The Board meets on the first and third Monday of each month. Meetings begin at 1:00 p.m. and are held in the department conference room at 65 Lafayette Ave, Littleton. Board meetings are open to the public and time is allotted for public comments at each meeting.
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The regularly scheduled business meeting of the Littleton Water and Light (LWL) Board of Commissioners (BOC) meeting began at 1:00 p.m. on Monday, February 3, 2020 in the LWL conference room. Present were Commissioner Peter Cooper, Commissioner Schuyler Sweet, Commissioner Ralph Ross and Superintendent Thomas Considine.
MINUTES REVIEW:
The minutes of the January 21, 2020 regularly scheduled Commissioners meeting were reviewed. Commissioner Ross made a motion to accept the minutes as presented, seconded by Commissioner Sweet.
The vote was in favor of the motion 3-0-0
CUSTOMER AND PUBLIC CONCERNS:
There appears to be a water leak at the road junction of Pine Street and Union Street in the trench line of the Town of Littleton wastewater sub area B project though not yet confirmed by LWL. LWL personnel suspect that inadequate trench backfill around the LWL water main has caused the pipe to move and a joint to open.
The water surfaced around Christmas week and LWL personnel have monitored the situation. The leak appears to be very minor and efforts to locate (pin pointing the source) the leak itself have not been successful. No audible sound is being detected and that is unusual because of the high system pressure in the service area. LWL is in close contact with NHDOT patrol and everyone is in agreement that as long as the leak remains manageable and does not present traffic safety issue repairs could be postponed to a more suitable time following the conclusion of the plowing season.
APPOINTMENTS:
John Soininen, representing Lead Lease developers discussed their propose Blue Berry Ridge solar project with the BOC. Lead Lease is proposing to interconnect a 20 MW PV solar array to the LWL sub-transmission line operating at 34,500 volts. After reviewing a very preliminary engineering report with the BOC Mr. Soininen proposed that the next step should be to contact ISO-NE and have them study the proposed interconnection. The PV array would be a grid asset; they only need LWL lines to wheel the power to the grid as it is more economical to connect at LWL’s 34,500 volt than Eversource’s 115,000 volt system.
Mr. Considine stated that as LWL overhead system would be wheeling the power back to the grid but is skeptical as how this will benefit LWL. Mr. Soininen stated that the direct benefits would be in the revaluation of the proposed property and associated taxes in the vicinity of Slate ledge Road. Mr. Considine stated that would be nice for the town but does little for LWL operations. Mr. Soininen also stated that there would be some cost sharing of line maintenance between the interconnection point and the gird.
Commissioner Cooper stated that a possible wheel charge would be for Lead Lease to cover all LWL transmission charges from National Grid. Mr. Soininen stated that all this could be worked out when an interconnection agreement is signed but the process is a long way from working out that detail.
Following some additional discussion the LWL BOC agreed with Mr. Soininen recommendation that ISONE be contacted to study the proposed PV interconnection.
Mr. Soininen thanked the BOC and exited the meeting about 1:45 pm.
SUPERINTENDENT/ GENERAL MANAGERS REPORT:
1. LWL was contacted recently by a contractor that submitted a bid with regard to the NHPUC request of a proposal to install DC quick car charging stations along the I93 corridor. Six (6) quick charge (30-minute) stations are being proposed in Littleton at the Little Grill restaurant on Cottage Street.
2. The BOC reviewed and discussed the services provided by LWL to the community for the year ended 2019. Service rendered amounted to over $105,000 with the large portion being the LED street light conversion project.
Commissioner Ross made comment that the service provided by LWL in support of the Littleton Area Chamber of Commerce (flags, banners, Christmas décor, etc.) is missing from the tally. This will increase LWLs total contribution. Mr. Considine stated that he would check into and revise the list as needed.
3. Mr. Considine reviewed the deployment status of the Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) program with the BOC. The electric meters with the exception of some commercial locations and difficult residential application are mostly upgrade to AMR technology, water is at about sixty (60) percent complete.
In total of the 5,642 meters read monthly (on average) 4,659 or about 83 percent of the usage is acquired using AMR technology. Most of the remaining meters that have not been upgraded are water system meters. Mr. Considine stated that a plan is being developed with the operators and office staff to upgrade the remaining water meters over the next two (2) or so years. He will bring the plan to the BOC when the plan is more formalized with estimate costs associated with this effort.
GENERAL/ OTHER BUSINESS:
1. The BOC reviewed the proposed implementation of a new electric rate for the tracking net metering credit. The new rate designated G-4 is a house keeping measure to more accurately track cogeneration credit given to a commercial customer. Presently all credit given under the R-4 rate is tracking on the general ledger towards the residential wholesale line item. This new rate would separate the commercial account and push the credit towards the commercial wholesale general ledger. This does not affect any change on the current customers metered at the R-4 rate.
Following some additional discussion Commissioner Sweet made a motion to approve the recommended new G-4 electric rate for the net metering cogenerated electric credit, seconded by Commissioner Ross.
The vote was in favor of the motion 3-0-0
2. Commissioner Cooper informed the BOC that he questioned Mr. Considine with regard to the system outage that affected most of the system back in October 2019. In particularly, the overhead electric switch that LWL personnel chose not to operate due to a lack of confidence with the equipment. If this switch was able to have been operated the outage would have been minimized and the business sector not impacted to the extent it was.
Mr. Considine stated that he was not positive and would need to get another opinion but felt that the potential exists to bypass the switch and exercise the switch not under load.
3. Mr. Considine made a requested that the meeting be moved to nonpublic session to discuss the proposed hiring of an employee.
Commissioner Sweet made a motion to enter into Nonpublic Session in accordance with RSA 91-A: 3 paragraph II (a) and paragraph II (b).
Seconded by Commissioner Ross.
Commissioner Cooper called for a roll call vote to enter in nonpublic session. Commissioner Sweet – Yes, Commissioner Ross – Yes, Commissioner Cooper – Yes.
The vote was in favor of the motion 3-0-0.
Entered nonpublic session at 2:10 p.m.
Public session reconvened at 2:27 p.m.
ADJOURNMENT:
There being no further business to come before the board Commissioner Sweet made a motion to adjourn the meeting, seconded by Commissioner Ross.
The vote was in favor of the motion 3-0-0.
Meeting adjourned at 2:30 p.m.
The regularly scheduled Commissioner’s meeting is held twice monthly on the first and third Monday, at 1:00 p.m., in the Department’s conference room.