Submitted Photo Dunkirk Mayor Kate Wdowiasz stands with Brad Tito, director of community energy at PowerMarket, in front of City Hall.

A representative of a state-backed solar energy program touted it at a last week’s Dunkirk Common Council meeting.

Brad Tito, director of community energy at PowerMarket, spoke about the Dunkirk Community Solar Campaign.

He said it could help residents save up to 10% on energy bills. “By achieving 160 signups, Dunkirk will qualify for a total of $52,500 in state grants that the city can use for city projects,” he said. “Those are match-free grants.”

Residents who connect would be tapping into Community Solar’s power generation site in Troy. Tito said 86 households in Dunkirk have already signed up.

Tito said city residents will soon get a letter from Mayor Kate Wdowiasz encouraging them to sign up.

“It doesn’t matter if you rent or you own (to sign up, and) there’s no solar panels on your roof or property,” he said. “You just save money on your National Grid bill, and help the city earn this valuable grant money.”

Councilperson Nancy Nichols asked him to “explain how we’re saving money.”

Tito’s response: “Community Solar has been around in New York since about 2016. Thousands of people — in fact, I believe it’s more than 300,000 utility accounts in New York are already connected, including the city of Dunkirk’s utility accounts.

“The way that it saves is, you get these credits applied to your bill based on the amount of sunshine being generated at the solar farm (in Troy). Those credits translate into savings, and it’s an itemized line on your bill — it’s a negative number, it’ll vary from month to month, but you’ll never pay more. It’s a New York State-regulated initiative.”

Tito added a bit later, “We’re constantly in communication with National Grid to make sure these credits are applied properly on people’s bills. … The utility gets paid to do this, 1% of the value of these credits actually goes to National Grid to administer this program.”

Wdowiasz then touted the program in her mayoral report. It was the sole subject of the report.

“I look forward to having the community sign up and take advantage of these credits,” she said. “I know that several households have already benefited from the significant savings that they’ve received. As everybody’s seen in their last utility bills, the bills have gone up significantly — so please sign up and take advantage of this.”

Shortly after the Common Council meeting, City Hall continued its Community Solar push by sending a press release about it to the OBSERVER. It contained essentially the same information that Tito went over.