and where we stand and what is like on the collection amount is and what we plan to do and if we decide to take like three hundred or six hundred from rates tab we'll come to you and we will tell you what our strategy would be alright well this is what the rate stabilization fund is for so i don't have a particular issue with using this as an unforeseen oddity when you look at the chart it's just a spike and there's what are you going to do but the it's not unique to us i guess the thing is going to be important to keep an eye on the quarterlies i guess for us when do you so we want to make sure we get to see the quarterlies in a timely fashion because keep track of this number in particular when do you think we'd have the q2 q2 how many do we at the end to that i would say august that would be about the same as the timing from q1 to now alright but this should already be baked in for the rest of the year from an expense perspective the only uncertainty is how do the rest of the lines in the budget or is there some unpredictability it's no it's like there is a projection and there is an actual expense and sometimes it's the rates and i have to based on the reality it depends on the weather it depends on manufacturers and sometimes i have to adjust it that's the problem with this kind of like with purchase power expense it's in most cases not that predictable as you would wish to so what all right so what's been negotiated for clarity is the rate you don't quite know we quite know how much what sales will be or your demand will be absolutely hot summer could be a cold summer okay so there will be some very broad alright well is there anything else we need to do to protect ourselves against this affecting future auctions is there anything that can be done or is this just anyone who is in new england is dealing with the same exact thing with no ability to insulate yourself from sure in certain terms of rates as we take a really close look at how our rates are structured that's the piece that we have the least control over being the power supply component we can go out and secure capacity contracts to hedge against that you know an energy contracts but in terms of how iso forces us to incur oxen charges it's we just have to maintain that stabilization account to ride out the spikes that we have no control over buy over oil futures hedge hedge okay so is there anything else under the budget i mean that's probably the elephant in the room on that court q1 right yeah well there's some fluctuation between different type of expenses i don't know i can go through them if you wish but it's it's all here there's nothing unexpected it's just movement from one bucket to another i mean the light department's budget's not terribly difficult to figure out because you buy power and you sell power kind of what it is except for whatever spike like this it's something odd other than that it's relative but you're looking to increase the rate here at some point effective july 1st we are looking to purchase power and transmission adjustment which was waived for the first half of the year so you want to implement it as of july 1st as of july 1st and yes at two cents no not two cents two tenths two mil two tenths of a penny so that would generate about one hundred and twenty seven thousand in additional revenue for six months for the six months remaining in the year so that's the effect on the average bill the penny was about ten or ten to fifteen so you're you're looking at year per month per month yeah but this is much less so you're talking right so proportionally two bucks a couple of months yeah so the idea was to take the burden off the customers so it's not that noticeable how we would collect you'll recover some of it yes and would still re like you don't pull down from the rate stabilization fund for at the end of the year perhaps and you said roll maria you said to roll it forward to some of the underage to next year yeah but we will be like reviewing it closer to the end of the year is this the is this the budget i'm sorry the agenda item you want to take this up under i because you need to vote on the mils i would assume yes so i think because you're looking for a motion to set up a charge of one hundred and eight effective july 1st two thousand and eighteen no no no no two i think it's not yeah it's the different memo so it's like the second to last i'm reading the first memo alright hold on all right i see it's the motion would be to recommend setting the purchase power and transmission adjustment ppta to a rate of two effective july 1st two thousand and eighteen and keep the rate flat in the foreseeable future correct yeah second all in favor aye you're not asking for a vote on the rate stabilization fund we'll deal with that maybe in august or see where that sure where it leads us and we look at the fund balance quarterly so we can take it up at any quarter presentation okay just keeping an eye on the time but we'll it took longer than i expected but that was a big big thing discussion on current no charge led bulb distribution i was at the el back meeting last week with chris and this was discussed so you want to explain what this is sure so basically our one of our current programs is to give away a free bulb every time you pay your bill in person and so while it might necessarily seem trivial on the surface it actually is quite expensive and has a significant administrative burden on the folks the customer service folks and so one of the handouts you see in front of you just to for a point of reference that's the program details since its inception in one noteworthy point in two thousand and sixteen the partway through the year was changed to leds so that's why you'd see the jump from sixteen to seventeen and so last year in seventeen we're looking at almost sixteen thousand in a program and then through may of eighteen we're on track for more closer to seventeen thousand maybe eighteen thousand and so what we were looking to do is you know in terms of keeping the big picture in mind in terms of the cap goals and offering programs that encourage energy efficiency and you know on that theme it's really difficult if not impossible to track if you give out a bulb to someone who pays the bill in person we really don't have any idea if that has a positive impact to energy and there's no limit