Solar energy on a first-come-first-served basis? It may sound unusual, but that’s what’s on the table for residents and small-business owners in Southampton’s half of Sag Harbor Village and other nearby parts of the township, through a solar project being constructed at the North Sea Transfer Station.
Through the program, residents and small businesses can apply to receive an 8-percent credit to monthly electric bills. Only about 550 applicants will be accepted. It is estimated that the benefit will kick in during the first few months of 2025.
Its merits were laid out before the Sag Harbor Village Board at its Sept. 10 meeting by Mary Ann Eddy, a member of both the harbor committee and the environmental advisory committee.
“I think this is very exciting,” Ms. Eddy said by phone this week. It offers “access to renewable energy to those who can’t or don’t want to install solar panels.”
The solar benefit program is known as community-distributed generation. It is free to tap into, with no physical solar panels required. Distribution will come by way of North Sea, where a 4-megawatt solar array is being built at the transfer station.
“Part of the deal there,” Ms. Eddy said on Sept. 10, is that the transfer station “will get some of the electricity for its own property. But they have to give another portion of it, 40 percent of which goes to Southampton Town, and 60 percent of it has to go to residents and small businesses.”
Applications are at meadow.
energy/north-sea-solar. What’s required is a verified PSEG account, with name, email address, and electronic PSEG bill or photo of page one of a bill, which is needed “to figure out how much you use, so that together the residents don’t go over the allocation of kilowatts that’s available,” Ms. Eddy said.
Those with solar panels already on their properties are not eligible to take part.
