Webster Municipal Solar Array

The Webster Municipal Solar Array is a wonderful resource for the town, right next to the school.  It has no loan or bond payments and is fully owned by Webster.  This means that there are no power purchase agreements or higher rates to pay, nor any needed budget line use except for the meter charge that ends up in the electric bills.  When power comes out of the arrays and through the meters to the grid, a monetary credit is created, rather than an amount owed as appears on most bills.  Depending on the point in time we are at, this has come as a revenue check to the town, or more recently has been used towards lowering the electric bills for the other town properties.  This is done in a way called "group net metering".  In most years, the array creates slightly more electricity than the municipal properties use.  Unfortunately, there are other parts to the electric bills though, so this hasn't meant no budget is needed for electricity.

Click here to see the monitoring page for the Webster Municipal Solar Array.

The default view is "Billing Cycle", but that won't really tell you much.  It is more informative to click on the week or month view.  Below that is a comparison to previous years.  This is good, but unfortunately with the replacement of some equipment in the beginning of 2024 when this new monitoring interface was brought online, years prior to 2024 aren't accurate (though the prior years should be comparable to each other).

For those interested in a bit more detail, at the top left you can click on the "Layout" button, instead of the Dashboard.  From this view, you can see what each panel and inverter is doing, not just the system as a whole.  Do not be alarmed or confused if the numbers aren't all the same.  This is normal due to both manufacturing tolerances, the atmosphere, and even shadows from birds and trees as they go by.  The numbers should generally be pretty close to each other though, unless something like snow is sitting on a few panels.

The Energy Committee is tasked with monitoring, basic maintenance, and reporting.  Please contact the Energy Committee if you would like to know more, help out, or have noticed something that needs attention.

You can find the presentation from when the array was created here, though note that the monitoring system previously used is different.