A solar project on the roofs of Martha’s Vineyard Hospital’s (MVH) workforce housing project promises to deliver hundreds of thousands of dollars in electricity bill assistance for low-income Islanders over the next few decades.
The 138-kilowatt rooftop solar array, installed by West Tisbury-based South Mountain Company, is the first in PowerOptions Connect’s SolarShare program, a press release read Tuesday, and is supported by grants from the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center’s EmPower Massachusetts program and Island nonprofit Vineyard Power. PowerOptions Connect, a nonprofit connected to a larger regional energy-buying consortium, hopes to expand this new community-benefit model for solar across the Northeast.
The arrays are on the roofs of three MVH workforce housing buildings at 480 Edgartown–Vineyard Haven Road, which is adjacent to the Navigator Home nursing facility, and are fully constructed and operational.
The idea behind the SolarShare program is to produce onsite renewable energy generation and deliver broader community benefits. The project aims to provide both energy savings at the workforce housing units in Edgartown and contribute to as much as $550,000 in electricity bill assistance to the overall Island over the next 25 years.
Michael Cosgrave, executive director of administration for MVH, said that when energy is captured via the solar arrays and delivered to the grid, a credit is generated for each kilowatt-hour; the credit can be used to offset utility bills. “Rather than claiming 100 percent of those energy credits, Martha’s Vineyard Hospital will share 50 percent of those credits (estimated to be $550,000 over the next 25 years) with local energy-burdened households on the Island,” Cosgrave said in a statement to The Times.
Which Island households are allocated the funds is determined by Vineyard Power’s Resiliency and Affordability Program (RAP) Advisory Committee; they must earn 60 percent less than the area median income. The RAP funds come from a community benefits agreement between the nonprofit and developers of the offshore wind farm Vineyard Wind. The agreement, officially released last summer but signed a decade prior, exchanges support of the Vineyard Wind 1 project with benefits for the Island, such as $7.5 million over 15 years for energy resiliency programs like this one. Many public officials never saw the document prior to its release, and as some Island residents said the contract included a conflict of interest, towns decided to pursue their own agreement with the developer, even after the project finished construction. Towns and the developer are currently in negotiations.
“The Resiliency and Affordability Program is a community benefit secured from Vineyard Wind that was designed to enable local renewable energy generation, increase resilience, and advance energy affordability through local initiatives that deliver tangible benefits to the community,” Richard Andre, president at Vineyard Power, said. “We’re thrilled to collaborate with MGB (Mass General Brigham, MVH’s parent organization) and PO Connect to leverage RAP funding, with guidance from our advisory committee, to deliver roughly $550,000 to support income-eligible households on Martha’s Vineyard.”