spearhead an effort to promote the installation of rooftop solar units on belmont homes in response to that request by the board of selectmen the town's energy committee in collaboration with a group of dedicated volunteers has created the belmont goes solar campaign today we're going to talk a little bit about that campaign and to do that i'd like to welcome two people to the media center i have on my right in the middle alex to turn to you for a minute one aspect of the belmont go solar campaign has been to select a single vendor direct energy solar to work with the community can you explain how they had occurred and why that occurred you know i would be happy to venter selection was a very important part of our process after we convened as a group i was one of the  first orders of business and one of our members took the initiative to draft a request for proposals sometimes called an r f p for short and we all reviewed that weighed in on it edited and got it to a form that we were very comfortable with we then sent out that our peak to a number of firms that had extensive experience doing residential solar installations in the state of massachusetts and sat back and waited eagerly for their responses  we were very happy to receive some excellent responses some excellent proposals from a number of different solar companies and then the task became having to compare those and to figure out which of these firms was going to offer a package that seemed attractive to the town sure well we looked at a number of factors one factor of course is the cost of what they were offering the price basically because one of our objectives was to get as good a financial deal for belmont residents as we possibly could but price was by no means the only consideration the second thing we really thought about hard was quality what's the quality of the proposals before us and there were a number of different elements in that evaluation of quality so for example there's the quality of the equipment where they offering to or one type equipment where they offering panels that would produce you know a good amount of electricity good warranties that kind of thing  second element was the quality of the customer service that we thought that the company was likely to be able to bring to bear in terms of both how turnkey operation they were going to be able to provide to make it easier for people to go through the process and also long term customer service you know is this a firm that we think is going to be there for the longer haul because investing in the solar system is done a short term investment there analysts have life spans of twenty years thirty years and they have warranties that are similarly lyin so we wanted to try to find a firm that we felt we would be comfortable was going to be there so if there was going to be a warranty issue that there would be somebody there to be able to respond to that so we considered that we also called references you know we want we wanted to check out the reputation of the firms as best we could so we asked for and we contacted references to hear what they had to say about their experience and working with the firm and related to that was the experience of the companies in terms of working with communities in the types of campaign such as what we're doing today and if we were to back back up a little or make it a little broader share are there broader aside from the specific criteria that you just set forth can you talk a little bit about what the intent goal so or campaign will be our is yeah well the overarching goal is to try to have a whole lot more solar in town than what we have at present in belmont and to achieve that by making it both as easy and as affordable as possible for people to go solar so we want to remove barriers that might otherwise be in place whether that's barriers of information barriers of time barriers of cost so let me think about my wife and i for a minute my wife and i moved into our home twenty four years ago and we said one of the first things that we were going to do in our home was to redo the kitchen now we are twenty four years later and we have yet to redo the kitchen because the notion of designing the kitchen and finding a contractor  doing all that stuff even though she is an accountant i'm a lawyer was sort of overwhelming yes it seems like that's applicable to go solar what i hear you saying is we're trying to do some of that work for people well that's absolutely right and where the kitchen people at least have some idea of what a soviet stove is supposed to do and you might know whether you want gas or electric and you've probably heard of brand names the case of solar panels that's a lot less true for the general public so yes by helping by helping basically do a lot of the leg work in connection with that we are hoping to try to make that process easier and less intimidating for people that's great joe i would like to turn to you for a  solar i mean i think it's the lingo we've attached to the fact that many homeowners in massachusetts are choosing to put solar panels on their roofs to generate electricity so that they get better control over their electric bill they're able to save money on electricity costs they're able to actually there are a bunch of incentives in place to help them go solar but now is a is really a perfect moment i think massachusetts is one of if not the most important state in going solar right now part of it is because massachusetts along with the federal government there is a tax incentive of thirty percent of federal tax credit for thirty percent of the system cost and there is no limit on that thirty percent federal tax credit plus the state will give you a thousand dollar tax credit and the state also has an incentive system that will pay you for producing power from the sun for ten years so it's actually the incentives are lined up to make solar  very financially for it will and at the same time the costs are going down and within the last three years there's been a decline in the price of solar by about thirty percent so the panel the car actual cost of the equipment has significantly decreased and alex was talking about the the work that the go so campaign was trying to do on behalf of the community to make it  easier my understanding is that partially because that work direct energy is providing a discount right so i think not said quote a bunch of figures but the average price in the market is a little over  four dollars per watt and we don't have to get into systems sizes and what's a watt and you know what's going solar the average price in massachusetts has been declining significantly such that it's just over four dollars