Renewable Energy

Mashpee, as a Green Community, has committed to reduce energy consumption 20% or more over the 5 year period ending 2014. As most of Mashpee’s Town buildings are already energy efficient, generation of renewable energy (solar, wind) will be used to assist in reaching the 20% goal.

  A British Thermal Unit is the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of one pound (16 Ozs.) of water One degree Farenheit. It is a convenient unit of measure to sum energy use from varying sources into an overall baseline to view total consumption. Some BTU equivalents utilized for total power computations are

  Computing BTU consumption for larger facilities usually entails large numbers so the prefixes “M” or “MM” are frequently used to indicate millions of BTUs.

  Mashpee has categorized town energy consumption into Building (Gas and electricity), Fleet (Automotive fuel) and Lights (Street & Traffic).

Progress to date includes the signing of a Power Purchase Agreement for an approximately 350 kilowatt system for the High School, Senior Center and Town Hall that is rated to produce over 381 kilowatt hours of electricity in its first year of operation. (1,300 MMBTU.