what i'd like to call the meeting of the belmont municipal light board to order at seven pm monday february first two thousand and sixteen my name is sammy baghdad why don't we start with the first item on our agenda general managers report and specifically update on the substation and transmission project ok very good so last time we met was on december reason for that was the filing of the application we needed was to much uncertainty that we would have the construction completed in time to take the outage and interconnect our new substation to the existing transmission facilities over in cambridge so decision had to be made at that time that it would have to go past the moratorium in the summer to confirm that in the mail and then we also looked at the construction the construction going to be done with the building and the all of the contracts that are under our control right now will be done by june period of transmission outage that's correct which we don't want to occur during peak usage right it's like the summer absolutely right does example so that's why it's pushed to yeah that's that's why for can't make joan it should be pushed to the fall it but what's the additional cost it's just the cost of borrowing is going to be instead of going until october of two thousand and sixteen is going to be delayed pool of two thousand and seventeen and the dish will cost of borrowing is going to be absorbed by and i asked him this question the building will be completed so our construction if the disk iraq the construction of the substation will be completed so all of the infrastructure will be in place right it's morning and one of the issues that we had you know that was the policy change with the m t a with peel this yeah and i think i sent you a notification on that that we did experience that the first snowstorm so what happens is any time there's two inches track and reassigns them for snow removal efforts right along the tracks presumably so that puts a delay on your construction project and that must have happened twice so far this my guess yeah the two one notification that i have is the one that upset all the left the second one i don't know if that impacted us ok jen many questions i have a couple  first of all i think you know what generated the memo was you know we went from one status report to another status report we didn't realize that there was that the outage had been extended you remember that you so i think i think we're well beyond that we don't have any major milestones coming up or there's there's nothing on the horizon that would be equivalent to this like a surprise like that you mean yes i'm trying to avoid any so i just you know you are and the i think you're doing pretty well i just you know i like i always like that asked the question yeah i know there's no there's no surprises in the near future because it was interesting that both you and ford had discussed it you know it and you all knew what was going on but you know for some reason through our process we we just and there's a lot been going on and i'm really happy that you know everything is kind of settled down and things are going well but right now i guess you know in hindsight you always see twenty twenty four and i guess you know the messaging was always there maybe there wasn't a lot of focus on it and and like i said in a few minutes ago i mean i i'm so close to it you know sometimes i you know i could easily overlook something that i would be more sensitive to you guys but i think you know what what made a big difference to me was that floyd knew in the finance was under control and you know there was kind of like no harm no foul that mailbox about managing the flood level in clay put it on a pond that you read that when i get it it's kind of interesting because i think the last time we talked about storm water management someone told me that the area where this this substation is going to be it's going to have four feet of water in it and jim explained to me when that question was asked by frank frazier who's on the stormwater management committee asked me i know him personally and a but the parent lead the way the sub's the substation anticipates that the building's been raised his forehead above you know the building of the race universe and your family want everything so but what i was wondering is and this is not a topic for tonight but i think we should look into that because what she was recommending was that there there be some easy fix i am not sure it's only cambridge i think it's something you saw i think you know since things are going so well here if we have a chance to put you know a back clone cover on those two cigar the six is it possible they're sixty feet or is it is it six feet those those outlets that they're talking about the ones that go into fresh and i don't want to get the you know when i want to get lost in the conversation but i think it's something that we should you know we should take a closer look at because it could protect that that area  explanatory but it well explanatory i think the decision not to spend a lot of money to accelerate the construction schedule was was a good one ok because it could have cost the town quite a bit of money and it might not have made much of a difference depending on snow conditions and flagmen but the only thing i would say is that should have been brought to the like board to be involved in that decision making process ok so that well ok all right so that can be forwarded ok all right jim your fiscal year coincides with the calendar year direct unlike the towns you know the town's fiscal years from july first to june thirtieth but yours follows the calendar year correct january first to december thirty first so we did put on the agenda item calendar year two thousand and fifteen financials