Special Bd. of Aldermen — 08/06/2019 Page 19
Mr. Weeks And it is worth noting Alderman Lopez asked the question about the roof condition, in addition to
reducing cooling loads by exactly how much we don’t know, hence not included in the financials, it will extend
the roof life. Those UV rays are the primary cause of the degradation of the roof itself. So covering that up,
soaking up those rays instead as the panels are designed to do, will have that additional benefit.
Alderwoman Kelly
And just to follow on, as we are starting to look at building projects, | would just be interested to know what we
can do to make it more solar friendly. So we have the Performing Arts Center coming up, we are talking about a
new school, what kinds of things can we do to make sure that they are solar friendly even if we don’t install it
right at that time?
Mr. Weeks Thank you so much for looking ahead and thinking ahead in that way and | would note to Alderman
Dowd’s question that we have had some conversations with members of the School Department and done
some preliminary designs. The two high schools each have capacity for about a megawatt, that would be ten
times the arrays you see here, so tremendous potential in the City in the future. | would say the short answer
Alderwoman Kelly is we are always grateful to be brought in early in the process. We are often working with
several municipalities and businesses, putting up new buildings at this point in time and advising their electrical
contractors on conduit runs, on spacing for inverters in the utility rooms so they don’t need to go outdoor
preferably, on roof type selection. So that is something obviously unique to a given project and their needs but
we are eager to provide that guidance at the get-go and certainly can do whether or not we are a chosen
vendor. We are happy to provide that input.
Alderman Dowd
Any new design building like the new school, the Performing Arts Center or anything like that, the architect and
the construction manager do a lot of the planning to allow for the solar array and they have a lot of that
responsibility to make sure it is done correctly and esthetically. So they would work with a solar company to
perform all that work but they’d do it in accordance with the drawings that they come up with.
Alderwoman Kelly
| think my question was if we were planning on it then definitely that would happen but if we are not and we are
just putting up a new building, are we at least thinking ahead and putting in roofs that can actually sustain this?
Alderman Dowd
Oh no we are way ahead and we are doing solar.
Alderwoman Kelly
OK.
