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Committee recommends backup power project for town lot, fire station and communications site
Summary
Committee members discussed adding backup power (generator or battery/solar) for the town lot, the fire department and key communications infrastructure to the five-year hazard mitigation plan and asked staff for cost options.
On July 22, Castle Valley mitigation committee members discussed prioritizing backup power for the town lot, associated public buildings and the fire district as a mitigation project in the 2025 five-year plan.
Members said the town lot and adjacent buildings lose power during outages and that an on-site generator or upgraded solar-plus-battery system could support the towncommand post, the fire department and road operations during prolonged outages. The committee discussed technical trade-offs: a generator would probably be less expensive to deploy initially, while a solar-plus-battery system requires battery inverters and an automatic transfer/disconnect system but may offer longer-term resilience and lower operating cost.
Committee members asked staff to treat the priority as backup power for the town lot and associated buildings,rather than specifying a single technology. They asked staff to provide a bare‑minimum cost estimate and a list of options (propane generator, diesel generator, battery backup with existing solar panels, adding solar panels and batteries) and to identify likely permitting or utility coordination steps (including whether meters, transformers or service configuration would require modification). A draft in the agenda suggested an initial cost band for such systems would likely fall in the $5,000to100,000+ range depending on scale; the committee asked staff to provide more precise 2025 estimates.
Ending: Staff will prepare a short options analysis with order-of-magnitude costs, required utility work (locator/blue-stake, metering/transformer checks) and suggested funding sources for review at the next meeting.