update and i think the update is going to be that will be updated in detail in the future correct but i'll let you explain where we are in the process yet realistically  know we we came before you in december and gave you the third quarter results and what we were looking for at that point was approval to make some transfers which which we did so we had the rate stabilization fund of seven hundred thousand dollars transfer and the construction fund of the four hundred thousand dollars transfer and then there was the tie of tom pilot payment for six hundred fifty thousand dollars so we're looking for approval to  transfer those funds and that was unanimous vote on that so those transfers of taken place to date the two thousand and sixteen financials we can't you know we rely on the town for certain data to run yeah yeah for two thousand the other two five thousand fifteen financials we can't complete them until until we have until we have that information so it's just a quite nation thing that you know but i mean in the public sector you you know the year end is not i usually we we present to the audit committee in april ok towards the end of april i think everything's in order there is a question about the retirement information from the retirement board but that's being addressed ok and so if it has it's not under the like little like companies could or the like departments control ok so those numbers come in from a different source base the new rate base determination starts with the new rate based determination if you're going to have someone come in and review you know we're going to do that in two thousand and seventeen in that's that's calendar two thousand and so i think there's a there's a better basis for that pilot payment which has something to do with net p p and he noted that and you know i think it's just an arbitrary number and i think you know when we redo the rate base now we're talking you know two thousand and seventeen that that's the time to address i think we've been talking about from quite some time to look at how that's calculated if perfectly appropriate to do that yes you know i'm not talking about you know floyd having a heart attack over this but have i'm not talking about you know no two no nothing in the you know right away i think we can have like a five year gradual it will be a reduction if we do it based on p p and the but it but we don't have to do it all at once but i do think it should be done in connection with this determination of this rate base and that's when you create i mean the part of the gym right is consideration with the needs of life forms as well right so yes in the afford to continue to provide six hundred fifty thousand dollars to the town as a pilot payment i don't know and you know from our end of the town side we realize it's a significant amount of money that we get infusion of we've talked about since i've been to the board about looking at how that's calculated see i think it's perfectly appropriate to do that for me it's kind of an indirect in the other thing that i think we need to address as of ward possibly this year in fact i would recommend that we do it this year not tonight not next two months or anything but i'd like to explore i think and and so the opec contribution for the like to part of it is being held in a cash account you know what i would like to do is to in i think i believe it's permitted by the like by like department dollars it's quite a bit of money i think at the end i think it's seven million dollars and i don't think the three of us want you know that you know would be nice to get out of the operating cash i think that had discussions you know it might have sooner sooner rather than later the same situation except it's not it's not handled exactly the same way but the point is that that those services are supposed to fully fund their cost and so if you don't do that then you know the costs are below where they should be in this case for the like company for opeth it is fully costed and it is being paid but since we don't have a separate trust set up that it's being  what you have because of the like board advisory committee on what possible projects you know policy issues they would like to take up or they they think it would be advise advisory to take up and you know ralph had come up with a list of four things which i can run you know run through them briefly one by one i think the first one is something we touched upon a few minutes ago and that's a cost of survey cost of service study and and and rate study and i guess they would kind of go hand in hand so cost of service study you know that you want to join us ok because we have a few light board advisory committee members here so why don't you join us yeah makes sense since on the completion of the substation and transmission project line but it would be useful to hire a consultant to do the study after the end of the next fiscal year i think that's in the that's not a plan in any event  upland you know you were saying for a calendar year two thousand and seventeen that we would do a cost of service study and and i agree i mean i think that's you know that's important because it builds into the next thing which is a rate study  and logical as raw fraud a logical successor to a cost of service study as a study of the utility rates this probably is best done after the close of fiscal year two thousand and sixteen and after the conclusion of the i but i mean we've never actually had we've we've requested and trying to but the numbers prior to him weren't in good enough shape to actually do a full cost a service study for the department and i think now maria and lungs are in order and we talked about doing one once we the logical time at which to change the rates or to readjust the rates would be after the project