For town planners, select boards and assessors
A resilience asset for the town, paid for by someone else.
GridLynQ builds battery hubs at marinas, boat yards and campgrounds so vehicles and vessels can send power back to the grid. The same hub can carry a shelter, a lift station or a harbor operations building through an outage. This page lays out what the town gets, what we commit to in writing, and why a multi-year property tax incentive usually pays for itself.
The avoided-cost case
Start with what the town would otherwise have to pay for.
The fair way to value a resilience hub is to ask what the same protection costs when the town buys it directly. Every line below is something a municipality already budgets for, borrows for, or absorbs when the power goes out.
Emergency generators
Backup power for a shelter, warming center or emergency operations center.
A town buys the generator, pays for the pad and transfer switch, then carries fuel, testing and service contracts for its whole life. A hub block already sitting on the waterfront can carry that load instead.
Critical facility ride-through
Keeping lift stations, water treatment, harbor operations and communications up.
Each site is usually backed up on its own, or not at all. A hub with contracted emergency dispatch covers several of them from one asset.
Local business losses
Revenue that leaves town during an outage.
Marinas, restaurants and lodging lose sales by the hour and the town loses the meals, lodging and sales tax attached to them. Hours of coverage translate directly into retained local revenue.
Deferred grid upgrades
Distribution work the utility would otherwise build and bill.
Load growth on a summer peak pushes feeder and substation upgrades that show up later in everyone's rates. Storage that shaves that peak can push the upgrade out or shrink it.
How we put numbers on it
We do not bring you our figures and ask you to accept them. We build the analysis from the town's own inputs: your generator quotes and fuel contracts, your outage history, your assessor's valuation practice and your utility's posted rates. The result is a ten-year table your finance director can check line by line, not a marketing number.
The community benefit agreement
Enforceable commitments, not promises.
An incentive should buy the town something specific. These are the terms we are prepared to sign, and every one of them is written so the town can enforce it.
Emergency power for town facilities
A named list of municipal buildings gets priority backup during a declared emergency, at no cost to the town. The list is written into the agreement, not left to good intentions.
Public shelter and charging capacity
Reserved capacity for a designated shelter, plus a public charging tier residents can use during an event so people can keep phones and medical equipment running.
Local hiring and training
Construction and ongoing service work is bid locally first, with apprenticeship slots on the install so the skills stay in town.
Public annual report
One report each year to the select board or council: hours dispatched, emergency support delivered, jobs supported and payments made. Plain numbers, publicly filed.
Clawback if we miss
If the commitments are not met, the incentive reverses and the abated amount becomes due. The town keeps the leverage for the entire term.
No municipal capital, no municipal risk
GridLynQ funds, builds, insures, operates and decommissions the asset. The town does not own equipment, sign a lease or take on operating cost.
The fiscal picture
Why the tax roll ends up ahead.
A tax incentive is easiest to approve when the arithmetic is shown plainly. It runs in three phases.
- 1
Today
The value does not exist yet
The parcel is assessed as it stands. There is no hub, so there is no incremental tax revenue for the town to give up.
- 2
Years 1 to N
Abated period
The improvement is assessed and a negotiated share is abated for the agreed term. The town collects permit fees, equipment sales tax where it applies, and the base assessment it already had — and starts receiving resilience service from day one.
- 3
Year N+1 onward
Full roll-on
The abatement steps off and the full improved assessment lands on the tax roll for the remaining twenty-plus year asset life. Host property occupancy and assessed value typically rise as well.
The resilience service starts in year one. The revenue arrives later but keeps coming for the rest of the asset life. That gap is the entire trade, and it is why the deal works for a town willing to think past a single budget cycle.
What residents get
Lead the electric boating revolution — and pay the town a dividend for it.
Resilience is the reason the hub gets built. The reason residents back it is what changes on the water: a quieter harbor, cleaner air and water at the town's front door, and a waterfront positioned for the boats people are already buying. None of it costs the town capital, and all of it compounds.
First harbor on the electric boating wave
Every major builder now ships an electric or hybrid model, and the boats need shore power that can charge fast without melting a 1970s dock feeder. A town that has the hub already in the water becomes the port those owners plan their season around — and the one the next generation of boaters keeps coming back to.
