Bright Ideas October 2014

Braintree Electric Light Department & BELD Broadband...your hometown electric and broadband department

BELD and the Town of Braintree bring solar energy to the landfill

A monthly newsletter for BELD & BELD Broadband customers, published October 2014

New website coming soon We’re excited to an-nounce the launch of

our new website! We’ve been working behind the scenes to make it easier

for you to find the informa-tion you want easily on-

line. In the coming weeks you’ll find our new site at the same address, www.

beld.com. If you need help navigating the new site, call our HelpDesk at

781.348.BELD (2353).

Tune up your heating system

Before the fall heating season starts, make an appointment to have a

qualified technician clean and tune your boiler or furnace. If you have an oil system, make sure the technician does a combustion efficiency test and gives you the

results. Questions? Call 781.348.1032 and speak to our Energy Advisor.

BRIGHT IDEAS

BELD is partnering with the Town of Braintree to install a solar array at the town’s closed landfill next to the Covanta Transfer Station on

Ivory Street.

The array will be made up of 4,142 solar panels and will have the capac-ity to produce 1.26 megawatts of electricity. Over the course of a year it is expected to generate 1,645,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity—enough power to more than 200 homes.

A leading provider of solar-power solutions for public enterprises, Ameresco of Framingham will as-sess, permit, engineer, construct and operate the photovoltaic (PV) system, manufactured by Canadian Solar. Ameresco has installed three other PV systems on landfills in Massachusetts.

Braintree’s landfill solar array will serve as a stand-alone power gen-

eration site, offsetting the amount of utility power sourced by BELD from the grid. The installation will include an educational kiosk featuring dis-plays of real-time and historical data from the system.

“The landfill is a highly visible site,” said Mayor Joseph C. Sullivan. “This project will light the way for us as we venture into the world of solar en-ergy.”

Construction on the project will start in the fall, and the unit will begin operation before the end of 2014.

“Ivory Street Solar, LLC, is a coop-erative project that will add envi-ronmentally friendly value to our landfill,” said Municipal Light Board chairman Tom Reynolds during a recent meeting with Vice Chair Tony Agnitti and Secretary Jim Regan.

www.beld.com150 Potter Road

Braintree, MA 02184781.348.BELD (2353)

PAYMENT OPTIONSwww.beld.com

Click “Manage My Account” to pay your electric & broadband

bill with a single payment (credit card or eCheck)

PAYMENT LOCATIONS150 Potter Road

7:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m. Monday – Friday

(7 p.m. on Thursday)

Drop BoxesTop of Potter RoadBeside Town Hall

Braintree Cooperative Bank1010 Washington St.372 Washington St.505 Quincy Avenue

BROADBAND HELP DESKMon–Fri: 8 a.m.–8 p.m.Sat–Sun: 8 a.m.–4 p.m.

COMMISSION MEETINGSPublic meetings are usually

held monthly. Call 781.348.2353 or check www.beld.comto confirm time and date.

HOLIDAY CLOSINGS

Veteran’s DayTuesday, November 11

ThanksgivingNovember 27 & 28

Bright Ideas is printed on 30%post-consumer recycled paper

Community Bulletin BoardBraintree AARP Chapter #4042 Monthly meeting Tues. 10/21, 1:30 p.m. at the D.A.V. Hall on Liberty St. Attorney Patricia Bloom McDonald & Carol “Nurse Carpenter” DeRienzo, R.N. will address issues of elder law & home modifications. New members & guests welcome.

South Congregational Church FairFri. 11/7, German Supper, 5–8 p.m., fair open 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Sat. 11/8, 8 a.m. breakfast, lunch 11:30 a.m.–1 p.m. fair opens at 9 a.m. 1075 Washington Street, 781.843.5155.

Braintree Park Department trips Sun. 11/ 2, Mohegan Sun Day Trip, deluxe mo-tor coach departs Town Hall at 8 a.m., $10 food & $10 bet, must book by 10/28, $29pp.Fri.– Sun., 11/7–9, Christmas Festival at the Seaport World Trade Center, no transporta-tion provided, tickets may be used on any day, $10pp. Handicapped accessible bus may be made available with a 10-day notice. Call 781.794.8901 or visit www.braintreerec.com for information.

Thomas Reynolds Chairman

Anthony AgnittiVice Chair

James Regan SecretaryC

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Braintree Electric Light Department & BELD Broadband...your hometown electric and broadband department

This article is one of a several-part series detailing exactly what your monthly cable TV bill pays for.

Competition is supposed to help prices, but that’s not necessarily the case in the TV world. Retail competition among BELD Broadband, Comcast and Verizon hasn’t helped to keep costs down. Instead, it has actually driven prices up. That’s because there are multiple cable and satellite com-pany buyers for a channel like Comedy Central, but only one seller—Viacom. As a result, Viacom is able to demand huge price increases because if BELD Broad-band doesn’t agree to pay, consumers can switch to another video provider who will. Either way, Viacom gets more.

These are unprecedented times in the TV industry. Already the biggest communica-tions company in the nation, Comcast is trying to acquire all of Time Warner, the second largest. If they succeed, they’ll create an industry behemoth that controls 30% of all United States TV households, about 40% of U.S. Internet households, about a quarter of phone lines and a giant chunk of TV programming, including the NBC TV Network.

At the same time, AT&T is proposing a merger with DirecTV, designed to create an-other giant telecommunications company.

Even more remarkable are the news sto-ries about TV programming. Everywhere you look, cable and satellite companies—the companies that deliver TV services—are at war with the companies that own the TV content. Time Warner is fighting

with CBS, DirecTV with The Weather Chan-nel, Dish versus AMC Networks, Cable One battling with Viacom … the list goes on and on.

That means cable com-panies are starting to push back, and push pretty hard. It’s all about the price of the programs.

For the first time in the history of the industry, cable TV companies are dropping networks owned by large content compa-nies. More than two dozen cable compa-nies representing almost a million homes recently stopped carrying all networks from Viacom, the owner of Nickelodeon, MTV, Comedy Central, Spike and a dozen others. DirecTV dropped all Viacom net-works for a month in 2012, but that was a short-term dispute. This is different. None of these companies is planning to restore the Viacom networks— it’s a permanent termination of those networks. The reason is simple: Viacom demanded such a large increase in monthly fees that the cable companies decided to stop carrying those channels. That is a big deal because it has never happened before.

We hope this serves as a wakeup call to the programming industry to stop paying ridiculous prices for TV rights. That will take time, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Cable TV programming Where does your money go? Part 3: What competition?

Next month: It’s more than just video