BETHLEHEM — A year after recovery act monies were secured for a battery of solar panels at Elm Avenue Park, the earth-conscious project is no closer to seeing the light of day.
The Town of Bethlehem has finished bidding the project and no contractor has come up with a quote that would put it within the amount and limitations of the federal grant. The issue, said Town Engineer Paul Penman, is that not many companies are equipped for this scale of project.
“It's not big enough for the major contractors to bid on it, but it's too big for some of the smaller guys to bid on it,” he said. “We're kind of in a gray area.”
The American Investment and Recovery Act grant of $111,500, with a town investment of $12,500 attached, was awarded in February of 2011.
The Town Board on Wednesday, Aug. 24, voted to reject the two bids received. The town will go out for new proposals.
The lowest bidder was Vanguard Energy with a bid of about $130,000. Even though that was close to the grant amount, the company would not have been eligible to receive the funds under the guidelines of the administering agency, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority's guidelines.
A second bid from Gould Erectors and Riggers was about $190,000. The town would have had to kick in another $65,000 under that proposal, which would make the benefits of the solar energy much less tangible.
The panels are intended to offset energy use at the park's administrative offices by 70 percent for an annual savings of $4,000.
Penman said the town's also speaking to NYSERDA about restructuring the terms of the contract, so Bethlehem could potentially install however big a system it could get for $124,000. They're also looking a ground-based system, which could be cheaper than the roof-mounted one.
New bids will likely be due sometime in September.
Comments
rkidalowski 1 year, 8 months ago
Thank you for the wonderful article on solar panels for Elm Avenue Park and I think this highlights the problem we currently have with “green” energy. The expected cost of this project is at least $120,000 for an energy cost savings of $4000 year. That means it will take 30 years to cover the cost of the project. If we estimate energy costs increase at 5% per year, it will still take 22 years to cover the cost, assuming there are absolutely no maintenance costs, which is highly unlikely. And the Town of Bethlehem expects the Federal Government {the taxpayers} to pay $111,000 of the cost of installation. Would anyone consider this project without Federal grants? NO !! The problem is the Federal Government {the taxpayers} is funding the manufacture of solar products, funding the subsequent sale of the products and the taxpayer is paying for all of it. Solyndra, a solar panel manufacturing company, recently declared bankruptcy after receiving over $500million in loans from taxpayers. Perhaps we should take a hard look at our energy policy and come up with ideas that are affordable and sustainable. Right now we have neither, and the taxpayers are just paying and paying.
Rah_solar 1 year, 8 months ago
You are misinformed.
No energy generation is installed without subsidies from the government. Coal, natural gas, oil, nuclear ALL receive subsidies from the government in the form of tax breaks or loan guarantees. Compared to the money given to the nuclear industry since its inception, the rebates and tax incentives the government gives to the renewable industry fails to compare. Consider also, the billions of dollars it costs to store spent nuclear fuel or decommission a nuclear facility. After 16 years of cleanup, the land is virtually useless for anything else but another nuclear plant. When there is an accident at a nuclear plant there is no insurance policy to pay for the costs. No insurance company on the planet will insure a facility such as that. We the taxpayers are responsible for the costs. If a collector falls off the roof of the Bethlehem maintenance facility there won't be a need to evacuate all the residents within 20 miles or need to wait 300 years to replace it. After the solar array has reached the end of its lifecycle, one simply needs to remove the collectors and send them to be recycled. The array will be virtually maintenance free, unless you consider spraying the array with water to remove dust and pollen a big deal. This type of installation is what made Germany the solar powerhouse it is today. Germany has the same sunlight average per year as Alaska and they have the most installed solar in the world. I believe 17000 megawatts installed for an output of 12 terrawatthours of generation annually if memory serves me correctly. This is the type of energy the country should be investing in. Getting away from fossil fuels, depleting our natural gas reserves and using radioactive isotopes to boil water to generate electricity is both unintelligent and dangerous.
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