A quieter waterfront for the people who live on it
Electric propulsion removes the idling, the throttle noise on the no-wake run and the generator drone at the slip. Residents on the harbor and families on the town beach get their evenings back, and the pressure on noise complaints and enforcement drops with it.
Cleaner water and cleaner air at the town's front door
No fuel spills at the pump, no sheen off two-stroke exhaust, no diesel plume over the launch ramp on a July Saturday. Shellfish beds, swimming areas and the town's own air quality all sit downstream of what happens at the dock.
Waterfront property and business values that follow
Harbors known for clean, quiet, modern facilities hold slip demand and waterfront value through cycles. That shows up in the grand list for every abutter, not just the host site — a dividend paid to residents who never set foot on the dock.
Dividends that reach residents directly
Lease payments and tax revenue land in the general fund, a public charging tier is priced for residents, and slip and launch fees stay stable because the town is not funding an electrical rebuild out of its own capital plan.
A story the town can lead with
Grant reviewers, state resilience programs and private berthing partners all look for towns that moved first. Being early makes the next round of funding and the next partner materially easier to land.
The investment case, in one line for the warrant article.
The town contributes a tax position on privately funded equipment. In return it gets contracted emergency power for its critical buildings, a modernized waterfront ready for electric vessels, measurably quieter and cleaner harbor operations, and a growing line on the grand list that outlives the abatement. The dividend is paid in avoided cost, in revenue, and in the quality of the harbor residents actually use.
Tell us what residents think
Support, questions or concerns about the waterfront, the tax terms or emergency power — leave a comment and it goes into the record for the town's review.
Draft warrant-article language
Community Benefit Agreement term sheet, warrant-article language, host-site agreement outline and the tax-vehicle structures we use with towns.
- Formal motion text sized to your meeting
- Conditions of authorization, including clawback
- An investment summary residents can read
Questions residents ask
What this costs, what it sounds like, what it does to the water.
The answers a neighbor wants before a town meeting vote — written to be read aloud at the microphone, not buried in an appendix.
- What does this cost the town — and me, as a taxpayer?
- Nothing in capital, nothing in debt, nothing in operating cost. The hub is privately funded, privately built, privately owned and privately maintained. The only thing the town contributes is a tax position: a share of the property tax on the new equipment is abated for a set number of years, after which the full assessment is taxed. Because the equipment did not exist on the roll before, the town is not giving up revenue it already collects — it is phasing in revenue it never had, in exchange for services it would otherwise have to buy.
- Will my property taxes go up to pay for it?
- No. There is no appropriation, no borrowing and no override attached to the host agreement. The article authorizes a lease and a tax agreement, not a spending item. Over time the added value on the grand list works the other way: more taxable value spread across the same services tends to relieve pressure on the residential rate rather than add to it.
- Is it loud? What will it sound like from my house?
- A battery hub has no engine and no exhaust. The only moving parts are cooling fans and inverters, and the enclosures are specified to meet the town's own noise bylaw at the property line — typically in the range of ordinary background noise a short distance away, and quieter than the diesel generators it replaces, which run at full throttle for hours during exactly the events people notice. The net effect on the waterfront is less noise, not more: electric boats remove idling at the slip, throttle noise on the no-wake run and generator drone overnight.
- What about the water — spills, runoff, or something going into the harbor?
- There is no fuel on site, so there is nothing to spill, no sheen off the ramp and no fuel-handling risk at the dock. Enclosures are sealed and sited above flood elevation with containment and stormwater controls reviewed in the normal permitting process. Every gallon of gasoline or diesel displaced by electric propulsion and shore power is a gallon that is no longer being pumped, stored, or spilled next to shellfish beds and swimming areas.
- Is a battery installation safe near homes and boats?
- The systems are built to current fire-safety standards for stationary storage, with cell-level monitoring, thermal management, automatic isolation and physical spacing between units. Before anything is energized the local fire department reviews the plan, receives an emergency response procedure specific to the site, and gets training on it. Siting, setbacks and access are settled in public permitting, not after the fact.
- What happens in an outage — does my neighborhood actually see anything?