so if you have if your house is already fully led you could end up with a significant amount of surplus bulbs we've had a number of difficult customer exchanges around this program so i should mention that it does not include eliminating bulbs from events community events or audits and so the other thought behind that is we offer these audits and so we'd almost we'd prefer folks to get these bulbs through audits because then it also opens the door the other energy efficiency measures and do you know you're replacing no an incandescent bulb with an led instead of someone who's all led and it just comes every month to get a bulb to put it on ebay or something exactly and so i just save them up right yeah i mean that's the basics of this is because we went through this a lot at el back is that it's just the people that go to the window and pick it up who get the free bulb to pay their bill in person of which most people don't most people don't pay their bill in person and actually would encourage people to pay their bill remotely so they don't drive down to belmont light to get the free bulb and then incur the cost of actually office cost of handling payment right yes that is not the behavior we want to drive from a cost ordering bulbs storing bulbs yeah and el back's feeling was that stopping this particular program was worthwhile and then chris's idea was to take the savings and put it towards a program that would better meet the climate action plan goals that would be a little more rebates for heat pumps or rebates for something else that you know solar panels or whatever you know that was more directly related to the climate action plan and giving someone a free light bulb which at this and then this was to be fair when the program was started led bulbs were relatively new and we're trying to get people to actively switch over but i think at this point it's almost harder to find an incandescent light bulb i think people are switching over or have switched over so the need to get people on board with the new technology isn't really there and that was a consumer education campaign at the time right it's less around consumer education let's find the next thing we want to yes up at town day and at the farmer's market they'll still continue to give out the bulbs yeah actually what the public thing but it's not the same people that come every month and get bulb bulb bulb bulb bulb every month so i mean those are the i guess chris was asking whether we were okay with getting rid of that no the free led bulb hen you pay your bill in person program and have chris redirect the money to where he feels is important to achieve climate action plan goals so i guess that's the motion yes sir that sounds great did you get that it was kinda meandering three thousand bulbs right yes it's not three thousand people it's the same people coming back month after month and members of their family according to this and there's some people unfortunately have abused the program but that's not a thing but some people have i'm fine want to make a motion yeah so i move to eliminate the what's it called well it's whatever the bulb payment the bulb and a led bulb distribution program is currently for paying your bills in person paying your bills in person and to have chris find another climate action and you could use the savings for other sort of climate action plan initiatives second all in favor aye aye i never came down to get a bulb i didn't even know the program existed i don't pay it in person but discussion on possible membership and ene strategies this was also discussed at el back and this is about subscribing to the lobbying arm of energy new england regarding the programs and having a seat at the table and having a say and the way to get tech support and that it's about six hundred a month and it seemed like chris's it seemed like a really good idea and chris has suggested it as something that would be we could do and try it for a year and if it doesn't work we don't have there's no obstacle to it right so yeah there's a list of the other towns that do and it's like a lot of the ones we as a municipal light department hold ourselves as our peers if you look at the list here there's twenty three of them on here and they're the ones we all call our peers and they all are members so it might be good to have us what do they provide so page two yeah i saw that is the proposal and so basically they get to know us and they can provide you know materials for public education they can come to i believe there's two meetings in this proposal they can come to board meetings and talk about current events but most importantly they have a significant presence and so that gives us a point of contact into future events you know future programs on the state level to also you know inject our point of view on how these programs should be structured and you know and basically in the name of moving the belmont mission forward do you think this is a good you're recommending this to us i recommend definitely questions no two quick comments i guess one would be it sounds like the type of thing where if you ask for help you probably get it and you get to use the services and if you don't they're just happy to collect your six hundred bucks yes and not do anything so it sounds like it's one where just make sure that we're actively taking advantage of the benefit sure and i guess the second comment would be can we just make sure that we look in after a year and make sure it is valuable yep these are the types of line items that just make it year after year into a budget without anybody thinking about it is it just from this ene or are these are all isolated so just muni's and they actually did secure their first private client that's first energy on the list i believe it was i'm sorry mbta is on here if you look on the list as well so they had not for profit ene yes thank you i have a motion to join ene strategies so moved second all in favor aye aye preliminary discussion on moving from the cost of service study to rate design and this is do you know the cost of service study has been ongoing to try to get it where how our rates are where they're coming from and to then by knowing where the rates come from getting some sort of level of control or shifting around on them and the cost of service study is not in yet or at