Danby Town Hall soon to be fossil-free

The Danby Town Hall will soon go fossil-free.

The town recently received a $60,000 grant for green municipal initiatives, and about $50,000 will be spent on removing the building’s three natural gas heaters and replacing them with three air-source heat pumps that will not only heat but cool the town hall as well. The hyper heat units will be integrated into the existing ductwork for heat distribution. 

Two additional smaller air-source units will be installed as well; they are highly efficient and designed to quickly heat and cool the town hall’s large gathering area.

The town considered using geothermal ground-source technology but discovered it would be too expensive, said Joel Gagnon, Danby town supervisor, adding that he is excited about the prospect of using new technology that was not available until relatively recently.

“Twenty-five years ago, the technology did not exist,” Gagnon said. “Transformative technology has made it possible for heat pumps to be effective down to 13 [degrees] below.”

The town hall was constructed in the 1840s and has gone through two rounds of energy audits, Gagnon said.

All of the work being done to replace the current heating system — which was installed at the same time the building’s new wing was added on, in 2000 — is the result of an energy audit completed by the town about 10 years ago. The town received a Clean Energy Communities (CEC) grant through NYSERDA at that time and used it to make the town hall more energy efficient.

As part of the upcoming project, which Gagnon said will likely be finished before the end of the year, the town will also install a natural gas hot water heater, which was not eligible in the grant and will cost roughly $1,000, including installation, said Jim Holahan, Danby town energy advisor, who is also senior energy analyst for Taitem Engineering. He said this will completely eliminate the need for natural gas at the town hall.

Though other quotes were sought, Simply Installs was the one company that submitted a qualified bid and was selected for the project. Holahan said the company visited town hall three times as it was moving through the process.

A $15,600 air source heat pump incentive by the state lowers the $64,696 cost of the project to $49,096, which is well within the range of the CEC grant. 

About $5,000 of the $10,000 left over after the heating and cooling project will go toward repairing or replacing the existing electric vehicle charging station at the town hall, Holahan said, adding that the town has not yet decided how to utilize the additional $5,000 that will remain.

Gagnon acknowledges that any cost savings to the town due to the new heating and cooling system are likely to be modest, at least in the immediate future.

“We won’t save a whole lot, because the context is that electric rates have risen,” Gagnon said, “and the cost of natural gas has dropped.”

“The motivation here,” he explained, “is to get off of fossil fuels altogether.”

The town has a long history of implementing green initiatives. Municipal buildings are currently using electricity generated by two local arrays, located at the town highway facility and town hall.

“The town boards in my time here have been uniformly committed to reducing our environmental footprint, and an obvious way to do it is to reduce the energy usage of our buildings,” Gagnon said. “We have had multiple opportunities to take advantage of state incentivizing to do it.”