- Yes, and it is written into the agreement rather than promised verbally. A named list of critical facilities — typically the shelter, the emergency operations center, water and wastewater pumping, and harbor operations — is carried by the hub at no charge to the town. Residents get reserved shelter capacity during declared events and a public charging tier priced for the town, not for tourists.
- Who is accountable if the company does not deliver?
- The commitments are contract terms with a clawback: if emergency power, resident access, local hiring or reporting obligations are missed, the abated tax becomes immediately due and the agreement can be terminated. The operator also files one public annual report to the select board covering dispatch hours, emergency support delivered, jobs and payments — read in open session, so residents can check the record against the promise.
- What if the company sells, or walks away in ten years?
- The host agreement binds successors and assigns, so the obligations travel with the asset rather than with the owner. Decommissioning and site restoration are secured up front — a bond or equivalent financial assurance sized to remove the equipment and return the site — so the town is never left holding a stranded installation or a cleanup bill.
- Why should the town go first instead of waiting to see how it goes elsewhere?
- The scarce input is grid capacity and a suitable waterfront site, and both get allocated to the towns that move. Being early also carries weight with grant reviewers, state resilience programs and private berthing partners, which makes the next round of funding and the next partner materially easier to land. Waiting does not lower the risk — it hands the position to the next harbor over.
Your town's fiscal analysis
We prepare a town-specific fiscal analysis — showing the tax roll impact, avoided costs and net effect for your community — after a short review with your team.
- Prepared for your specific parcel and assessment
- Delivered after our team reviews your request
The warrant article, in plain language
Every answer below is derived directly from the article a town would post — the motion, its conditions, the fiscal note and the clawback — rewritten the way you'd explain it to a neighbor.
Summary of draft article language for public discussion — not legal advice. The posted warrant governs.
Run the numbers
10-year abatement and town ROI model.
Set your own mill rate, assessment ratio and abatement term. The model shows assessed value added, tax abated in each year, tax collected once the abatement steps off, and the year the town turns net positive.
Model your town's return
Block pricing, install and interconnection cost build-up, operating assumptions and the payback math behind a deployment.
- Assessed value and tax revenue over ten years
- PILOT or abatement structures and break-even year
- Avoided emergency-generation and outage cost
- A one-page summary you can hand to the board
Planning board and avoided-cost materials
Segment one-pagers, planning board packet, avoided-cost analysis and the presentation materials we bring to a board or council decision.
- Public-good services delivered and the assumptions behind the model
- Year-by-year fiscal impact and the net effect after abatement
- What GridLynQ commits to in writing
Holding us to it
Measurable public benefit, defined before anything is signed.
An incentive should be tied to something a town can count. These are the metrics we put in the benefit agreement, how each one is measured, and the target the hub is held to. Every definition below is written so a third party can verify it from meter and utility records rather than from our word.
No hub is operating yet, so there are no published results to show. These targets are the measurement standard we are willing to be held to once a site is energized.
Dispatch hours
Hours in the year the hub discharged to serve load or the grid, summed across the site.
- How it is measured
- Metered at the point of interconnection by the utility revenue meter; hub SCADA logs are reconciled against it monthly.
- Annual target
- ≥ 600 hours per block per year
Facilities supported
Named town-designated facilities (shelters, water and wastewater, public safety, harbor operations) electrically able to be carried by the hub under the benefit agreement.
- How it is measured
- Counted from the executed facility list; each is proved once a year in a scheduled islanding test witnessed by town staff.
- Annual target
- 100% of the agreed facility list proven annually
Outage-hours covered
Facility-hours of grid outage during which the hub actually carried the facility — one facility carried for four hours is four outage-hours covered.
- How it is measured
- Derived from utility outage records intersected with hub discharge logs; both timestamps are published in the report appendix.
- Annual target
- ≥ 95% of eligible outage-hours during declared events
Public charging delivered
kWh dispensed at the public-access charging positions the benefit agreement requires the site to keep open.
- How it is measured
- Charger session records, exported quarterly and rolled into the annual filing.
- Annual target
- Positions available ≥ 97% of hours
Avoided municipal cost
Fuel, rental generation and spoilage the town did not incur because facilities stayed energized, priced at the rates in the avoided-cost schedule.
