By Katlynn Vredenburgh
contributor
New energy-saving initiatives are going to be implemented in the village of Cazenovia, including the installation of a solar power array at the Village Water Treatment Plant, and the possible replacement of village streetlights with more efficient LED streetlights.
The village’s goal with these initiatives is to reduce village costs, save taxpayers’ money and reduce the village’s negative environmental impact, according to David Porter, the village trustee in charge of renewable energy.
The installation of the 200 kW photovoltaic (PV), or solar power, arrays at the Village Water Treatment Plant site will be used to provide power to buildings owned by the village of Cazenovia, such as the Department of Public Works, the municipal building and the firehouse, Porter said. The ground-based system will hopefully be installed within the next year, he said.
“We’re hoping that the PV array will contribute about maybe over 50 percent of the electricity that the village uses,” Porter said.
Additionally, he said that due to price drops in PV arrays there is a possibility that the village will expand upon the array it is currently installing in the future.
The initiative to potentially replace the village’s current streetlights with more efficient LED streetlights is being done because LED lights use “a fraction of the energy” of conventional lighting, Porter said.
“In old style lightbulbs … maybe four to six percent of the energy gets converted into light, the remaining energy gets converted into heat … whereas the LED lightbulbs are much more efficient in converting energy into visible light, while emitting much less heat,” said Porter.
This means that the LED streetlights would need significantly less energy than their traditional counterparts in order to produce the same amount of visible light.
In addition to saving money on streetlights, more energy-saving initiatives may be discovered through an energy audit in the village’s buildings currently being completed by the energy services contractor, SmartWatt. During the energy audit, SmartWatt finds ways the village can save money by making improvements or replacing old equipment with more modern technology. Then with the savings SmartWatt finds, “they look to see what other energy efficiency improvements can be made, or what else can be bought with those savings found during the audit,” Porter said.
Hopefully, a portion of the savings found during the energy audit being conducted in the village’s buildings will go towards the LED streetlights, he said.
The village’s goal is that with these energy-reducing initiatives they will not only be able to save money, which would prevent citizens from paying needlessly high taxes for energy used in village buildings, but that they will also, “have an impact on global warming,” said Porter.
“We know there will be less greenhouse gases produced if we save energy, and hopefully we’ll be protecting the planet from the disastrous consequences that come with climate change,” he said.
However, he mentions that people are often much more focused on the idea of saving money with energy-saving programs than they are on the concept of helping combat climate change, especially seeing that there are still individuals who do not believe it exists.
This can be problematic because then even if communities or individuals switch over to using energy-reducing technology, their bad energy consuming habits, such as leaving lights on at all hours of the day or opening windows while they have the heater on, will end up wasting energy anyways and will negatively affect the environment.
Therefore, Porter also urges people to become more involved in energy conservation through actions such as, “turning off lighting, not leaving your windows wide open in the middle of winter, and being more conservative with your water usage by installing low flow toilets and sink fixtures, or by taking shorter showers.”
Katlynn Vredenburgh is a reporter for The Quad, the Cazenovia College newspaper.
