Newburyport Energy Today

Use

  • National Grid provides electricity and natural gas to most of the 14 city buildings and 18,000 residents. and owns Newburyport’s 1,594 streetlights 
  • Newburyport owns 278 lights, including decorative streetlights in the downtown area, traffic lights, and flashing school lights 
  • The majority of municipal buildings heat with natural gas 
  • Two buildings heat with electricity (Molin Elementary/Nock Middle School and DPS) 
  • One building (Brown School) is heated by oil 
  • A 512 kW solar photovoltaic system installed at the Molin Elementary/ Nock Middle School and the DPS 
  • Of approximately 126 vehicles, 17 are classified as non-exempt by our Fuel Efficient vehicle policy. Source: 2010 Energy Reduction Plan
    • Newburyport uses about 160 million Kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity per year1 
  • Commercial and Industrial – 62%
  • Residential – 33% 
  • Municipal – 5% (about 8 million kWh/year)

Producer

  • We produces greater than 2.2 million kWh of electricity per year from the Molin Elementary/Nock Middle School rooftop solar array and Mark Richey’s wind turbine 
  • 2016 solar electricity production was 1.3% of total electricity use 

Newburyport Solar 

  • Purchases 2.3 million kWh/year from Salisbury solar farm
  • Produces 0.5 million kWh/year 
  • Solar generates 35% of municipal electricity

Residential Solar   

  • Over 182 solar installations to date
  • An estimated 2-4,000 Newburyport homes are appropriate for solar
  • Business Clean Energy (Source: 2010 Energy Reduction Plan)
  • Bixby International’s was chosen as a demonstration site for Evergreen Solar’s new solar panel, flat roof mounting system in 2004
  • The Parker River Wildlife Refuge built a Federal and Water Management Award winning sustainable building in 2003, upgraded in 2009. The 112-panel solar photovoltaics generate 35% of the buildings needs
  • The Tannery (retail shops, restaurants, offices) hosts a 60-kilowatt building-mounted photovoltaic array built downtown in 2010  
  • Mark Richey Woodworking has a 600-kilowatt turbine, solar array and  biomass furnace that powers and heats 80,000 square feet of the woodworking facility in the Business Park 
  • Hillside Center for Sustainable Living under construction will be a community of net zero homes