- How it is measured
- Outage-hours covered multiplied by the per-facility avoided-cost rate agreed at signing and reviewed every three years.
- Annual target
- Reported annually, no floor — it varies with weather
Availability
Share of the year the hub was capable of dispatching at rated power, excluding scheduled maintenance windows disclosed in advance.
- How it is measured
- State-of-health and fault logs, audited against the maintenance calendar.
- Annual target
- ≥ 97% availability
The annual performance report the town receives.
Same format every year, so year three can be laid next to year one without reinterpretation. Six sections, filed within 90 days of the close of the reporting year and published where residents can read it.
- 1
Performance summary
One page: each metric above with the year's actual, the agreed target, prior-year actual and a met / missed flag. This is the page the select board reads.
- 2
Event log
Every grid outage and declared emergency in the reporting year — start and end timestamps, facilities carried, hours delivered, and any facility the hub could not carry with the reason why.
- 3
Community benefit compliance
Line-by-line status of each commitment in the benefit agreement: emergency priority, public charging uptime, local hiring and apprenticeship hours, and community meeting attendance.
- 4
Fiscal statement
Assessed value on the roll, tax abated, tax and fees collected, and cumulative town benefit to date against the ten-year model filed at approval — same line items, so the assessor can compare directly.
- 5
Methodology and raw data appendix
Meter data, outage records and calculation method for every figure, so a third party can reproduce the numbers without asking us for anything.
- 6
Filing and remedy
Delivered to the town within 90 days of year end and posted publicly. Two consecutive years missing a target triggers a written cure plan; a third year lets the town reduce the incentive on the schedule written into the agreement.
We will draft the metric schedule against your own facility list and outage history before you take it to the board, so the targets are argued once and then simply reported on.
Request the metric scheduleGetting it approved
Four vehicles towns commonly use.
Which one fits depends on your state's enabling statute and your own practice. Your town counsel makes that call; we will prepare the packet for whichever route you choose.
PILOT agreement
A negotiated payment in lieu of taxes that fixes a predictable annual figure for both sides, usually escalating over the term.
State storage exemption
Many states already exempt energy storage or renewable equipment from real property assessment. Confirm this first — the incentive may largely exist in statute already.
Community benefit agreement
The commitments above, attached as a condition of site plan approval so they are enforceable through the permit, not only through the tax deal.
TIF or resilience district
Where a town wants the incremental value directed at a specific waterfront or resilience program rather than the general fund.
Evidence checklist for each vehicle.
What the proposal has to show, who produces it, and which body signs off. Work down the column for the route your counsel picks — a CBA runs alongside whichever tax vehicle you choose.
PILOT agreement
The town wants a predictable annual figure and the state permits negotiated payments in lieu of taxes for energy or industrial property.
- Turnkey capital cost by block, itemized for the assessorGridLynQ provides
- Ten-year assessed value and depreciation scheduleGridLynQ provides
- Proposed annual PILOT payment and escalatorGridLynQ provides
- Comparable assessments for storage or utility property in the districtTown provides
- Confirmation the enabling statute allows a PILOT for this class of propertyTown provides
Decided by
Select board or council vote, on the assessor's recommendation, with town counsel drafting.
State storage or renewable exemption
Your state already exempts qualifying storage equipment from real property assessment. Check this before negotiating anything — the incentive may exist in statute.
- Equipment list with model numbers, ratings and nameplate documentationGridLynQ provides
- Certification the system meets the statutory definition of qualifying storageGridLynQ provides
- Interconnection agreement or application evidencing grid serviceGridLynQ provides
- Statutory citation and whether local acceptance has been adoptedTown provides
- Filing deadline and exemption application formTown provides
Decided by
Assessor determination, sometimes with a local acceptance vote of the statute.
TIF or resilience district
The town wants the incremental value directed at a specific waterfront, resilience or infrastructure program rather than the general fund.
- Base value and projected incremental value over the district termGridLynQ provides
- Construction schedule tying increment to years on the rollGridLynQ provides
- Local hiring and spend estimates for the development programGridLynQ provides
- District boundary map and current base assessed valueTown provides
- Development program and financial plan in the state's required formatTown provides
Decided by
Town meeting or council adopting the district and development program, plus state review in many states.
