Solarize Massachusetts

Wed 8 May 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., GreenStart, local power, the world| Posted by: Gavin

I was one of 100+ people at the first Northampton Solarize Massachusetts meeting last night. Woohoo!

Solarize Massachusetts is a state program that uses group buying to bring down the installment cost of solar power. I’ve long wanted to add solar power at home—at work at the Paragon Arts building I don’t choose the electricity provider. But the cost, the cost. We are signed up for Greenstart so we are paying slightly more than the average but are buying into solar, wind, etc.—although it is mostly hydroelectric. (Not as good as the rest, but better than fossil fuels.)

Anyway. The first round of towns in the 2013 Solarize Massachusetts program are Bourne,Brookline, Carlisle, Chelmsford, Lee, Medford, Medway, Newton, Northampton, and Williamstown. The program selects one solar power installer who does site checks and so on to see if the interested people (me!) can actually have panels installed. The installer offers the town a deal: the more people who buy in by the end of the program (September 30, 2013), the lower the price. The average savings in previous rounds of the program have been 20%. Not bad!

 

There are also Federal tax credits worth about 25% of the cost, a $1,000 Massachusetts income tax credit, “solar renewable energy credit” (SRECs), net metering (you get a credit if your solar panels generate more power than you need), and the possibility of a few other credits. Overall, if the town gets enough people into the program—and there were 100+ people there last night—the panels usually pay for themselves within 5-7 years.

Any Northamptonites interested in the program should email Susan Lantz at solarizenorthampton@gmail.com. Send that email!

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AWP

Sun 10 Mar 2013 - Filed under: Not a Journal., AWP, conventions, keep it indie, local power, Publishing| Posted by: Gavin

I never managed to catch up with all the people I hoped to, I enjoyed the bookfair so much I didn’t see any panels, I didn’t manage to arrive on time 2 out of 3 mornings, but besides all that, AWP was, somewhat unexpectedly, a ton of fun! We have a pile of new books from a few quick trips around the fair—including a new subscription to Tin House and more poetry than I’ve gotten in ages. It was invigorating to spend three days with 13,000(!) people who care deeply in one way or another about words on pages. (Not as much chat about ebooks as expected, none about the possible horrors of the used ebook market, yay!)

We stayed with friends (to whom we are very grateful!) and Kelly’s mom looked after Ursula (and brought her in on Saturday when the fair was open to everyone) which made the whole thing much more relaxed.

Friday there was a snowstorm so I was late. On Saturday morning smoke started coming out of the ceiling of the T at Fenway. “Driver, there’s smoke in here,” someone shouted. Doors opened: we all trooped out. Looked like a long wait, walked in.

Our neighbors in the fair were the very lively H_ngm_n Books on one side and our real-life near neighbors, the excellent Perugia Press. I am very happy to say that somewhere in that 13,000 people there is a contingent who read books from H_ngm_n, Small Beer, and Perugia.

We talked to hundreds of people and I owe apologies to some people for the times when I could not stop my anti-Am*zon invective: sorry. (They really do want to put everyone else out of business and all the fun out of life. Ya boo sucks to them.)

We sold out of LCRW on the second day: awesome! Wish I had brought more but it was—again—invigorating to meet so many readers.

I can’t even begin to list the excellent people I met. Wait, I can. People from: Paris Press, One Story, Milkweed, McNally Jackson, Porter Square Books, Coffee House (got a copy of Raymond McDaniel’s new superhero-themed poetry collection(!) Special Powers and Abilities and Geronimo Johnson’s excellent sounding New Orleans novel, Hold It ‘Til It Hurts—which is one of two Coffee House titles, the other being Laird Hunt’s Kind One, up for the Pen/Faulkner Award!), Shape & Nature, Eleven Eleven, Unstuck, Biblioasis, oh, wait, no I can’t list everyone. Sore hands and: Lists = I will miss people, sorry friends! And! We just added Puerto del Sol over on Weightless so while I met tons of people from New Mexico State U., I am kicking myself for missing the Puerto del Sol table. Argh, mea culpa. Didn’t take photos. Argh x 2.

It turns out tons of our books are being taught in schools around the country, including Karen Joy Fowler’s What I Didn’t See and Other Stories, Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud’s A Life on Paper, Ted Chiang’sStories of Your Life and Others, and others including pretty much all of Kelly’s books. For which I say to all those teachers: it was awesome and heartening to hear that you are reading and teaching and studying these books. Thank you!

And that’s it. Thanks to everyone who stopped by to say hi. Hope you got home ok and that you too went home with some books you’re looking forward to reading.

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Wind me up

Thu 3 Feb 2011 - Filed under: Not a Journal., GreenStart, local power, the world| Posted by: Gavin

It’s been a while since I looked at where our electricity company gets its power. The last one I can find is October 2009. I’d stacked up this year’s reports so here is far too much info on the New England GreenStart program’s power source. Looks like we are up to 13.2% power from solar and wind. Which means it has tripled since 2008: not bad. Bummer for me though: they just sent me a note saying the unit cost price for the “green” electricity is tripling (! . . . I think because they can) by about $20 a month. Hmm.

