NEWPORT — The top brass of the Vermont Electric Cooperative (VEC) brought their road show to Newport Wednesday night, December 10. Although an explanation of the proposed 9.24 percent rate hike was intended to be the main event, the possibility of a wind generating project on Lowell Mountain was what really captured the attention of the small audience.
David Halquist, VEC’s chief executive officer, was joined by chief operating officer Jeffery Wright and Randy Pratt, manager of governmental relations, as he brought a slide show that had already been seen by cooperative members around VEC’s large territory.
While his audience was polite and attentive as he explained the rate hike and told how the cooperative has moved to address past service problems, it only came to life when the subject turned to wind.
Mr. Halquist said he recently visited Don and Shirley Nelson’s home in Albany to discuss what part VEC may play in the creation of a proposed wind power project on Lowell Mountain. The Nelsons are strong opponents of the plan
“Now I’m a little interested in wind. How long has that company been known as Kingdom Community Wind?” Mr. Nelson asked.
Mr. Halquist said the change is in more than the name. Trip Wileman, who owns 1,800 acres on which he hopes to site 17 wind towers, has severed ties with the companies he hoped would help finance the projects and formed a new corporation about three months ago, he said.
He said the property has “very favorable wind data,” but added the “jury is out on whether wind is economically feasible.”
Mr. Halquist said the question of whether people who live within sight of the mountain want to live with the 410-foot-tall towers matters to the cooperative. “We do value our landscape. We put our money where our mouth is,” he said.
Mr. Pratt pointed out that the final decision on any wind project rests with the state Public Service Board (PSB), which must issue a certificate of public good for any such project to move forward.
Regardless of that reality, Mr. Halquist said, the cooperative will openly consider the question of whether to back the wind project.
“We won’t hide behind the regulatory process,” he said.
On the other hand, the PSB is likely to lean on the cooperative in its decision on whether to grant the certificate of public good, Mr. Halquist said. If VEC opposes the project, it is very likely the board will prevent its construction, he said. Likewise Green Mountain Power is also relying on the cooperative to determine whether people in the area want the project to go forward, he said.
Mr. Halquist quoted figures from a state Department of Energy study that said 83 percent of Vermonters approve of wind power projects, even if they were built within their line of sight. He suggested that cooperative members may get to vote on the issue at the VEC annual meeting in May. The final decision, though, will be left to the cooperative’s board of directors, he said.
Speaking by telephone Tuesday, Mr. Halquist clarified his position. A vote would only be held if a wind project was deemed to make business sense, he said. If the economics aren’t right, there would be no point in asking for a member decision, he added.
At the meeting, Mr. Halquist explained the 9.24 percent rate hike sought by VEC is meant only to cover the increased cost of power transmission. Power costs are stable because the cooperative still has long-term supply contracts, Mr. Halquist said.
Transmission costs, though, have increased by 30 percent. This is because Vermont is required to be part of a New England-wide power pool and share in the cost of transmission projects throughout the region. While this may appear to be a problem, the arrangement enables Vermont to build projects that would be beyond a small state’s ability to fund. Once the projects are up and running, they produce revenues and the expense diminishes, Mr. Halquist said.
As a result, the cooperative is asking the PSB to permit an adjustment mechanism to be built into the rate. With this quarterly adjustment clause, rates could rise or fall by as much half a cent per kilowatt hour. That would amount to about $3 on an average member’s bill, Mr. Pratt said.
The advantage to the cooperative is that it allows it to handle transmission cost increases without the time and expense of a new rate case, Mr. Halquist said. A rate case costs the cooperative about $300,000, he said.
The advantage for VEC members is that rates can fall automatically as transmission costs drop, Mr. Halquist said.
Mr. Wright, who is in charge of the cooperative’s daily operations, explained the efforts VEC is making to improve service reliability. Among them he cited a daily conference call during which members of the cooperative’s maintenance staff rehash the causes of outages. Mr. Wright said the number of outages of unknown origin has dropped sharply since the conference calls were started.
He said the cooperative will increase its brush clearing efforts. Five years ago the cooperative spent $1-million a year on its line clearing efforts. This put the cooperative on a 21-year cycle for clearing transmission lines, he said. Now it plans to move to a five-year cycle for the smaller lines and an eight-to-ten-year cycle for larger distribution lines.
That will mean using herbicides again, Mr. Wright said. The herbicides in current use are targeted to kill only hardwoods, he said. The cooperative uses them at a rate of about a pint an acre, which causes less pollution than the oil spilled from chainsaws, Mr. Wright said.
Nevertheless landowners will be notified if herbicides are scheduled to be used on their properties, he said. They will always have the option of refusing permission for their use, Mr. Wright said.
With its experience of many outages the cooperative has often relied on help from neighboring utilities during major storms. The storm that hit Vermont Friday, December 12, largely spared the cooperative’s service area. As a result all but six of VEC’s 30 line workers were dispatched to southern Vermont to help restore service to victims of the storm.
“We are so happy to be able to help out,” Mr. Halquist said Tuesday.
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