least we haven't seen it yet but the idea is to what the next is to talk about the next step going from the cost of service study when we get it to then going to rate design which means chris you want to take it from there dot dot dot so yes i mean given that there's been a lot of discussion around the cost of service study i wanted to just basically give a quick update on where we're at we did a week ago or time's flying maybe week and a half ago we had heard a presentation from utility financial services basically they went through the results they have now and then asked for more information and so but one of the important things that i learned having been my first interaction with this group in a belmont context is so their scope of work they've looked at basically the bucket of expenses that belmont light incurs and then evaluated how those expenses are incurred by each rate class and so the proposal they have before us takes the forecasted climate of the industry and compares it against our current expenditures as they are today and so there's two followup components that i think is for further discussion in the future being the rate design that comes from looking at how each rate class encouraged the expenses so do we want to increase costs for commercial over residential or industrial that type of discussion also it also highlights our ongoing internal effort to put together a financial book a budget book if you will that then looks at each ferc account to understand more about what goes into the bigger picture expenses that were injected into the cost of service study and so we look at it by each account number so we'll look at overhead expenses overhead infrastructure and expenses not necessarily overhead you know general plant but that to underground expenses you know crew where our crews spend their you know construction time and that theme and so that analysis you know will supplement the cost of service also with the cost of service study they provide a model that we can then manipulate based on our internal budgeting review and so those i think that was what i just was hoping to clarify in terms of the deliverables from the cost of service study being a model and how each rate class incurs the existing expenses and that further then highlights the need for us to look at internally how we're accounting for different activities so you'll get the cost of service study in and then you'll make recommendations to us about the next step i would assume correct questions is just sort of framing of where we're going to go when's the last time we have we ever done this i mean i don't remember we did when was that we had one cost of service study but it wasn't very detailed on in twelve thirteen and then i reviewed in fifteen when there were like high power costs they went up significantly and we had to review all our rates in order not to collect through ppt but collect through the rates because the initial projections were not done properly but this is a more detailed role by that's comprehensive and is it also something right agreed and so is it something that you do on a periodic basis i mean is it couple of years you do this kind of initiative or is that too difficult that's how it is supposed to do you're supposed to do every two to five years depending on how the you know the rates work and what is the industry what are the industry standards because the industry is changing a lot lately like last few years it changes a lot with all those like ev initiative right and everything so we need to look into probably more frequently than we used to yeah i thinks so that makes sense right i think that's the big point you know what in many cases outside of here out of this individual instance you know what was the rule of thumb in a utility twenty years ago it was rapidly changing to something new and dynamic as we implement storage and there's higher solar penetration and dg and sales decline and we look at how fixed costs you know what percentage of fixed costs are incurred through meter charges and things like that and so you know the evolution of the industry has prompted more frequent and closer look at how rates are designed just keep us informed when the cost of service study comes in you expect to have that for us when so our follow up is next week next week yeah we need to provide what we did i think it was july yeah it's hard to say i would say for if you're asking me for a conservative date i'll give you a i think august i think a more realistic dates so we can plan what we're doing right yeah i think august would probably be the best okay we'll look forward to seeing it discussion on future planning meetings with el back when i spoke with steve kioski the chair and this was discussed at the el back meeting about them wanting to come in and talk to us about what we feel their role is and sort of how to work together with them and sort of keeping the way we're meeting with the various department committee chairs in the selectman side it might be good to bring el back in and maybe at some point bring in the energy committee and roger colton as well to sort of discuss what we and provide some leadership as to what we want them to do because we've sort of went with chris coming in it's things are sort of going in a different direction with belmont light a bit and so everyone wants to make sure that a nothing falls through the cracks and b that we don't and this was more steve's issue with no one duplicates work so if we all make it clear i mean i've always had in my mind what i felt that el back's role was to sort of be technical advisors to us who are elected but have no electrical knowledge whatsoever but to be technical advisors because they do i don't even know what they're working on today i mean not to say that not working on something but it'd be helpful to meet with them and to talk those kinds of things yeah i've been going to the meetings and chris goes i know we have a liaison with you and but you know maybe you meet with them on a quarterly basis in the energy committee just to sort of level set in terms of some of the initiatives that they may be working on and the energy committee is beyond belmont light whereas el back is targeted just to this right circling back around with them you know at least quarterly no less than quarterly i think it makes a lot of