Remembrance
Get trapping
SoBu commemorates Memorial Day
State sets hearings on trapping, coyote hunts
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South Burlington’s Community Newspaper Since 1977
the MAY 25, 2023
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VOLUME 47, NO. 21
New housing project called ‘first of its kind’ Gov. Scott, Sen. Welch attend groundbreaking; 155-home development will be fossil-fuel free COREY MCDONALD STAFF WRITER
PHOTOS BY ANDY DUBACK
Some of Vermont’s top-ranking officials wielded golden-tipped shovels Friday to break ground on a 100 percent fossil fuel-free neighborhood at Hillside East in South Burlington. Below, O’Brien Brothers CEO Evan Langfeldt.
State and city officials gathered at the O’Brien Farm property last week to break ground on a first-of-its-kind housing development project — one that will be completely free of fossil fuels and will essentially function as its own microgrid community. The 155-home project called Hillside East — an extension of the existing Hillside development on the property with 115 units — features fossil fuel-free energy generation, with solar paneling, in-home battery storage back-up technology, and a community microgrid with utility scale batteries built out by Green Mountain Power, providing energy as needed. With both the in-home battery backup, as well as the electricity provider’s grid scale battery facility on the property, the neighborhood will be climate resilient and will “create a virtual power plant lowering energy costs for all GMP customers on peak energy days,” according to a press release published by Green Mountain Power. “Vermonters are facing two overlapping challenges: a dire housing shortage and the ongoing climate crisis,” Vermont Sen. Peter Welch said at the groundbreaking. “This project helps tackle both problems
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head-on, creating more than 150 fossil fuel-free homes using Inflation Reduction Act tax credits. It’s the kind of ambitious project we need more of — in Vermont and across the United States.” The South Burlington-based real estate developer, O’Brien Brothers, had built 115 homes at the property several years ago. But “the big difference here is that it’ll be 100 percent fossil fuel free ... whereas the previous phase we were building highly energy efficient homes, but we did have natural gas to the units,” said Evan Langfeldt, O’Brien Brothers’ president and CEO. “We made an internal decision that we wanted to go in this direction and continue to actually increase the level of energy efficiency that we were already building to,” he said. With the battery technology in place, “not only are you backed up in your home, but you’re also backed up on site,” he said. “So, what this ends up becoming is a micro-grid community. You’re charging your batteries via your solar, you’re backed up with your own unit’s battery storage, and then you’ve got this grid-scale, battery-storage facility that’s backing up See HOUSING PROJECT on page 13
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