Boston’s Mayor, Thomas Menino goes Solar

From The Boston Globe.  Read the orig­i­nal arti­cle here.

May­or Thomas M. Meni­no has a new source of ener­gy for his home in Readville: solar ener­gy pan­els, installed by stu­dents from Roxbury’s Madi­son Park High School as part of a co-op project.

Meni­no pledged in August to install the pan­els at his home as part of the Solar­ize Mass-Boston pro­gram.

With the 13, 260-watt solar pan­els, the city esti­mat­ed that the Mayor’s elec­tri­cal bill could drop 70 per­cent, equiv­a­lent to about $54 per month.

The sys­tem, which can cost upwards of $20,000, will be leased by SolarCi­ty for 20-years, lock­ing in rates at 12 cents a kilo­watt-hour and sig­nif­i­cant­ly drop­ping instal­la­tion costs for Meni­no, the Globe report­ed in August. With the low­er rate, the Globe esti­mat­ed the cur­rent rate from a util­i­ty is about 15 cents a kilo­watt-hour, Meni­no expects to save about $8,000 over 20-years.

“Solar­ize Mass-Boston has been an amaz­ing suc­cess, increas­ing access to clean ener­gy for many of our res­i­dents,” May­or Meni­no said in a state­ment. “We will build off this suc­cess and con­tin­ue to build and devel­op pro­grams to help res­i­dents and busi­ness­es go green and save money.”

The “green” addi­tions, installed by local con­trac­tors and the two stu­dents, mem­bers of the IBEW Local 103 Elec­tri­cal Union’s co-op pro­gram, were part of the larg­er pro­gram that brought 116 solar con­tracts to the city.

Over­all the new pan­els city-wide will gen­er­ate 522 kilo­watts of renew­able ener­gy, the city estimated.

The four-month Solar­ize Mass-Boston pro­gram, which end­ed in Novem­ber, was a part­ner­ship between the city, the Mass­a­chu­setts Clean Ener­gy Cen­ter, and the Mass­a­chu­setts Depart­ment of Ener­gy Resources. The pro­gram aimed to make solar pow­er eas­i­er for res­i­dents, with group buy­ing and access to fed­er­al and state tax credits.