CONWAY – Town officials hope solar energy will take flight after Monday’s Special Town Meeting, when voters will address two articles aimed at accommodating the industry in Conway.
One article asks residents to grant authority to the Selectboard to consult with the Board of Assessors to negotiate payment in lieu of taxes (PILOT) agreements for any solar energy projects. The article immediately following that one, if adopted, would grant authority to approve a PILOT agreement for an approximately 5-megawatt community-shared solar project at 2394 Main Poland Road. Town Administrator Tom Hutcheson said the land is owned by Sarah, Robert and Ian Newman, while the project would be owned by Nexamp, a company based in Boston.
“Article 2 is about negotiation, Article 3 is about approval,” Hutcheson said. “It’s the first time we’ve done anything like this.”
He said a PILOT agreement would negotiate a regular annual payment in place of a property tax. He said the amount an entity owes in property taxes fluctuates based on three- to five-year assessments, but a PILOT would generate a steady stream of revenue for the town year after year. The PILOT, he said, would be based off the amount of electricity the project is expected to produce.
“We hope to be able to demonstrate it will be more money than annual property taxes,” Hutcheson said about Monday’s special town meeting, adding that Administrative Assessor Lee Whitcomb was working on crunching the numbers. An email to the Assessors’ Office was not returned by presstime.
Hutcheson said the PILOT money would go straight into the town’s general fund, where all tax revenue goes. He said he would like to put the money toward a new highway garage.
He explained the plan is for the Newmans to lease to Nexamp. The Newmans, Hutcheson said, would get lease money and Nexamp would receive state tax credits.
Ethan Gyles, a development manager for Nexamp, said the Newman family was interested in purchasing a solar array and reached out to the company.
“We look at a parcel and evaluate it based on terrain and proximity to appropriate power distribution lines,” he said. “In this case, the distribution lines are already in place in that part of Conway.”
Gyles declined to disclose how much lease money the Newman family would get each month.
Gyles said Nexamp has since been interacting with the Conway Conservation Commission and hopes to submit an application to the Planning Board in the fall. He explained energy produced by the array would go to the power grid and any Eversource customer would be able to earn savings on their electric bill if they subscribe to the project through Nexamp. Instead of paying the utility company, subscribers would pay Nexamp, which would offset the subscribers’ Eversource bill by crediting Eversource for them in a process called virtual net-metering.
Gyles said the Newmans own roughly 100 acres, though not all of it would be used for the solar array. He said how much land the array covers and how many panels there will be depends on surveying and wetlands research.