Not sure they can keep increasing the solar and wind power quite as fast—so bring on the the Cape Cod Wind Farm, and as many more as they can build asap.

Our office in Easthampton is 40 miles south of Vermont’s leaky old nuclear power plant, Vermont Yankee (seen here being gently buzzed by Greenpeace’s thermal airship) and here in Boston we’re 40 miles south another nuclear plant in New Hampshire. Eek! Build me a windfarm and coat my building in solar panels now!

March 2018 Update: We have installed solar panels on our roof so this is all going to change!

Update: As far as I can see it’s pretty much always 75% “small hydro” (is that “greener” than “big hydro”? Is there less damage from dams?) and then a mix of mostly wind, then solar, and digester gas.

Update: Vermont Yankee is closing, yay!

Spring 2018

This is where GreenStart have started dropping non-Class 1 hydro power:

• 33% old hydro
• 24% wind
• 5% solar
• 2% new hydro
• 36% standard mix:
  • natural gas 40%
  • imported power 19%
  • nuclear 11%
  • oil 9%
  • wind 7%
  • solar 3%
  • hydro 3%
  • municipal trash 3%
  • coal 3%
  • other renewable 2%

Winter 2017/18

This is where GreenStart have started dropping non-Class 1 hydro power:

• 53% old hydro
• 21% wind
• 5% solar
• 2% biomass
• 1% new hydro
• 17% standard mix:
  • natural gas 42%
  • imported power 19%
  • oil 10%
  • nuclear 7%
  • municipal trash 5%
  • wind 5%
  • coal 3%
  • solar 3%
  • hydro 3%
  • biomass 2%
  • other renewable 2%

Fall 2017

• 71% old hydro
• 6% new hydro
• 3% biomass
• 6% solar
• 14% wind

Summer 2017

• 74.9% hydro
• 3.4% landfill gas
• 5.4% biomass
• 4.2% solar
• 12% wind

Spring 2017

• 75% hydro
• 7% digester gas
• 5% solar
• 13% wind

Winter 2017 — hydro back to 75%

• 75% hydro
• 7% digester gas
• 6% solar
• 12% wind

Fall 2016 — first time hydro has dropped 1%

• 74% hydro
• 8% biomass
• 4% solar
• 14% wind

Summer 2016

• 75% hydro
• 8% biomass
• 2% solar
• 15% wind

Spring 2016

• 75% hydro
• 6% biomass
• 3% solar
• 16% wind

Winter 2016

• 75% hydro
• 5% biomass
• 4% solar
• 16% wind

Autumn 2015

• 75% “small hydro”
• 4% gas digester
• 5% solar
• 16% wind

Summer 2015

• 75% “small hydro”
• 1% digester gas
• 5% solar
• 19% wind

Spring 2015:

• 75% “small hydro”
• 2% digester gas
• 7% solar
• 16% wind

Autumn 2014:

• 75% “small hydro”
• 3% digester gas
• 6% solar
• 16% wind

Summer 2014 was nearly the same as the previous 2 quarters:

• 75% “small hydro”
• 3% digester gas
• 5% solar
• 17% wind

It is depressing to look at our supplier, National Grid’s “standard mix” of power. Lot of change to come here:

• 36% “natural” gas
• 28% nuclear
• 15% imported
• 6% oil
• 5% coal
• 5% municipal trash
• 3% wind
• 1% biomass
• 1% hydro

Spring 2014 was exactly the same as:
Winter 2014 (back to “disgester gas”—how is your digestion?)

• 75% “small hydro”
• 4% digester gas
• 6% solar
• 15% wind

Autumn 2013 (same as spring except with a new title for hydro. But, really, is hydro low impact? Relatively. Maybe.)

• 75% hydroelectric (now retitled small hydro. hmm)
• 3% biogas
• 6% solar
• 16% wind

Summer 2013 (same as spring except with a new title for hydro. But, really, is hydro low impact? Relatively, maybe.)

• 74.9% hydroelectric (now retitled low impact hydro. hmm)
• 14.5% Digester Gas (cow power)
• 4.1% solar
• 6.4% wind

Spring 2013

• 74.9% hydroelectric
• 14.5% Digester Gas (cow power) [that’s really what it says!]
• 4.1% solar
• 6.4% wind

Winter 2013

• 74.9% hydroelectric
• 14.5% biomass (“wood, other plant matter, or landfill gas”)
• 4.1% solar
• 6.4% wind

Falll 2012

• 74.9% hydroelectric
• 16.2% landfill gas
• 3.3% solar
• 5.6% wind

Spring 2011

• 74.9% hydroelectric
• 9.9% biomass
• 6.9% solar
• 8.2% wind

Winter 2010

• 74.9% hydroelectric
• 11.8% biomass
• 7.2% solar
• 6.0% wind

Read more

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