WHATELY – The Baker-Polito Administration announced last week the Municipal Vulnerability Planning (MVP) grants this year total $32.8 million, a new high, and will assist 73 communities with grants for planning and building green projects. Whately secured an action grant for $304,778 to install solar panels and electrical storage in the Center School building.

According to discussion between the Selectboard and Town Administrator Brian Domina, while revising the request for proposal (RFP), one of the next steps in securing principal contractors on the project at the old school building, a few basic questions came up.

“What do we want to do with the excess energy?” Domina asked. “We also wanted…to ensure the quality of the products” used in the project.

Selectboard Chair Joyce Palmer-Fortune clarified for board members that under new regulations in the commonwealth, municipalities may have a choice between net metering and renewable energy credits (RECs) as compensation for generating electricity and/or selling excess power to a distributor on the grid, Eversource or Berkshire Gas & Electric.

“Until recently municipalities couldn’t get net metering,” Palmer-Fortune said. “If you’re producing more than you use, your [excess] electricity goes for sale on the grid…but if you’re a municipality you didn’t get credit for it.”

“Is it an either or?” asked board member Julia Waggoner. “Or is it both?”

Palmer-Fortune admitted the need to talk to people better informed about the details.

“My understanding is that the RECs get less and less valuable as the programs go on, but net metering maintains its value,” Palmer-Fortune said.

Homeowners and other casual green energy producers receive one REC for every megawatt generated. In recent years RECs have sold at auction for $200 to $275 each. The sale of RECs subsidizes investment in green energy generation. Companies that create greenhouse gas emissions buy RECs as a counterbalance to the carbon pollution they generate.

“If you have the battery storage and you have enough of it they will pay to pull energy out of your battery,” Palmer-Fortune said. “It’s a money maker in some ways…(So) if we have the funds to put toward a little extra solar and a little extra battery, that’s something we can do to offset the costs of this.”

Domina and Keith Bardwell, superintendent of the Highway Department, also talked about whether the solar generation system planned for the Center School is large enough to produce sufficient energy for the building. Bardwell, consulting with a local electrician, voiced concern the electricity generated wouldn’t be enough to run the heating system during the winter. Domina said there also may be compatibility issues between the three-phase HVAC and the solar systems.

“There’s three phase and single phase, and all these things going on, that I think need to be discussed,” Domina said, “before we put out the RFP.”

A meeting with the Energy Committee is scheduled for this week.

Domina also updated the board on the weatherization project at Whately Elementary School. A Green Communities grant was secured for the project. Domina and his staff already met with officials from the Green Communities program and Eversource, with a meeting also scheduled with the school principal and the facilities manager for the Frontier Regional School District.

Domina explained that distributors, like Eversource, develop lists of approved contractors. Municipalities are required to contract for energy-related work to be done by an approved contractor. The difficulty is that each distributor has its own list.

“The one hiccup that it might give us,” Domina said, is that “Energy Source was the company that we were planning on using…So we’re waiting to see if the vendor we had used for the energy audit and we’re going to use for the work is on the Berkshire Gas list.”

The town has two years to complete the project. Planning and procurement questions aside, Domina said the work is moving forward.

Area legislators see the contribution of the Green Communities and MVP grants as a great boon for small towns like Whately. The grants give municipalities the fiscal flexibility to take advantage of opportunities to generate electricity and decentralize the grid. The grants often bring aging infrastructure into compliance with current building standards.

“The MVP grant program is among the most relevant and the most effective in the commonwealth,” said state Sen. Jo Comerford. “I’m absolutely delighted to see substantial funds flowing to western Massachusetts.”