was the transmission of the substation were implemented but the nineteen compare with everybody else because we're a monopoly right so one nine hundred cents is fine make sure we cover our cost but your point earlier our costs in line with what they should be and could we do things to lower our costs and sure is why we're making these decisions and they going to great i think that's really been i think it's i think it's very important you know i mean we have the luxury of having our own you know like plan and not you boy if we can save the rate payers and let the little months they readjust their rates and it's complete market based rates so they have a set of regulators and again they don't the same costs right no service they do not have the payment of taxes there there's all kinds of things that are no no there right  ok could i ask one question about this though the governor said that in his speech the other night that the the nuclear plants coming off line in the future is a big risk that the state is dealing with and that the the state of massachusetts is dealing with when when you do a deep dive like this do you look at the supply side as well that's it's where are we buying our power from and ralph points out are we heading it properly because our power prices change based on supply like you like this right and then it's also a question of what type of power are we buying do we buy nuclear power do we buy gas car do environmental bills power should we in part of this process should we put a renewable standard right here on on down and we have that option right and we haven't done that yet right but we could you know san francisco has decided they're going to go all renewables right we don't have to do that but you we could have a way to go there not only the things that we would be thinking about and right at the tradeoff on costs of buying renewables versus right now it's those types of things should be part of that last light purchases energy through a series of long term power purchase agreements with energy generators and these long term of the to provide a hedge against potential disruptions in the spot market ok so first is our hedging percentage appropriate for today's market and that's something you guys can do a deep dive on is it too high is it too low second are we increasing our commitments to renewable energy in these contracts and i think that's a very  you know fair discussion group is and this is something you can start working on sooner rather than later we used to do this or periodical that we had the energy and come in and update us and we review the portfolio an ongoing differences jim they're not involved in the day to day operation of belmont like they're looking at the bigger issues and yeah you know this is a funny thing right yeah so you know i mean realistically i go circle that there's a need for a light commission that's appointed by those like commission like i should write and that's kind of where these guys i mean we had a great relation working relationship together and it worked very well for the past four five years it was a great model the only problem was they weren't permanent and it gets you everything you need and that's why when i look at this i'm like great as what we did we did a lot of good work together but under the statute you really need to have a like commission ok or can we work with this all true my best to try to work with it if that's ok or we have an advisory committee that makes recommendations to us and i think that's i think that's where while i would like commission policy lay some of the light board is at the point ye commission right which would actually run would be run like for the competence of the light department correct and then they would report out i think the way that the original draft was it was it would be that they would jim's point and so now i'm understanding that it's back to the scene sort of discussion that was taking place back in two thousand and two thousand and perhaps one of our early charters says we are currently an advisory board is  pros and cons of staying advisory or in a button visors status versus ok what else is going on ok that the carpet and maybe we need more discussion ok maybe what this says is we need more discussion ok now out of it in defense of my two colleagues and jim ok i received this on sunday lot yesterday was it sunday saturday i received it on saturday ok and you know didn't have a chance to really focus on it until today this afternoon and i sent it to my colleagues and jim you know this is a couple of hours ago so  so the clearly what you're what's being recommended we need to fully understand the implications of i think that's what jemma saying ok we did make some changes and we did change you know your mission and that doesn't mean that through your projects you go back to the old mission i think what we need to do is is look you guys are experts in the field and in areas that you can offer us expertise and help guide us we welcome your input that's the way i see it i mean do you se anything now i don't know i don't see i think these are perfectly fine projects for the 's a project that we we don't have the wherewithal to sort of oversee and we have to rely on the terrific team that we have in place here with you guys are ok now go ahead yes i think i'd like to know more about the commission the difference between the commission and the committee could but you know when when i when i came into office as a selectman there were there was a you know to kind of to continue you know to get to the keep the authority without interfering with with the work of the committee but you know because if you had a commission and everything was working fine then theoretically wouldn't have had the kind of dispute that we had that that took so much