Technology

Have y'all seen the web site that the County's consultant set up about the new site search process? At the Orange County Transfer Station Siting Website, visitors can find background, details on the siting criteria, and upcoming meetings.. This is a good start and represents an improvement on the amount of information previously available.

My wishes are that:

1. They would provide a syndicated feed so that we can follow updates to the site without having to visit each page every day to see whether there's something new.
2. The COUNTY ought to provide this kind of information on it's own website, since this is the people's information, and should do this for more projects. Of course, the Towns should do this as well.

There's been something floating around in my head since Monday night's council meeting. One item from the consent agenda entitled "Resolution Authorizing the Mayor to Request a Fee Waiver from Duke Energy for Town Solar Energy Projects with 'Buy All/Sell All' Metering," sparked a mini-feud between Matt Czajkowski and Mayor Foy. Apparently, Duke Energy charges a rate for two-way metering that is significantly more than the rate they charge for a meter box on a typical usage-only application. As in, perhaps several times more. The exorbitant fee is putting a damper on the rate of return on the town's experimental panels on top of the fire station, and the mayor wanted to ask Duke if they could provide a more reasonable rate, whereas this is a rather experimental project, and is benefiting both Duke (who is getting the energy at peak usage hours, aka daylight hours), and the entire community, as per environmental benefits.