FREEPORT – Freeport went out to bid last week on behalf of at least 125 Freeport homeowners who are interested in acquiring solar panels to provide electricity to their homes.

Planner Donna Larson said that the Solarize Freeport program will not cost the town money. The Town Council has approved her effort in that regard, Larson said.

“It’s really exciting to imagine this,” said Gretchen Giumarro, who lives with her family in a salt box-style home on Richards Lane and is interested in the plan.

Companies that install solar panels will submit bids, Larson said. People interested in signing up should do so by April, she said.

“The town does the organizing,” Larson said. “That’s the biggest contribution of bringing the price down. In this case, we’re doing the outreach. There’s no money appropriated for this. There’s just my time.”

Once a winning bid is determined, Larson said, the company will conduct community meetings with the interested homeowners.

“From that point on, they work with the installer and the town steps aside,” she said. “The point is to help people save money. There are federal tax credits set to expire in 2016.”

Larson said that solar energy is the choice for this project “because it’s renewable, has widespread use (unlike natural gas that is only available in more dense areas), electricity rates will go up starting in March, and this is a way to help residents.”

This isn’t the first time the town has made an effort to help residents with their energy costs.

“We used to maintain a list of residents interested in a bulk purchase of oil,” she said. “The town would do the bidding on behalf of our buildings but we would also ask for residential prices,” Larson said. “We don’t do that anymore because none of our big buildings use oil since our conversions to natural gas.”

Larson said she got wind of the concept for Solarize Freeport when she saw in a newsletter that ReVision Energy was doing a similar project in New Hampshire. ReVision, a renewable energy contracting company, installed the panels on the Freeport Community Library.

Larson conducted research and learned of Vital Communities, a nonprofit that, among its other projects, works to find alternative energy sources in New Hampshire and Vermont.

“I called the executive director there and she was very helpful,” Larson said. “They put projects like this out to bid. This is the same thing that we’re going to do. We’re modeling it after theirs, except theirs is a group of communities and ours is Freeport only.”

Vital Communities is a regional nonprofit based in White River Junction, Vt. The Vital Communities Energy Program works with businesses, institutions, municipalities and citizens to leverage existing work and seed alternative energy sources.

Sarah Simonds, who provided the models for Larson, said the typical price of installing a home solar system for a home using 5 kilowatts of electricity is $20,000. The panels immediately eliminate electrical costs, and pay for themselves in about eight to 10 years, she said.

“You’re completely cutting out your electrical bill,” Simonds said. “The panels are guaranteed for 25 years. This is a fairly long-term arrangement.”

Unlike Freeport, which is going it alone, Vital Communities arranged solar power for residents of 69 towns in the Upper Valley region of New Hampshire and Vermont.

“Otherwise, Freeport’s using the model that we created,” Simonds said. “I gave (Larson) things that she didn’t have to create. The solar industry is great, because they can offer the step of home inspecting for free.”

Larson said she had found 28 installers within 100 miles of Freeport, and the bid invitations have gone out to all of them.

Giumarro said she is hoping many people sign onto Solarize Freeport, to lower the price for everyone. Giumarro got the idea, as many in town did, when Larson set up an informational table at Freeport High School during the Nov. 4 elections.

“Getting the right number of people will get us some leverage on the price of the solar panels,” Giumarro said. “We’re just waiting to hear the price. I could power an electric car off my roof.”

Though solar panels are built primarily as an alternative source of electricity, Giamurro is looking to derive heat from them, as well.

“We’re putting in heat pumps, so the solar panels could be heat sources,” she said. “We’d save on electricity and on oil.”

Giumarro said that her roof is nicely positioned to effectively hold solar panels. For one thing, it’s new, so she would not need to take them down in five or 10 years to replace an old roof.

“The size of the roof matters, too,” she said. “We have a south-facing roof with no trees and we just put a new roof on. So we’re in a prime position to do it.”