The goal of this project was to assist the Town of Nantucket in achieving the criteria and prerequisites necessary to earn SolSmart Silver status. The project was sponsored by the Town of Nantucket’s Energy Office to achieve national recognition for the island’s many past solar and energy achievements and grant the Nantucket community access to program benefits such as free technical assistance. To help the team further understand SolSmart, a variety of stakeholders were interviewed. To initiate the official SolSmart designation process, Nantucket produced a “Solar Statement” committing the town to specific actions to encourage local solar development by improving the solar permitting and installation processes. Working with a SolSmart-appointed technical assistant, an analysis of Nantucket’s public information and resources related to local solar energy development was conducted to identify areas of improvement and to establish a “road map” for achieving designation of various levels (i.e. Bronze through Platinum). Based on this information, documents were created and used to update Nantucket’s online resources related to the solar installation process. Ultimately, the team assisted the town in completing the majority of the remaining necessary tasks to earn SolSmart Silver status and provided recommendations of further tasks necessary to earn Silver designation and higher.

• This report represents the work of one or more WPI undergraduate students submitted to the faculty as evidence of completion of a degree requirement. WPI routinely publishes these reports on its website without editorial or peer review.

Creator

• Fainer, Brendan
• Reid, Alana
• Brower, Daniel
• Phillips, Grace

Subject

• Energy
• Innovation
• Sustainability
• Infrastructure

Publisher

• Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Identifier

• 115114
• E-project-121323-165825

Keyword

• Clean energy
• Solar
• SolSmart
• Nantucket
• Photovoltaic
• energy

Advisor

• Looft, Fred J.
• Jarvis, Susan M.
• Golding, Dominic

Year

• 2023

Center

• Nantucket, Massachusetts Project Center - IQP

Sponsor

• Lauren Sinatra

UN Sustainable Development Goals

• 7 - Affordable and Clean Energy
• 13 - Climate Action

Date created

• 2023-12-13

Resource type

• Interactive Qualifying Project

Source

• E-project-121323-165825

Rights statement

• In Copyright

License

• Creative Commons BY-NC Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International

Last modified

• 2024-02-08