sense we want to get them in i think we talked about july or august and this leads into the next item which is discussion of light board meeting schedule because i told them we didn't know when july or august would be however i wanted first of all i wanted to make sure we got the selectmen schedule for the rest of you're done hmm hmm which we've now done so you know what the finite dates would be if you want to piggyback it onto a selectman's meeting so the question then would be for the next rest of the year if we could maybe get while we're here dates for when we were el back's we have no more light board meetings scheduled for the rest of the year we'd schedule it back in the summer i scheduled through the end of june right this is the last one yep so now we have to schedule through the of the year are these potential dates i'm a tentative now adam on the 16th but i'm here for the rest of the meetings alright so we have to be out of town on the 16th there's the chart here so these are the meetings where the selectmen are meeting so i looked at all of these and that we already had these in our calendars right yup you should so other than the 16th every all the other meetings were fine for me the 30th is the night of the collins center presentation which is a joint meeting with the school committee and the warrant committee and the capital budget committee at the selectmen seven not to say we can't do this right i mean at five hundred and thirty as long as it still works for you yeah i guess the question was do we typically find we need the full ninety minutes or is it five hundred and forty five start or well it's six hundred and thirteen so tonight probably not but sometimes it's eleven am when did we meet one thousand one hundred am on the 21st what is that so the one thousand one hundred am on the 21st won't work for me what is that anyway we it was eight hundred am actually not one thousand one hundred am what was that for we couldn't come up with a second time oh that's right so we're doing it it's the 21st at eight hundred in the morning well no yeah so the board selectmen is at eight hundred in the morning and then this is going to be the follow on it oh i see gotcha that's why that was there but that one will be tough for me so i won't be able to make that you can't make the 21st that's no i can make the 21st bos meeting but i can't stay until noon right so i'm okay with everything other than the 16th so july 16th is no so would july 30th be a light board meeting sure okay the only thing i just wanted to add in there and just see what you'd like to do july 30th one of those rare things i could have a daughter on july 30th so i'm available until you're not to that that's not a good excuse at all oh the other thing is it's totally unpredictable and you and you want to make the meeting so i mean i prefer to be here adam but you know if you wanted to go ahead with the 16th is kind of tight as well i just no this isn't planned make plans today for me on travel maybe be having to be in california looking at flights and me have to fly out on the 16th i think we do the 30th and if you if something comes up you let us know we'll move it you know sure we have to move it we'll have to move it that's certainly a legitimate excuse chris i remember like my wife my second baby i had court in the morning and i'm like i can't call the court at like eleven o'clock at night so you can't just not show up either it's tough so august 20th or 27th which would be your preference for the light board meeting either is fine with me the 27th since it's thirty days later yeah that's fine and that would be that would be the 27th what's your preference for el back to bring him in on july 30th or august 27th well we should just if chris is going to be out perhaps out maybe august 27th alright so tell el back they were we told them it would be either the july or august and we gave them this chart so they knew it was one of four dates hmm hmm so unless steve says that they can't they don't have enough people because it's the last week in august or whatever but hmm hmm you know other than that yep we should be good and then i've seen since i can't be here on september 17th that would be the september light board meeting yep october one or fifteen i don't carry the one let's say fifteen because otherwise it's going to be too soon on the september meeting okay you got it november you want to just continue on november 19th yes december seventeen yup and then we'll deal with next year next year perfect so you get all that aidan so i guess the one final question i would have is if we think we need a full ninety minutes i can work to try to get out if you want to post them for six o'clock and see where we go we can do six o'clock and if we need to move them up because we have a particular large agenda we could in advance or if it bleeds into the selectmen's meeting it has happened before yeah i appreciate we close for six hundred to eight hundred many times many times so it's okay if we post them for six hundred and then the one on oh we're not nevermind so there only the night ones well you can always adjust them i mean if you think that it's going to be ninety minutes well what if you could always post the selectmen's meeting at seven hundred and thirty right well when we get the cost of service study for instance that's probably going to be a longer meeting yep el back i don't think there's going to be a longer meeting but it's going to take a little time and if the q2's come in august there's a big mess then we need to keep an eye on it so are you going to be okay you think august 27th maria for having the q2's that's another reason for going late in august make sure we get the q2's yep okay okay sounds good who's on the board meeting you're going to send out invites aidan alright we'll meet on the 16th you know i may not be here but you guys can talk well we've got the schedule we're good we want you okay okay alright cool we have minutes for may 22nd two thousand and eighteen and june 4th two thousand and eighteen both regular sessions i didn't see anything in them i thought they were pretty good so if anyone has any comments or anything we'll entertain a motion to approve so moved second all in favor aye aye aye anybody else have anything else six hundred and eighteen or so you're right forty five minutes