a watt the price that's being offered in belmont is significantly lower at three dollars and thirty cents a watt so you were achieving by entering into this agreement with your chosen installer you're agreeing receiving a significant discount on the price of the systems and the important thing about that price is it's an all inclusive price so it's not pay three thirty a watt for this and then you've got to pay for installation or you've got to you've got to buy the building permit you know it's an all inclusive price there are some apps sions for you to choose and in designing your system but it is a an all inclusive price so can i can i try to spit back at you with her to see if what i heard was what you intended to say sure what i heard from you was in addition to the reasons that  gain control over your own bill and you go so today the fact that there are clear environmental benefits but just from a financial perspective to your own pocket book that if somebody installs a solar system through  solar they're going to receive thirty percent of that back through and through a federal tax credit that's they're going to receive fifteen percent of that back immediately through a state tax credit up to a thousand thousand dollars they're going to receive you about a thirty to thirty five percent discount off the price on the front end right through the solar campaign right so people really when they install these systems these systems are pretty good from a financial perspective even better than if people were to do it outside of the the bell might go solar campaign right and i think that the other key aspects  that point to now are the fact that this is a time limited program this this program and the pricing discount only runs till the end of april so you want want to act before april thirtieth to take advantage of the pricing discount and the other thing is the state of massachusetts is rethinking its incentives for solar and it's likely that they won't be as good as they are today so if you could sign up today start generating your own power you can start collecting all the benefits and what we generally say also is homes with good solar potential you're installing a system that's going to last twenty five thirty years you can get your money back in five to seven years if you have good solar potential so so too i find it easy to talk about going so or right those panels will produce power that you tend to use in your home let's set aside for the moment if you use more or if you produce more than you use right and instead of buying that electricity the light you produce like growing your own tomatoes in your backyard exactly i mean in a way yeah you have your own local power plant on your roof i mean that that's actually the trend in the marketplaces is a bunch of local power plants on roofs and we'd like to see yonder to more of them in belmont and are there some roofs that are better than others or some homes that are better than others to go so or yes in general but the the definition of what makes a good roof for solar has expanded significantly as prices have come down at one thing i should let folks know was i i've been in concord for twenty years concord also has a municipal light plant and i ran the concord solar challenge which was a very similar program three years ago back in two thousand and thirteen and at that point in time people thought just southeast seeing routes were the only good routes for solar but the reality is the prices are so low and the incentives are so high that you can actually put solar on roofs from east all the way to west so kind of the lower half of the of the clock face if you think about it in that way within concord we covered a lot of east west facing roofs as well and it's all about what is sufficient for a good return to the homeowner  so but you know there are things that get in the way of the sun and we have to pay attention you know you need a roof that's gets a reasonable amount of sunlight we generally say six hours a day the technology is such though that it panels now operate individually so that if one panel is shaded it doesn't drag down the performance of the rest of the solar panels so even if you have a roof that's partially shaded we wouldn't put panels over there we'd put them over on the part that receive the most sunlight so if i can come back to my wife and i and our the lack of our new kitchen ok well we did install solar panels and we didn't have that particular question because we have a nearly due south facing roof that does not have any trees close to it that could possibly have shit so that particular question was an easy one for us and we did not that but the other way you can get a sense of that of course is high cost call yes still are signing up on line for the right does not take much time at all so let's talk about you have to have them for a minute if somebody believes if somebody is even pressure what how we speak to a lot of curious people every day in in dialing when you dial the eight hundred number the eight hundred you're calling to wrecked energy solar and we have people on the phones i don't know eighteen hours a day every day to take phone calls the first thing they'll do is take a look at your house on google earth and they'll zoom in and they'll look at the orientation of the roof is it an east west roof a north south roof how does it look does it look like there are trees close to the house you know that might be shading or is the google image itself show shading from trees that are close now if you have a short tree short trees are great but some larger trees would make it difficult to put solar panels on certain sections of roofs and so when you call the eight hundred number you usually get this very  kind and courteous person from direct energy solar who will walk you through the process of considering solar and if you're interested they will move you forward in the process and set up a sales visit with a solar consultant  and those are folks right here and who are working with i think we have about one hundred people we're working with already within belmont and so we will prepare basically a proposed layout of your system and we will set up a sales is it with the solar consultant who will walk you through the proposed layout and also a financial proposal and it'll show you kind of you know your initial investment what that might cost as well as what you're going to save on your electric bill every year what you're going to get paid from the state system to pay you as a solar generator and any other benefits you're going to get from the system with your experience in concord how did you avoid or how did folks feel comfortable that