As the nearly 800 members of Vineyard Power — the Island’s nascent energy cooperative — vote on their future, at least 12.5 per cent of them need to actually show up in person to legally do so as a quorum. Members who attended Wednesday night’s meeting to vote on rather mundane bylaw changes were disappointed to find that there were not enough in attendance to do so.
One audience member blamed the poor attendance on the lack of urgency in the cooperative’s electronic bulletin.
After nearly two hours of passionate and sometimes contentious debate, Aquinnah voters agreed to back a plan to install 200 solar panels at the town landfill at a special town meeting Wednesday night.
The town of Aquinnah awarded a bid to Vineyard Power this week to build a solar array at the town landfill, marking the first major project for the Island energy cooperative.
Pending approval from town counsel, the selectmen signed a preliminary agreement at their meeting Tuesday to place about 200 panels at the town landfill. The 50-kilowatt system will produce up to 60,000 kilowatt hours a year, which is equivalent to about 10 to 12 houses. The panels will produce enough electricity to power the town buildings.
Compared with the other nine developers who have expressed interest in building commercial-scale wind farms across some 3,000 square miles of federal ocean south of Martha’s Vineyard, the Vineyard Power cooperative looks like a minnow.
Aquinnah selectmen this week inched closer to a final contract with Vineyard Power to install a solar array at the landfill, but pressed for clearer contingency plans from the community energy cooperative in the event of a problem.
Summer shoppers seeking shade may be able to do so this summer while powering up. Vineyard Power hopes to install a 12,200 square foot array of solar panels over the Vineyard Haven Cronig’s parking lot. The array, which will supply a quarter of the store’s energy needs, is made up of three “solar canopies,” which will also feature six electric car charging stations.
