Each year, the amount saved through reducing energy and maintenance costs is expected to exceed the debt payments for the work. And over the 25-year life of the upgrades, the savings are expected to total roughly $2 million, city officials said.
Facing ailing infrastructure and not enough money to fix it, Fullerton is planning numerous energy efficient upgrades throughout the city, hoping to offset the cost of the work – and then some – with the energy savings it reaps.
The $8.9 million plan will include replacing thousands of lights around town with LED bulbs, adding solar panels and electric vehicle charging stations, bringing in new air conditioning units and upgrading some plumbing, among other updates.
Each year, the amount saved through reducing energy and maintenance costs is expected to exceed the debt payments for the work. And over the 25-year life of the upgrades, the savings are expected to total roughly $2 million, city officials said.
Challenges with Fullerton’s dated infrastructure and the lack of extra money in its budget to address them “is becoming critical,” said David Grantham, Fullerton’s principal civil engineer. The majority of the city’s roads, storm drains, water mains and other foundational infrastructure dates back to the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, when the city expanded, he said, and workers have “Band-Aided it for a while.”
“We’re now really at a point where things are really at the end of their life, and we need to spend a tremendous amount of money to repair them or replace them,” Grantham said.
But Fullerton doesn’t have “that nice, big, fat piggy bank that we can just take from,” he said.
So officials had to get creative, he said, and the project they settled on, an energy services performance contract, allows an energy service company to develop and implement numerous upgrades that, when done together, create energy savings.
“So we’re updating our infrastructure, but also creating new infrastructure that’s, you know, modern, more environmentally friendly, something that we can use well into the future,” Grantham said.
The lighting upgrades will go in at dozens of parks, at community centers and at fire stations. At the police station, City Hall and the main water plant, solar panels will generate renewable energy while also creating shaded parking for roughly 130 cars. Fifteen vehicle charging stations will go up in three spots: at the parking structure in the SOCO District, at City Hall and the police station.
Unanimously supporting the proposal, Fullerton’s City Council recently approved an agreement with energy service company NORESCO to design and implement the projects and authorized city staff to obtain the necessary funding.
The city will borrow money to pay for the work, and officials have gone out to bid to find the funding, Grantham said, noting that companies aware of this type of project are “very comfortable providing the loans.”
Once the money is in place, work can start right away, he said. It’s all expected to be finished within the next year and a half.
After debt payments, savings each year are expected to be in the tens of thousands of dollars, according to a staff report. When the debt is paid off, the city will then bank even more money from the energy savings.
Those savings will likely be put back into more infrastructure projects, probably improving the city’s streets, which are the worst in the county according to an evaluation required by the Orange County Transportation Authority every two years, Grantham said.
“We just haven’t had the funds available to keep up with the maintenance needs that we’ve needed over time,” he said. “We’ve gotten to the point where our streets are in dire need of work, of rehabilitation.”