they were receiving just a sales pitch because the company was in the business of selling so i think  sit down and the beauty of solar is it kind of sells itself there are people who actually believe that it's a no brainer that they'll look at it and will say oh my gosh how could i have how could i not choose to go solar so there isn't a hard pitch necessary but at the same time different installers have different styles in approaching individuals and there are a couple things we take a look at we clearly want to show you what your options are we want to find the right option for you i mean it not not that there are a million and options and we're going to overwhelm you with door polls and cabinet styles but we're going to run through those options and we also have a couple of different financing options for you if you want to use financing to move forward with the system but our job is really to lay things out and the other piece of it is that it's an process you know you can ask us a question that says well i would really want a little bit smaller system or you know let's take the panels can we put panels on this roof so the important thing is it's the design that the customer wants and within conquered we had about five hundred fifty people who got free solar consultations everything's free until you sign a contract all of this stuff there's no upfront charge and we had about one hundred sixty people put solar on their homes and that was finished two years ago and we've still had people going solar we have about two hundred twenty five homes in are working on this campaign in town are belmont residents and we're all volunteers and there's a number of us who have volunteered including myself to service solar coaches so as you go through this process if you have questions and for to have a reason you don't want to ask them direct energy solar but you want to ask them of a solar coach who has no financial ties to the outcome or and who is an independent voice and belmont resident and may sort of get it in some fashion then you're free to do that and that's one of the reasons that what this campaign is about so there are a number of us we are reachable by telephone we are reachable by e mail our contact information is on the belmont goes solar website and that is a big part of this which is belmont go go solar dot org  and that's a big part of the reason for us to exist is to basically be there as a resource for the community as an independent voice and advisor if you will if you have questions and you hope no problems come up we certainly hope that but life is not perfect and so if there is a problem and for some reason that it's not getting results fast enough or the way you want then that's what you're here for also is to help manage that process so i just wanted to make sense that we're not done as belmont goes solar just because we're going to vendor our work is ongoing we're part of this campaign we're supporting this campaign and we're trying to try to support the public and i think what you see is a very close tie between us in the solar coach team we you know we talk we really were actually on the phone on a day to day basis so we really appreciate it and i know the importance of the local solar coach having been one i think it just adds that comfort level but also kind of keeps the keeps things moving along well from the communities perspective you and you know if we talked a few minutes ago about the fact that you have solar panels on your home yes can you take us through what that was  and there are some pictures of our array that we we have we have provided in ice i want to make a couple of comments on that it was it was a it was a pretty easy process we did not have to be at the house when a lot of work was going on and it was it was a very turnkey experience so we're we were happy with that i guess a couple of little side comments i would mention as someone with an array little extras just f y r for the community  if you have panels that are on the slanted roof blew snow will come off them and will come off them in a big avalanche style so if you have something you care about underneath like a car your children then you might want to consider getting some snow guards as part of the installation to prevent large sheets of snow coming off unexpectedly on whatever or whomever is below and the second thing very briefly is pest guards we have not had lots of arrays which make to this point in time which means that it's all the more remarkable to my mind that i know of at least three instances where squirrels have gotten underneath the arrays and have chewed wire some caused a little bit of damage and one of which actually resulted in  chewed through so if there is any chance of squirrels getting on your roof which even our roof which has no overhanging trees and no wires going to it somehow they got up there my kids noticed them going up there with their mail is full of nesting material pointed that out to consider the pest cards because that's just it's very visually unobtrusive sort of mesh material that goes around the outside of the array and prevents critters from getting underneath there and chewing your wires so that's not something you want so that is some of my hard earned experience from being solar the good side is of course i've saved a ton on the tricity bill so there you are installed our kids get a great deal of pride out of having solar they feel very virtuous about it as well  to to participate either one of you it's really easy you just go to belmont goal solar dot org we're going to put the button right on the top but if you if you go farther down on the front page there is a link that will bring you to a sign up page and you can put your name address phone and e mail and i think we ask you how you heard about it on that screen it will if you  submit that information you'll probably get a call from us within an hour if not a few minutes and you're not you're not signing up to buy so or so that you're just signing up to  your day to come over and talk with us here at the belmont media center what what we've been doing today is talking with alex mann gill who is an environmental consultant and working with the town of belmont i would encourage you the viewers to stay tuned to the belmont media center or to watch you know the citizen or old or the belmont tony  to watch for events between now and the end of april that will provide education information on the belmont goes solar campaign the next event is at the end of january but there at the beach street center there will be other events throughout the campaign so thank you for watching today i'm your host roger colton and thank you for joining us