Community benefit agreement
Always — a CBA runs alongside whichever tax vehicle is used, and makes the resilience commitments enforceable through site plan approval rather than only through the tax deal.
- Metric schedule with definitions, measurement method and targetsGridLynQ provides
- Annual performance report format and filing deadlineGridLynQ provides
- Cure plan and incentive step-down terms for missed targetsGridLynQ provides
- Designated critical facility list to be carried in an emergencyTown provides
- Outage history and hazard mitigation plan prioritiesTown provides
- Emergency management contact and activation protocolTown provides
Decided by
Planning board, attached as a condition of site plan or special permit approval.
Filled circles are items we prepare and hand you in board-packet format. Open circles are records the town already holds — assessor comparables, outage history, the critical facility list — that we need before the analysis is defensible.
Which legal vehicle fits your town
Community Benefit Agreement term sheet, warrant-article language, host-site agreement outline and the tax-vehicle structures we use with towns.
- Ranked recommendation across PILOT, exemption, TIF and CBA
- Blockers and enabling authority for each route
- Next steps for counsel and the assessor
Community Benefit Agreement term sheet
Community Benefit Agreement term sheet, warrant-article language, host-site agreement outline and the tax-vehicle structures we use with towns.
- Clause-level term sheet drafted from the evidence checklist
- Attachable schedules and execution blocks
- A printable evidence checklist for counsel
Grant support alongside it
Harbor Current Foundation works with us on the nonprofit side of waterfront resilience and can help pursue grant matches for community resilience hubs. That often reduces how large an incentive the town needs to offer in the first place.
Read about the foundation partnershipSources and citations
Where every number on this page comes from.
Nothing in the avoided-cost case rests on a GridLynQ estimate alone. Each claim below is tied to a public source your own staff or consultant can pull independently. Where a figure is site-specific, we say so and file the underlying data in the methodology appendix of the annual report.
- [01]
Dollar value of an outage hour for a municipal or commercial facility
Interruption Cost Estimate (ICE) Calculator — Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory / U.S. Department of Energy
We run your town's customer class, load and historical interruption duration through ICE rather than quoting a national average. The output is the avoided-cost figure in the outage section.
View source - [02]
Outage frequency and duration baseline (SAIDI / SAIFI) for your utility
Annual Electric Power Industry Report, Form EIA-861 — U.S. Energy Information Administration
Utility-reported reliability indices, with and without major event days. We use your serving utility's filed numbers, not ours.
View source - [03]
Retail and wholesale electricity price assumptions behind arbitrage and bill savings
Electric Power Monthly and ISO settlement data — U.S. Energy Information Administration / regional ISO
State-level retail rates set the bill-savings side; day-ahead and real-time locational prices set the arbitrage side.
View source - [04]
Battery hub capital cost, degradation and O&M assumptions
Utility-Scale Battery Storage Cost Benchmark / Annual Technology Baseline — National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Cross-checked against our own vendor quotes for prefabricated battery blocks. Where our quote differs from the benchmark, we show both.
View source - [05]
Emergency generator, shelter and fuel cost the town avoids
Public Assistance Program and Policy Guide, plus published FEMA cost codes — Federal Emergency Management Agency
Used for generator, transfer switch, pad and fuel-cycle costs so the avoided-cost line matches what the town would actually be reimbursed or billed.
View source - [06]
Standby power installation and testing requirements referenced in the checklist
NFPA 110, Standard for Emergency and Standby Power Systems — National Fire Protection Association
Defines the classification, testing and maintenance duties a town would otherwise carry on its own generator fleet.
View source - [07]
Interconnection process, timeline and study requirements
IEEE 1547 and your state's small generator interconnection procedures — IEEE / state public utility commission
IEEE 1547 sets the technical interconnection standard; the state tariff sets screens, study fees and timelines used in the permitting checklist.
View source - [08]
Federal investment tax credit assumed in the capital stack
Clean Electricity Investment Credit, Internal Revenue Code section 48E — Internal Revenue Service
Applied to the developer side only. The town's fiscal model does not depend on the credit; we show the tax roll with and without it.
