City Looks at USGridco as Part of Smart City Initiative
By Robin Vinci | Editor at January 15, 2024 | 8:45 am | Print
As part of the Smart City Initiative the City is looking to hire a company that will manage and market innovations within the City. Mayor Erin Stewart said she is looking at USGridco, a national company out of Massachusetts, to undergo this task.
“They specialize in micro-grid technology which is an interesting development which could happen in the city of New Britain to basically create our own power and have a data center in town to be self-sufficient someday,” said Stewart. “It would be for businesses like hospitals, schools and larger companies and possibly one day residents, but that is a long way down the road.”
USGridco is being hired at this time for two reasons.
First is to talk with companies already hired by the City.
“For example, instead of me talking directly to SolarCity about products, USGridco would talk to them,” said Stewart. “Part of me hiring this company is expanding upon what we are doing with SolarCity in every municipal building. We want to expand our solar footprint to every opportunity we have available.”
A 780 kilowatt solar array at the Shuttle Meadow Reservoir water filtration plant, that will save the City $2.2 million over the next 20 years, was turned on last year. The project, as a whole, will total 1.6 megawatts of solar generation capacity, enough to produce at least 2.3 million kilowatt hours of electricity for the city each year. Estimates from SolarCity anticipate that the systems will offset carbon emissions by 49.7 million pounds. That’s the equivalent of reducing the carbon emissions of 4,797 cars over 20 years or enough electricity to power the equivalent of 195 homes each year.
“It is so difficult when you have so many irons in the fire. We have SolarCity for our solar arm. We have a different company for LED’s in our street lights and a different company for lights in City Hall,” said Stewart. “We have contracts with who we purchase our power from. USGridco are experts in energy management. They will help manage who we buy our power from and make sure we get the best rates possible. It can be overwhelming, especially if you are not an expert.”
According to the company’s website, “The mission of US Grid Company (“USGRDCO”) is to transform today’s power delivery system by paving the way to the utility of the future – a secure, reliable, resilient, efficient and low-carbon power system – in a way that customers can afford. We provide a lower-risk and lower-cost transition to the future utility model, centered on distributed energy resources, customer choice and critical system assets, in a manner that protects the utilities’ financial health so that they can serve the needs of all segments of society.”
USGridco has worked with the Cities of Detroit, Michigan and Fort Lauderdale, Florida managing their systems and helped bring a marketing campaign to the city so people understood what was happening.
New Britain would also like to make one of its initiatives a marketing campaign.
“The City initiative is more than just solar. It is many pieces that will help reduce our carbon footprint for many years to come and it will come with savings too,” said Stewart. “I want to do things like have solar trash compactors in the downtown area. They will help figure out how to do it. We are looking to have them there for two years and have goals in mind.”
There will be an ad-hoc committee called the Mayor’s Innovation Committee to oversee the project.
“I will pick city residents who have a stake in this and aldermen.” Mayor Stewart said. “It is exciting stuff. It’s really about thinking differently and not just energy.”
