Riverhead Town Hall generator plan could slash utility costs

The pitch went beyond backup electricity. The presentation projected that combined average monthly utility spending for Town Hall and the adjacent M&T Bank building, which the town owns and leases, would drop from about $18,019.15 to about $4,237.74. It also said the single unit would generate 882,570 kilowatt-hours a year and could potentially supply nearby town-controlled accounts, including the town-owned ice rink at Veterans Memorial Park.

Council Member Ken Rothwell said he had been working with Walt Jordan of dGEN Energy Partners for several months and framed the project as part of the town’s effort to reduce operating costs and pass savings on to taxpayers. Jordan said the unit could run continuously, unlike a standby-only generator that sits idle until an emergency. That distinction matters for Riverhead, where a generator would not just be about keeping the lights on for a few hours, but about hardening local government operations before the next severe weather event.

The technology itself comes with its own set of questions. Mainspring says its linear generator is fuel-flexible, fully dispatchable, uses no water and produces near-zero NOx. The company says the system directly converts motion into electricity using two moving parts, and that it can run on natural gas, renewable natural gas, biogas, propane and hydrogen. That makes the proposal part resilience project, part energy policy experiment and part emissions test for a town trying to weigh cleaner onsite power against the realities of cost and reliability.