to spare that would have been helpful to start at six hundred i'm sorry chris chris anything else i just reading the agenda again incinerator site oh update on solar plans feasibility proposed bhs incinerator site go ahead alright yeah i skipped that one but we're gonna be having a larger discussion at eight o'clock tonight on the incinerator do you want to talk about the incinerator and the solar i could just add my thought here for this line was just add how that could potentially tie in with the renewable energy credits basically in terms of i should state in terms of infrastructure standpoint belmont light could support really whatever you'd like to put there incinerator solar really anything it's you know line extensions system engineering that's just blankets you know ability to accept any technology that's there yeah i think at the selectmen meeting we talked with you about that about the just making sure to see if any of the ideas for like the incinerator site were just absolute financial or technical no go's exactly so we don't waste any time and if you're telling me that all of them are doable at some level then that's kind of all we need to know yes just preliminaries exactly any questions nope well how do we i guess the point is and i'm reading here their alternative three photovoltaic panels you're looking at that that's old though that's two thousand i know it's old that's my point i mean how do we look at this again as a possibility so basically what i talked to bruce about he i guess and certainly new information correct me if i'm wrong but they're conducting a more updated survey which will basically be used to create a grading plan in a new cap and so he said basically any design we're looking at for the cap on area b could accept a ground mounted array in terms of the solar application but to make that assessment we would need to know the grading plan because the grading okay that's helpful but i mean is there a financial aspects of this in which it's nonviable is there a line that needs to be sort of looked at from a threshold perspective to say this is viable financially this is not viable financially is that something we can get as well or update on how do we have we don't have a plan to look at right now right and i've always thought that you know solar array center that would be a nice thing to have sure not withstanding some of the other thoughts that we had we've been taught well it could be in conjunction with some of the other ones oh that's right yeah good point so it was one mega award enough i mean i had heard of you have to do five i mean anything the key i guess here and this is part of a past fractal survey for this site with the changing tax credit climate and the renewable energy climate we're looking at solar plus storage as the new way to make things financially viable hmm hmm historically speaking a ppa arrangement by itself was it enough because the developer could leverage those tax incentives but moving forward solar plus storage is you know looking to take the place of those disappearing tax credits so i think the short answer to your question is yes there is still financially viable it just might not be at solar alone we'd be looking at solar plus storage to make the numbers work can you explain again the rationale for adding storage why is that so the storage component now opens the door to peak shaving which is a cost saving measure on what we were talking about right before you couldn't store it i mean this six story technology was nascent right and it really didn't correct and belmont's peak in large part is at night yep as the solar production is tailing off it allows for participation and frequency markets which provide incentive payments for being available to stabilize the grid in times of need so that's another revenue stream and so those sources can then offset the declining tax incentives that used to be there this would be we would this would be a developer that would do this and we'd just have a purchase power agreement with that developer correct correct and it would always sell would it be just would it be exclusive to belmont that they could sell this storage stored in yep it would d we would have to make financially viable to them to develop the solar array exactly we'd have to have ppa in place we'd have to look at all of that right exactly there's just things things have changed so much that the two i was reading the two thousand and twelve report and i'm like is this kind of so i know that i agree on that so that's the reason i asked but we have to be in a situation where you know our purchasing of this power and the fact that we can now store it and like you say shade capacity would be a financially acceptable proposal for the community but it also enhances our climate action planning initiative as well exactly and i've always thought that we should do something there with this sure and that's somewhat ties in i won't go too far down this path but the rec treatment so each of these renewable energy facilities currently are associated with renewable energy credits and so that kind of complicates the discussion aside from just facility but there's also the environmental credits associated with it and so there are different classes and i just highlight them for discussion sake but class i recs tend to be solar and wind class ii recs are hydro and alternative recs call it class iii for ease of conversation those are your bio mass landfill gas anaerobic digester the digester and so those you know each of those have different environmental attributes associated with that and so when considering the cap goals you know what are the environmental attributes associated with the rec class because class iii is class iii because there are missions associated with those so different than solar where you know just sits there and there's no emissions the class iii recs alternative recs or such as biomass landfill gas or renewable because they you can regenerate the fuel but like landfill gas there's methane in there and you have to burn the methane to generate electricity so there are emissions so it gets a class iii it's kind of deemphasized but it has different properties where solar is variable and you know a landfill gas plant can be closer to base load where it's more predictable so okay so that's summary there we're going