HAWLEY — The town will be using part of its $136,920 Green Communities grant to buy and install an electricity generating, 10-kilowatt (kW) solar panel system on the town’s Highway Garage.
Bid openings for this project are planned for Wednesday, Aug. 16, in the Franklin Regional Council of Governments office at 2 p.m.
Once a vendor is chosen and the bid is approved by the state, town officials hope the new system can be installed and up and running before the end of the year.
“We’re very excited, but we’re only on the first step,” said Will Cosby, a conservation commissioner who is coordinating the solar photovoltaic project with Lloyd Crawford. “During the summer, we have an excellent location,” Cosby said of the town garage roof. “There’s plenty of sunshine from March until October.”
Lloyd Crawford said the solar array on the highway garage roof is just one of the projects underway to make the town highway garage more efficient and “greener.”
For instance, workers are currently stabilizing the river bank behind the town Highway Garage using “living material” to prevent future erosion, said Crawford. That work includes a rock wing dam and root wads at the foot of the bank. He said the root wads will also improve fish habitat, and the alders and native species rooted there will prevent erosion. During Tropical Storm Irene in 2011, the ground beneath the town Highway Garage had been undermined and foundation work was required. This additional work to shore up the bank is being paid for with MEMA (Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency) funding, he said.
Also, projects are in the works to make the Highway Garage more energy-efficient, by improving the air sealing and insulation, and finding a more efficient heating system.
When the solar array is up and running, workers may be able to use generated electricity directly to run lights and machinery, Cosby said. When the electricity isn’t used, it will go into National Grid.
The town became a Green Community last October.