City of Visalia May Buy Street Lights From SCE
There are some 6200 street lights in the city limits of Visalia and it cost the City $850,000 every year paid to SCE to rent and maintain them. Now the Visalia City Council is looking to buy the system and maintain it themselves for what they say could be good savings. Cost is expected to be in the $4 to 5 million range after negotiations with Edison.
“The savings could also potentially fund other system upgrades such as replacing the downtown series circuits and an energy efficiency retrofit project to convert all of the streetlights to light-emitting diodes (LEDs)” says a staff report. One Southland city put in LEDs along their city streets 6 years ago and has yet to change a light bulb.
Supervisors To Discuss Pulling Out Of Tulare County EDC
Will they stay in or pull out of the Tulare County Economic Development Corporation?
The Board of Supervisors is expected to discuss that hot topic next Tuesday as they wrestle with several options.”I want to hear what the rest of the board thinks” says Phil Cox, chair of the board.”I have been unhappy with with the Tulare County EDC for some time. Right now I am leaning toward a reduced funding level instead of puling out altogether.” The County spends around $70,000 annually to fund the organization who is also funded by municipalities and corporate interests.
SolarCity Will Power Up WWT Plant,Corp Yard
Under a Power Purchase Agreement submitted by SolarCity, the City of Visalia will contract with the publicly traded company to design, purchase, install and maintain a 1 MW solar facility at the wastewater treatment plant. The City will pay SolarCity just under $1.1 million and will receive all electricity produced by the facility for the next 20 years, with a guaranteed minimum production of electricity. The City will pay 2.2 cents per kilowatt hour compared to the City’s current SCE rate of about 10.4 cents. The 1 MW solar project has a payback period of 4 years with a net savings of over $5.6 million during the 20 year contract period.
In addition Solar City will submit a plan to build various solar panels at the city corporation yard . The company came with a good recommendation from Visalia Unified who had SolaCity build a half dozen arrays here.
SolarCity was the busiest residential solar contractor in the county last year with about 450 homes refitted with solar – about 40% of all home solar projects in Tulare County.
Solar To Power Firebaugh Desal Unit
Panoche Water District will expand its pilot solar desalination project. SF-based WaterFX has installed a solar-powered desalination system to treat agricultural drainage water,producing almost 500 gallons of clean water per hour. Now the Firebuagh water district will ramp the system to produce 2,200 acre-feet per year. Resulting salt brine is dried and sold for various products
Homes Sales In Tulare County
New home sales in Tulare County in January numbered 41 compared to 34 in January 2013. Meanwhile existing home sales declined to 214 from 302 in January 2013. However the median sales price for an existing home climbed nearly19% to just under $145,000 compared to $122,000 a year earlier.