Housatonic fuel cell veto cheers Milford

MILFORD — Turning aside a bid by a private company to build a fuel cell at the Housatonic sewage treatment plant led to "the best thing that we didn't do,'' the city's alternative energy czar said Wednesday.
Thomas Ivers told the city Economic Development Commission the city was "aggressively courted'' by firms hoping to use a package of state incentives to develop alternative fuel sources. While the company selected would have installed the fuel cell for free and leased the rights to the methane the plant produces, "ultimately all of that power would have gone up onto the grid. It wouldn't have benefited us directly.''

Instead, Ivers and the Alternative Energy Task Force he heads are lining up support for a municipally owned fuel cell at the wastewater treatment plant that would cost $1 million but generate 2 million kilowatt hours of electricity a year, enough to power the facility.

The fuel cell would pay for itself in just a few years, even quicker if the city can leverage the federal tax credit for such alternative energy projects by selling the credit to investors, he said. The city itself can't use the credit because it pays no taxes, Ivers said.

Another plus is that the 2 million kilowatts would account for 13 percent of the city's energy consumption, he said. That is enough to meet the city's goal of getting 20 percent of its energy from alternative sources by 2010, the task force chairman said, without buying $40,000 of "renewable energy certificates'' or credits every year.

Milford's municipal energy usage now includes 7 percent from renewable sources, through its utility contracts.

Business leader John DePalma asked if automatic light switches and other conservation measures can't be installed in public buildings, including the sprawling Parsons Government Center.

Robert Gregory, the city's economic development director, said while the restrooms in the building do have the switches, the offices and conference rooms do not. "I have been asked by the mayor to look at the usage of this building at night to see where we might save energy. There are three meeting rooms that are sporadically used, and we may look to transfer those to other buildings and close Parsons down at night.''

The energy bills for the Parsons complex, a former high school that includes a gym and an auditorium were $56,000 in 2004 and $200,000 last year, Ivers said. "One problem we have is tracking the usage. There are 153 meters in municipal buildings, and United Illuminating Co. at our request generated a usage report for each one,'' the task force chairman said. "Now we are converting those into a spreadsheet and a database that we can use.''

http://www.connpost.com/localnews/ci_9977697

Source: Conneticut Post