View source - [09]
PILOT, tax exemption and TIF authority cited in the legal vehicle checklist
State enabling statutes and local assessing practice — State legislature / municipal assessor
Statutory citations are jurisdiction-specific. We supply the exact chapter and section for your state in the board packet rather than a generic reference.
View source
Statutory references for PILOT, exemption and TIF authority are jurisdiction-specific. The board packet we prepare for your town cites the exact chapter and section of your state's enabling law rather than a generic reference.
Glossary
Plain-language definitions.
Written for a board packet, not an engineering review. Every term used in the fiscal model, the benefit agreement and the permitting checklist appears here.
- V2G (vehicle-to-grid)
- A vehicle or vessel battery that can send power back out, not just take it in. Parked fleets become dispatchable capacity when the grid or a local facility needs it.
- Hub block
- One prefabricated battery block with its own inverters and controls. Hubs are built in whole blocks, so capacity grows in steps rather than continuously.
- Avoided cost
- Money the town does not have to spend because the hub exists — a generator not purchased, fuel not bought, a shelter that stays open. It is a budget line the town keeps, not a payment it receives.
- Outage-hours covered
- Facility hours the hub actually carried during a real outage. Two buildings kept up for three hours is six outage-hours covered.
- Dispatch hours
- Hours the hub discharged on command in a year, for grid services or for a facility. It is the working measure of whether the asset is used or idle.
- SAIDI / SAIFI
- Standard reliability measures your utility already files: how many minutes the average customer is out per year (SAIDI) and how many times (SAIFI). They set the outage baseline for the model.
- PILOT (payment in lieu of taxes)
- A negotiated fixed payment that replaces the normal property tax bill for a set number of years. It gives the town a predictable number and the project a predictable cost.
- Tax abatement
- A temporary reduction of property tax on the new value only. The town keeps collecting on the land and existing improvements throughout.
- TIF (tax increment financing)
- A district where the new tax revenue created by a project pays for infrastructure inside that district for a fixed term, then flows to the general fund.
- CBA (community benefit agreement)
- A binding contract listing what the project owes the community — emergency priority, public charging, local hiring — with remedies if a commitment is missed.
- Interconnection
- The utility's approval and physical connection allowing the hub to export power. It is a separate process from local permitting and usually the long pole in the schedule.
- Energy arbitrage
- Charging when power is cheap and discharging when it is expensive. It is the largest revenue line for the hub and does not depend on the town.
- Islanding
- Running a facility or microgrid on the hub alone while the utility grid is down, safely disconnected so line crews are not endangered.
- Assessed value
- The value the assessor places on the hub for tax purposes, typically a ratio of the equipment's depreciated cost. It is what an abatement or PILOT is applied against.
Questions we get from planning boards
Straight answers.
- Is the town giving up revenue it collects today?
- No. The abatement applies only to new assessed value created by the hub. Without the project that value does not exist, so the base tax roll is unchanged either way.
- What does the town have to do?
- Approve the site plan and the incentive vehicle, and name the facilities it wants covered during emergencies. There is no municipal capital, procurement or staffing requirement.
- Who is liable if something goes wrong?
- GridLynQ. The company owns, insures and operates the asset for its full life and carries decommissioning obligations, all documented before the agreement is signed.
- How long is a typical term?
- Incentive terms are usually negotiated across the early years of the asset life, sized so the town's fiscal analysis shows the deal turning net positive before the term ends. The exact structure depends on your state's enabling statute and your assessor's practice.
- What happens after an emergency?
- The hub reports what it delivered — which facilities were carried, for how many hours — and that goes into the annual public report. The town has a documented record for its own hazard mitigation planning and grant applications.
Bring this to your planning board
Tell us the property, the facilities you would want covered in an emergency, and your outage history. We come back with the avoided-cost analysis, a draft community benefit agreement and a ten-year tax roll model formatted for a board packet.
Get started
Find out what V2G is worth at your property
Marinas, boat yards, and campgrounds: take the 2-minute eligibility quiz and get a tailored V2G plan with equipment, revenue, and interconnection steps.
No GridLynQ block is energized yet. Every figure shown is a modelled profile of a candidate site's conditions — speculative, not measured, and not a quote or a guarantee of results.