time to settle my last nine months i mean because to me you know that that kind of disruption you know rifles through the through everything and it takes an inordinate amount of time and we don't want to be in that position when things like that happen and it's the board of selectmen that is held responsible as the end of the day that we exists because throughout massachusetts various boards of selectmen and i think it was the salem board of selectmen that got itself into hot water trying to micromanage the light to parchman and they were told you know to step back and so i our goal is not to micromanage the like department but you know i like the idea of having oversight if i'm going to be accountable you know so that's that's where i come out on it ok and then the last recommendation ok energy efficiency programs ok belmont like has made a commitment to energy efficiency i think we all have a commitment to energy efficiency so the advisory committee  would propose an evaluation of the effectiveness of all turned alternative efficiency programs so you know what i would what i would see the advisory committee doing is you know we all want to promote energy efficiency ok we all want to promote great renewable energy we do want to do things like offer incentives to curtail demand during peak energy usage periods ways to reduce program ok and that's where repairs can they cannot contribute six dollars as it is a among you more than that you have a different i just signed up so i know so did you but i thought it was a time when we had signed up and i just signed up and there's different levels ok so i mean at and what you know for purposes of the audience what you're doing is paying a little more on your tax bill and then that  funding for renewable energy energy sources so you know i mean these are the kinds of things that you can look at and you can i think guidance or yet give us some data center and recommendations i mean does that sound unreasonable jim any no i mean we have a great tricks that we put together for the board just haven't been able presented to them ok you haven't met so you know what the matrix you know what why don't we why don't we do this then why don't you all and i'll work on flushing these suggestions out more ok and then and then maybe we'll have you come into our next meeting you know a lot of gray area between what we were doing and what you were doing and this is what this is supposed to do and designed to do so can ok i don't question the software can you share with us whatever you flush of pride for me to be here with you  a question before we close off this portion of the meeting i wanted to go back to the managers or port and just ask for a regulatory update on where the transmission  but as part of the belmont go solar program there are of course housing units in belmont that aren't good candidates to put solar panels on and the green choice program that you were talking about is one way for people to go solar without putting solar panels on their roof and there is there has been conversation both with ralph on the advisory committee which  myself to have the folks who have been involved with or an arc continuing to be involved with the bill my go solar program to have a conversation and have a role in talking about with the green choice program will be on a going forward basis so we i would like to know on behalf of that group of people whether it's the mothers out front the energy committee other folks who are involved with d to make that request and jim and i have have talked about this and where we're all on the same page on this but there are other folks who would like to be involved with that please tartarus i am the co chair of the energy committee town meeting member precinct one and roger you had introduced and i'm roger colton and i am also the or i'm the other chair of the energy committee and i'm going to be making the presentation tonight i do you have one maybe a couple of months ago to help help us and work on a belmont goes solar yes rather to encourage people to to transition to solar energy update of where that campaign has gone and what we have accomplished today what i'm not going to do is i'm not going to talk about the benefits of going so urged knight i'm going to focus only on for the activities of the campaign and the accomplishments of the campaign and i'm going to try to talk and run my laptop here at the same time if you want me to know i have to let it slide i can do this the so as you said mr chairman last i believe it was october you asked you being the light board asked the energy committee to help spirit had a i can say that well i'll talk about our relationship with the state in a little bit about might go solar is is not an agency or a committee or an entity  the town of got the town of belmont it is a private group of people who have come together to promote solar as you noted you the three of you supported it goal of goals of go solar are really pretty simple number one it's to increased education through outreach that's the reason that we've been holding meat to the installer me s there have been articles in the press people are more educated now than they were even four or five or six weeks ago about the existence of solar and the benefits of solar one of the important answered account and i'm an attorney and it was if if we had to make a decision about who to hire as a contractor for our house it would take years when ann and i got married we said we were going to remodel decision making process impedes people from going solar the notion of looking at all the numbers and looking at all the various contractors who install solar equipment in the different types of s panels so through about might go solar we can simplify that process by doing that for folks that in essence and in