The Hollis Energy Committee in three short years, has saved Hollis taxpayers $125,000 in energy efficiency and conservation efforts.

Established by the Hollis Board of Selectmen in 2009, the Hollis Energy Committee continues to make significant strides toward implementing a number of energy efficiency projects.

“In March 2009, the School Board presented a balanced budget,” HEC member Venu Rao said. “And then in June, I attended a meeting where it was announced that the School Board was in the hole $60,000. And what happened was when the budget was submitted, the price for a gallon of oil was $2.36; and then oil price jumped to over $4 a gallon. So what do we do?”

Rao said he began speaking to people around town, and the idea that he and others came up with was the prospect of trying to make Hollis more energy efficient.

“Our goal was to get rid of the fossil fuel dependency,” he said. “If we could do that, we’d be saving close to $1 million. That’s how much we spend for oil in Hollis in a year. And then the money saved could be used for some of the other school programs.”

Rao and other Hollis Energy Committee members created “Project Progress,” and then made a presentation to the School Board and the Board of Selectmen to make all school buildings energy efficient without impacting taxes.

“After winning a few other smaller grants, the HEC competed and won five significant projects worth nearly $250,000 in grants in March, 2010, which enabled the project implementations without any tax burden for Hollis residents,” Rao said.

In addition, in 2011, HEC signed a power purchase agreement with Hess Corp., thus reducing their electrical cost to the town and school districts by more than $64,000 per year.

“The resulting estimated annual energy savings for the residents of Hollis town totaled $128,000 per year, all achieved with zero additional tax burden,” he said.

The committee continues to search for energy-efficiency improvements to reduce the energy load, resulting in taxpayer savings. By reducing their energy requirements in this first phase, sustainable energy practices can be implemented more cost-effectively in the future.

Rao also discussed two project grants awarded in March 2010 that allowed Hollis to perform detailed energy investment grade audit on seven town buildings and all five school buildings in Hollis.

“After a formal request for proposal and evaluation process, Arcadia Engineers and Constructors of Durham, N.H., was selected,” Rao said. “These audits are funded by the grant with no local tax impact.”

Rao also discussed “an exciting development” that happened last year.

“That was the signing of a power purchase agreement,” he said. “The HEC worked with the Nashua Regional Planning Commission to develop a program to reduce electric costs.”

A detailed proposal process was implemented with assistance from the state energy office.

After several bids were considered, Hess was selected and the team determined that the January 2012 energy generation rate for Public Service of New Hampshire was 8.39 cents per kilowatt-hour, while the new rate from Hess is 5.75 cents per kwh for nearly all buildings in Hollis, resulting in a reduction of approximately 2.3 cents per kwh. The resulting savings are nearly $9,200 per year for the town, and $71,000 per year for SAU 41.

“Across the entire NRPC, the savings total approximately $425k per year,” Rao said. “We believe that the NRPC was highly instrumental in the success of this effort and it’s our goal that efforts such as this collective partnerships will expand in the future to sustainable energy generation projects.”

“And really, this is just phase one,” Rao added. “We still have a long way to go, and that’s where phase two comes in. We’ll see.”