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By TRAVIS MORSE
tmorse@morningsentinel.com
MOUNT VERNON — The City of Mount Vernon is moving forward with a plan to construct a small solar farm next to the wastewater treatment plant as a way to save significant money on electricity costs at the facility.
On Dec. 15, the Mount Vernon City Council approved an agreement with KPH IL 44, LLC to build the new solar farm and purchase the electricity. The deal in question was brought to the city by Affordable Gas & Electric (AGE) in Mount Vernon.
“This is again in regards to looking for a way to lower electric costs at the wastewater treatment plant,” said City Manager Nathan McKenna. “This is a proposal to construct an approximately five-acre solar farm at the industrial park that would help offset the cost of electricity for the facility.”
The average cost of electricity at the city’s wastewater treatment plant is about $12,000 a month. The KPH proposal would bring the current rate of 8 cents per kilowatt hour down to about 6 cents per kilowatt hour. It is a 30-year agreement and the deal would lock in the lower price for that length of time.
“It’s a tough choice because like you said, it’s a 30-year agreement, it is a long time,” McKenna said. “With a potential savings of $3 million over that 30 years, that’s a benefit to the community. We do have upgrades within the next five years that are going to be needed at that treatment plant. Any funding that we have that could help offset those costs would be nice.”
Prior to the vote taking place, the council on Dec. 15 discussed the proposal at some length with Ross Rubenacker, senior director of solar development for AGE. The 30-year length of the contract gave city council members some pause. Also, there was some question as to whether the city should seek out other proposals before just accepting the KPH deal from AGE.
On the other hand, though, the KPH deal represents a substantial savings, and time is of the essence. After the first of the year, the federal government will no longer allow a certain portion of equipment to be purchased from Chinese-owned entities or other “foreign entities of concern,” Rubenacker said. For that reason, the deal would have to be made before the end of the year.
“So that (requirement) would eliminate some of the more affordable Tier 1 manufactured panels that have some Chinese ties, so for them to procure those panels, it would have to be done before the end of the year,” Rubenacker said.
The city recently reached out to the utility company Veolia about possibly doing a solar project at the wastewater treatment plant. However, the city had not yet heard back from Veolia as of the Dec. 15 council meeting.
During the discussion with Rubenacker, Mayor John Lewis suggested the possibility of waiting to pull the trigger on the KPH/AGE deal until the city heard back from Veolia. There was also discussion of possibly holding a special meeting to discuss the matter further.
“You’re a great company,” Lewis said of AGE. “You’ve done a lot for Mount Vernon, and you’ve gone out of your way to help Mount Vernon in aggregation. But are we doing our due diligence by accepting one company? We would want to stay local so that other company would have to be pretty close to you for us to even consider them. … I am 98% positive that we’ll be going with them (AGE) … but we don’t have that other figure. We don’t have that to where at least the public knew we did our due diligence.”
In the end, however, the city council felt the AGE/KPH deal was too good to risk passing up. It would be difficult to get a new deal finalized with Veolia before the end of the year, and council members did not want to risk messing up the KPH deal because of the savings involved.
“I want to do what’s best for Mount Vernon,” said Councilman Donte Moore, later adding, “I just don’t want us to squander any savings. That’s my biggest issue.”
Mayor Lewis said he did some market research and the markets are saying that electric rates are going to keep rising for the next 50 years. The electricity rate for the city has about doubled over the last few years, he said.
The city council ended up approving the KPH deal in a unanimous vote. A firm time frame has not been announced for when the solar farm will be constructed at the wastewater treatment plant.
For more information on this issue, contact Mount Vernon City Hall.
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