simplifying the process we can reduce the time it takes to move from deciding to go solar to actually putting panels on your roof and what that does is it reduces costs and if we look over here at the this slides what we're doing is driving down the cost tack we're reducing the cost of installation we're virtually eliminating the costs of this process we're reducing the soft costs that process of seeking out contractors and negotiating contracts and the money that is saved through the bell might go solar a process therefore gets passed on to the residents of belmont it's one of the reasons that the entity that we've ras selected to work with direct energy solar can provide a significant discount of between twenty and thirty percent off of what people would be possible contractors if you've will we've looked at the equipment we've looked at the pricing we've looked at customer service we went through an r f p process this group of people it was an interesting process have because there's no real formal bell might go solar isn't in an organisation it's just a group of interests and people and so we're sort of representative of the of the community but we put out an r f p we had four  s asked to be the vendors for the the community of dominant i don't want to say the town of them up because it's for the community of damage and we selected we used criteria selection criteria that were recommended to us by the state the price of the solar equipment the ability to serve the community in other words one of the ability to serve the community is the length of time from signing a contract actually getting something installed on your roof the quality of the equipment their experience and reputation their customer service the whole nine yards and after reviewing that half after interviewing those folks we did we decided and at the top is the state massey or c e c the division of energy resources they are providing guidance to us even though we're not really part of their program but they're interested in having us succeed and they've been incredibly helpful to us we have a steering committee which i've been chairing and the steering committee has it's just a group of volunteers who are it's not unusual  belmont putting in not hours but dozens and hundreds of hours into making this work we have six people who we have designated as solar coaches so if a member of the community has a question about whether they want to go solar they have six neighbors and assets who they can send an e mail to and there will be a belmont resident who will get back with them and talk with them to really  so the big thing there is it's not we want to avoid it being a hard sell the purpose is not to do a hard sell the purpose is to educate people and to let people kno whether it makes sense and there are simply my next door neighbor being one of them simply have i have homes that aren't good homes that would be qualified for us  the homeowner needs to sign up for an assessment i'll talk about that in a bit and then our installer direct energy solar provides free site assessments to tell you whether your home's a good home they're providing a significant discount off of what they would have they would be offering in other parts of the state they are they have financing available they're installing them they provide significant warranties as well so what is the campaign math involved and this is one of those really awful slides that has and i apologize to the people at home but here is what we've been doing with outreach  solar but there is a button to click on if you want a free assessment we've been leafleting in neighborhoods we can through google earth i don't know if this is a good thing or a bad in neighborhoods that have homes that are are well suited for so or we have signs and banners up there actually some exciting things some because we want the kids involved and i talked with the technology teacher at the the cherry last week at halftime of the belmont high boys basketball game and he's very interested in having his kids involved but just the image i would like you to take away in the image i'd like the folks at home to take away is that the bell might go so a campaign there's a lot of work that's going into this and there's a lot of people involved and it's one of the reasons why you're going to see the results that this is the new the new slide you have you'll see the slide in your pack today before coming over here and here the new numbers so as of february one remember you asked us to start this in october we made a selection and we had a soft launch people started talking about it the middle of december we had our hard lines in the first of january so basically since the first of jan since the fifth of january we've had two hundred thirty two belmont residents request so assessments  those two hundred thirty two we've had one hundred seventeen of those that have been found to have homes that are conducive to solar that the difference is not that people who are not conducive there is a number of contracts by the end of april and the end of april is important because the the discount that direct energy solar is providing goes away at the end of  april in the discount is for the purposes of the campaign and so the discount ends at the at the end of april so you have you don't have to have it installed by the end of april but you have to have a contract you have to have a signed  contract and the goal has been to have one hundred signed contracts by the end of april i think if i were a betting person and i would have bet on the patriots but if i were  betting if i were a betting person i would bet that we're going to to meet our one hundred installation objective we are four weeks into this and we're forty percent of the way there  supports going solar and it and i and it's i