Thursday, November 2, 2017

What Happened to Greenport's New Solar Farm?

Almost two years ago, on December 30, 2015, Greenport signed a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) with Solar City  for the installation of a solar farm on four acres of town property located on Middle Road. The farm was expected to produce 100% of the electricity the town government currently obtained from National Grid, at a substantially lower price—saving Greenport "tens of thousands of dollars in electricity costs each year." Solar City agreed to an "outside commercial date of operation" of December 18, 2016, with a penalty for each day past that date.

In February 2017, Solar City notified the Town Board that they were unable to meet that date due to "difficulty negotiating" with National Grid "over the need for costly substation upgrades." On March 1, in a "First Amendment to the PPA," the Board passed Resolution 35-2017 to extend the due date to December 31, 2017.

 A few questions:
  •  Did Solar City pay Greenport any penalty from December 18, 2016 to March 1, 2017?
  •  Does the First Amendment to the PPA, which is not available on the town's website, contain the same penalty for each day past the new outside date? 
  •  When asked at the most recent town meeting when the solar farm is expected to be operational, Supervisor Ed Nabozny replied that "as a layman's guess" it would be three or four months, which is past the current due date. Why does Supervisor Nabozny have to make "a layman's guess"? 
  • Why does he know so little about a project expected to save Greenport a lot of money? 
  •  If the solar farm is late again, will Supervisor Nabozny still be reluctant to collect a penalty from Solar City?
We pay Greenport's lawyers to write deadlines and penalties into contracts because when we lose time with a vendor we lose money. Is there more concern about Solar City's finances than about Greenport's?

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