to have a lot of discussion about this shortly so anything else light board space no thank you travis bill whoever yes i want to just bring identify yourself for the record please yeah phil thayer i wanted to just bring to light board's attention that some resident experts in solar financing attended el back on thursday night and did some preliminary analysis that would be have direct bearing on the financial viability of a number of solar sites around town and i'd like the opportunity to ask one belmont resident jacob knowles to speak on that topic because i think it's relevant in given that the light board is not meeting again until the end of july and the timing is kind of tight alright jacob you have to identify yourself jacob knowles precinct four i think mr paolillo made a good point about that we need to look at the financial aspect of these topics and you know we've looked at it to a degree but what we're really asking for is that there's an important timeline here and an important investment and that investment may become less or somehow detrimentally affected if we don't act quickly it's something that we've been bringing up for a while now but i think that there's an opportunity now for the light board to potentially put together a short term a small working group between el back belmont light and the energy committee to just look at this financial question of solar in belmont for town sites and that seems like a wise move just to go through that process to see where it ultimately leads and get that expert input i know el back's working on it and chris that's a really good idea actually belmont light's working on it i don't know if i think if you bring together some individuals or just charge chris to sort of bring in these individuals i mean i think we really need to explore this in a very expeditious way you know i mean especially if we're starting to make decisions on these yeah we need to yeah i know we need to move on and make decisions on these things i just don't know whether it's you want to set up some formal structure or whether you know chris can reach out to the community yeah perhaps we just have already had that sort of network of you can call meetings with you and el back and jacob and like members of but you don't need us for that sure yeah that fine that's my recommendation i mean we get recommendations from you we get recommendations from el back and i hope you're reaching out to other people as well so it's not just this echo chamber i'm fine with that that's a great point but i just the reason why we're coming here tonight is we did go to the el back meeting and the feedback that we received was the light board really needs to say this is something we're interested in we give you the leeway to go ahead and proceed with this process we just said that yeah i mean i think they were saying i'm asking i think chime in if you like i personally am saying i think chris as a municipal light board general manager and it should bring in the expertise of el back and concerned citizens and making recommendations to us as el back should do when they make recommendations and they did because you were there and the more there's no monopoly and good ideas they're good ideas everywhere so i don't know if we need to set up if considering the time well i'm more concerned the timeframe because if you set up a formal committee and they have to post meetings and have minutes and have a whole big structure behind it it's going to slow everything down well el back meetings they have to post meetings right well not if just the chair of el back met with persons i think we can direct chris to sort of pursue this initiative expeditiously you know as you know jacob is indicated here and as you say adam he already has he's really plug and play with el back and with the energy committee and you go to the meetings as well so yeah we can certainly pursue i think that makes abundant sense and we had again when we were doing this i was going to general manager that's an important topic for this board right and we were doing it for the purchase power policy there were joint meetings with the general manager the energy committee el back i went and we had those meetings to come up with the purchase power policy so it's not like we haven't done these before within the existing structure i'm just more concerned the timing cause you're right about the timing and if we set some it's going to take and then they you know we have to appoint people formerly and elect a chair it's going to be two months before they can do anything and i'm just trying to find an ex i'm not against setting up a committee i'm just trying to meet your timeline yeah i agree i was just thinking of it you need to work through the general manager that was recommendation for a working group as opposed to appointing a committee but i rolled with the idea of working groups in general so long as chris so we just asked we just asked chris to sort of organize to organize to set that up i guess and then if you've if things haven't happened by our next meeting i should assume you will come and let us know and then if we have to do something more formal we will but i don't think chris has to be told twice to do it i think he's i think he would probably do it anyway to be honest with you i agree with that and another comment i would make chris is if at some point you deem a working group or committee more expeditious or useful to your execution please come to the light board and let us know yeah and we would probably take your recommendation if you want something more formal if this thing isn't working out for anybody you know i'm open yeah call us from the maternity ward and the 30th let us know how you're making out sounds good well that 30th meeting may end up moving around but we'll see give us a call as wife goes into labor will do sounds more than fair alright it is six hundred and thirty one so one hour not bad any other comments from the public seeing none i'll entertain a motion move to adjourn to adjourn so moved second all in favor aye nice job just as a programming note the board of selectmen will be meeting here at seven hundred pm in the town hall auditorium and then at eight hundred pm that meeting will turn into the public forum on post closure use of the incinerator site so please tune in or come on down thank you