don't know how to say this elegant lee but it's really very cool that it's a term of art very cool because we've been working with jam we've been working with accomplish our goal of one hundred out of one hundred contacts by the the end of april so this i didn't have time to do since i don't do this stuff i didn't have time to update the map so this is the map as of last wednesday where the the red little homes those are little houses by the way are the new contracts yes and and there will be significant opportunity for people to go solar after the bell might go solar campaign and that the significance of the bell might go solar campaign is that we have selected a single vendor and we've done the work for belmont residents and therefore got the the price discount and if you think i promised i wasn't going to pitch the solar but if you think about it  amount residents are getting through the bam i go solar campaign you take that typical price of a solar installation you take twenty percent off of that as the discount that direct energy solar is providing through the bell might go solar campaign off of that you take thirty percent because of the federal tax credit and then off of the discounted price you also take ten  so the there's really there's there has never been and there will never again be no strike that there is never been in there won't be and the for seeable future  a financial opportunity to install solar panels on your home in belmont as there will be between now and the the end of april through the bamako solar campaign so why not one thing just to give you a notion of how this is fitting in to this these are state wide numbers you can see that solar is starting to increase the reason i put this up here that was to show you where the bel go solar pricing is compared to the typical price per year installed watch for a typical solar installation which is coming in right around five dollars per volunteers really got a great deal not just a good deal but a great deal for for the community and if so what are we looking forward to talk talk talk that's not just what i'm doing now but it's the best way for people to find out about belmont go solar is to talk to their neighbors and for you folks to if you would please to tell people it's it's a good thing tell people at the one of the nice things about mike about i might go solar is that we've been working with the foundation for belmont education who not coincidentally has their annual fundraiser coming up in the middle of march and we will be musical this spring i might go solar will be there so we're trying to embed might go solar into into the community so we are being as supportive of the community as the community is being about might go solar as i said and yes we are one we should at least have that that conversation there are a couple of churches that and i shouldn't tell you and i won't which churches they are but there are three churches and i'm on i know that are talking about putting solar panels on their churches themselves so but anyway we'll we'll be working with the houses of worship and then the final thing is even at this point we need to be talking about what comes next what comes after bell might go so or because there will be homes that solar panels don't make sense for and that's why i ask for your nod of approval to work with the light advisory committee to work on the green choice program because that is just a natural extension of dominico solar in the meantime here's what people need to do if you and there is a button there to click that asks for a free how free home assessment when you click that button you're not agreeing to buy solar panels what you're doing is you're asking direct energy to contact you to talk with you about whether your roof makes sense where there the you have such shading on your roof that's all without cost so you're not signing up to buy solar panels you're simply signing up to talk to somebody about whether solar makes sense go solar dot org or if you are not handy with the web you can simply call the eight hundred number one eight hundred nine zero three six one three zero so either go to the website at belmont go solar dot org or call direct energy at one eight hundred nine zero three six one three zero and that will get you in contact with dark energy to talk about whether your home makes sense to go solar the come out and look at the house what they do initially what they do initially is they do it via google earth and then if if there's nothing that clearly disqualifies you know if you don't have an belmont's got a lot of trees you know if you've got three trees in your front yard it's it just isn't going to make sense and they'll tell you that one thing that direct energy in all be quiet here in a minute one thing direct energy does is when they when they estimate how much electricity your solar panels will produce they guarantee ninety percent of that production and so if your solar panels don't produce what they told you they would produce direct energy will pay you for up to ninety percent of their estimate that's which is one reason that they're not in the business of putting solar panels on homes where it won't work because they're going to  you know i know part of the challenge was there were other grassroots groups that were trying to do their own you know solar program so you know solar program and you were you were able to pull everyone's efforts together you know which which i think which i think was great certainly you've streamlined the process you've made it so much easier for people time is the big investment you know time to research to to to to become educated you know you've streamlined that process you're educating people i'm happy to see the results i think that's names will have many roger rubel mark robins mark davis