i'd like to call the meeting of the belmont white board of monday march fourteenth two thousand and sixteen to order my name is sammy baghdadi i'm the chair to my right is mark below the vice chair jim williams like board member and then j adjournment and that is specifically a discussion on the one thousand kilos wat solar capacity capacity limit that is a limit that we imposed as a policy based on the recommendation of the net metering working group that was chaired by roy epstein who's who's in front of me in the audience and they made a recommendation that that  solar program roger colton appeared before us all last month i would say you know he reported that there were forty signed contracts to purchase solar systems and you know there were two hundred thirty two requests for solar assessments and one hundred seventeen homes qualified for solar installations and their goal was to sign on one hundred  new solar users well i let broad sure you know give more details but you know approximately a month and a couple of weeks later we have exceeded the hundred home gold we're up to one hundred four homes right now and there are an additional three hundred forty six residents that have had their homes assessed for solar and found to be suitable  i think what i've heard from broader is we've already reached the thousand capacity limit and even though we've reached the limit that is phenomenal knows because adopted by the light board also got it right and it shows that belmont supports solar so i am happy to let you elaborate on your request roger and and i commend you for the results number one is that the desire to go solar isn't concentrated anywhere in town it's not a precinct sex or precinct date it is literally everywhere in town so that's to use a term of art that's very cool and it's very good because it means that there's no particular strain on any part of the of the distribution system but as you said the issue is simple that there is an incredible demand for solar it's going up on it day by day basis alex being a member of the committee and the bamako so a committee described it as like watching  the times square ball on new year's eve in reverse because just on a daily basis it goes up and up and up we have exceeded the cap the  i think that the reasonable thing to do is not to debate where the cap should be set there's plenty of time to do that what we want to do is we want to go solar to succeed and in order to do that i would ask that you simply suspend the cap for the duration of the goes out of solar campaign and there will be plenty of time in the future to talk about where that cap should eliminate all these potential new installations so certainly that is not our intent the other thing is it's probably a good idea to see how far the campaign does go before we set a limit and to see if there or there mission oh you know the only issue was a minor one i think everybody's intent is that everybody who buys a system under the terms of the solar is ation campaign be allowed to proceed with it but there's no date in this language of when that campaign ends so i think it just should be understood that this is not unlimited so i technically the campaign think if we define it by the discount period was going to end on april thirtieth so if that's extended by sometime you know that's fine but i think there should be an understanding that by the fall this whole issue gets reexamined that that's all on the median lydian would come after me of but anybody tried to cut that tree down so you know i'm not broken hearted but i but my house like even the faces south it can it doesn't make sense to convert what is your d me we're not talking about five megawatt as a cap well i think there are i think some people would talk about fight some people would talk about three  we have up to three hundred installations when if we get there it's wonderful but what i hear him saying any is correct or and maybe i'm just reading into what you're saying but we occur happier when that occurs happens and put solar on then all of a sudden we've got a bigger chunk so there she was not simply taking the five residential and multiplying that but there is a discussion a legitimate discussion to be had roger along that lines i've been you know thinking of ways that you know the advantage of having solar on the wellington it was primarily to educate the students so that the students you know look at look at the dials you know during peak solar times and see how much energy is generated and how much is say and what have you and you know i noticed on your website if i'm a whole solar you know depending on the number of solar installations direct solar energy will donate up to twenty five thousand towards the installation of solar panels on a belmont school or other municipal building boy two things if if we've exceeded our goal so maybe you can use your negotiation powers to increase that  support from the installer i don't know but but you know my thinking was you know maybe we can use this installer to do what you're saying either install panels on the high school or you know depending on what goes on at the incinerator site you know there's been talk about a solar farm animal as to what i'm going to hear or maybe even a police station which could have four other facility which could have solar panels on it you know and idea is you know this is what well we have done and you log in to their website and you see a real time solar portal you know that students can log into and look at it from their computers you know or from their i pads maybe even boy would it be nice if we could somehow leverage this effort and make it an educational opportunity as well i can't tell you what now might go solar committee has decided because we haven't decided and this gets beyond earned at twenty five thousand dollars that's money in the bank and twenty five thousand dollars however doesn't really go very far in putting solar panels on any given school if the world was the world according to roger we would take that twenty five thousand dollars we would have perhaps ask local business such as belmont savings bank the foundation which supports community initiatives perhaps engage in some financial some private fund raising and we would put a learning solar station it each one of our four elementary schools and i'd like that chatter yeah that's going to cost more than twenty five thousand dollars math it's the him it's in the environment it's everything that we would want to teach to the advantage of that is you can even have dials downstairs and yes hallway that kids can walk by and yes see the bats it makes but that's my bed that's my vision at this point and i'm not speaking on behalf of my committee it's you know a lot of the older schools structurally can't support many panels but if you're talking about two or three panels get it at each school just enough so that educational opportunity and you can see it and without compromising the structure of luck but it would take a community effort but what we know now from the past from the past ten weeks is the community has drafted some proposed language changes to our policy that would in effect suspend the cap for now while the campaign is ongoing you have comments i have no problem with the language if you will walk through it or the well i think what we need to do is we need to revisit it in the in the fall i mean but see how many systems they get up and running and see if there's any you know technical distribution difficulties and we don't need to  economic issues as you because jim referenced on we can revisit the sometime in the fall and you know that the practical matter yes there are two practical observations one is that if there continues to be demand we will hold the white under this policy policy exceeds a certain kilowatt level upon the conclusion of the bronco solar installation campaign that begin in two thousand and sixteen the light board will promptly assess the buys ability of further