and alex fangio they are belmont residents and if you know them and want to talk to them directly feel free to email or or cut contact them posse and tim from sage well but there has been it's it's just fun  support for solar and is it because of the campaign it's just so amazing that we organize around this as a community and all of a sudden we triple quadruple five times what we currently have in place is that because of the campaign make mak they are a group of people who really know their stuff who have gone and who have done the research for people in and so and i don't have to go out and look at six different solar vendors and figure out which one has given us a line and which one that's what it is or isn't one vendor you don't think it's all just so i think that the the solar program is a is an elegant additional move in the direction for sustainability that the board and light and the energy committee has really established over it lee five years and this just keeps driving the message and behavior on behalf of our residents so as you know we were lucky enough for we deservedly received a state honor for the energy efficiency in the residential sector and this is a logical next step not just from an outreach perspective but from a sustainability perspective because the cheapest cleanest way to help the environment is not to generate energy at all not to use energy at all and then once we have such a wide penetration of residents who understand that message and who participated in our program that you know the next logical step while it hasn't been made very explicit but is to look at alternative sources of of electricity and this fits and ingle whatever this campaign ends i mean do we have another i think this is i think you do agree with me that this is an example where good policy results and good government it was the tariff change that opened the door here no yes that is that as you know we put the p p a agreement back into the tariff and that is something that you can go to the schools and work with as well did you understood that as well right now abs absolutely so i think good policy leads to good government in in this tariff that roy's committee put together open the door we put the p p a back in and now you have a good a good tariff to work  with for this program is that fair to say absolutely and then as you know it's going to change every year so the next time it'll change will be year end next year i believe two thousand and seventeen is it two thousand and sixteen or seventeen seventeen seventeen so and we think that mechanism will be fairer and it's all been taking and the other thing is that when the tariff was changing back and i w become effective and younger first and so we said that anybody who had signed the contract would would be eligible for whatever yeah ok so my point is that before the new tariff became effective people were actually signing up for solar before b g s came in so what actually is happened is when we saw when the tariff was changed there were twenty installations and down not twenty seven and so what you have done and what the tariff did was it tripled as of february first the solar installations and belmont literally from twenty to forty is that in then i also wanted to mention and i think this is not as important as everything that you've said but obviously i think a plays a role in that is that the fed extended its its program so now it's no longer expiring on december thirty first of two thousand and sixteen it's expiring on five years later five years later ok so that's things that ended the investment tax credit that gives us a lot more time to work the solar installation story in belmont the one question i did have for you is i think the the discount is terrific and i want to ask you about the quality of the panels i don't i'm highly confident the discount hasn't affected the quality of the panels but what can you tell the public about their direct energy gave us the best panels that that that  were available and it's one of the reasons that we chose direct energy over the the other three because we didn't want to get a discount and then to get a lower  quality panel to perhaps get more in the weeds and you want and i'll try to avoid this but there really are two different types of panels that you can install in your home you can put your typical panel on or you can get a high efficiency panel for in additional amount of money but the point of bell might go solar is that all those prices have been negotiated that direct energy isn't going to come in and give different people different prices we have through the advantage of bulk marketing and being able to promise them a a certain number of are not promised but to promote a certain number of installations they can give us a fixed price so i'm just going for them all i'm doing just yes and the fact that they're going to be they know they're going to be in dominant and when we have their earth i live on warwick road there are three of us who have now purchased solar panels on warwick road when direct energy comes to warwick road they're going to have their trucks there  think fridays especially friday mornings don't work for you jim that's understandable and i think we're programmed to meet on mondays and i think residents are programmed to watch us on mondays so why don't right i think it's important it's been great to be able to have these means in the evening because we're doing them at night in the morning we were doing the math and now we have a war setting effect schedule now i think that's a great you know we doing them down a flight of time which well the way things are now we have to you know we have to keep the momentum working with jim and keeping her selves informed get the business will like committee back up and running again yes and