Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: We're live. Alright, everybody. We're live. Welcome, everybody, to House Energy and Digital Infrastructure. It is Friday, January 23, and we are here with Burlington Electric Department to talk about extending the energy efficiency modernization act. So we'll quickly introduce ourselves. I have a quick committee housekeeping thing, and then we'll turn it over to you. So I'm Rick Kathleen James from Manchester.

[R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Scott Campbell from Saint Johnsbury. Chris Morrow, Windham, Windsor Bennington. Michael Southworth, Caledonia too. Christopher Howland, Rowland 4.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: Dara Torre, Washington too. Great. And in the room.

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: Haley Perry, the craftsman group. Jonathan Wolfe from Cooper and Piper on behalf of Burlington Electric.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: Amber Whitmer, Burlington Electric. Great. Super. Thank you all for being here. Just real quick so folks know on h five twenty seven, our cell tower siding bill, After our committee conversation yesterday, I thought that the most useful next step to try to keep us moving forward would be to have an amendment for us to bounce off of. So instead of just continuing to float around with all the public comments and all the information we're receiving, can have some language to look at. So I asked R. Sibilia and Campbell to sit with Ellen to try to distill everything we've heard and come up with a proposed amendment, and then we'll have something concrete to look at and focus our next steps.

[R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Would that be amendments from the committee or bill sponsor and the co chair?

[Christopher Howland (Member, Rutland-4)]: It's a

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: great house rules question. I don't know. Okay. Language for us to look at, but we can be like, yeah, this is what we had in mind. This isn't what I had in mind. What about this? What about that? And then if

[R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Well, if we vote on the committee, then it

[Christopher Morrow (Member)]: would be

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: Then it would be

[Christopher Morrow (Member)]: become part of the bill.

[R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Committee. And then if if it's if if we present it on the floor, it would be from up from you know, whoever presents it on the floor would Okay. That was the the name associated with it. Alright. Thank you. Bye.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: Yeah. It's it's not a set in stone thing. I just feel like we need to have something to look at. So okay. On we go. Sorry, Darren. That's right. For the record.

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: So I'm Darren Springer, general manager with Burlington Electric, and I think I'm gonna try to share my screen here.

[Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: Let's see if that

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: works. Excellent. So just I'm gonna talk a little briefly about Burlington Electric. I know we've been here with you before. I'm gonna spend a moment on the next, on the third slide talking about our, fiscal health because I know you're taking testimony from all the different utilities about that. So we'll give you some key points about our fiscal situations, and then we will jump into the energy efficiency modernization act and how it potentially impacts us going forward. So Burlington Electric, we are the largest municipal electric utility in the state, third largest utility overall, well over a 100 years old now. We operate both as a distribution utility, but also uniquely as an energy efficiency utility. So we serve our customers in Burlington with energy efficiency services the way that Efficiency Vermont does for the rest of the state, and we overlap quite a bit with Vermont Gas who has its own energy efficiency program. And most of our customers, the vast, vast majority, have natural gas service as well as Burlington Electric service. We're a 123 positions, 86 IBW local 300. We are a 100% renewable since 2014. Our peak here, as you can see, in the summertime, 65 megawatts. So we're about, you know, six and a half percent or so of the Vermont peak, and Vermont, of course, is about 4% of the regional peak. So just to give you a sense of some of the scale. We have over almost 22,000, 21,800 customers. About three quarters of our customers are residential, and of those, about 60% are renters. And then in terms of our energy use, it's flipped. About three quarters of our energy use is coming from the commercial sector. And if you think about UVM and the medical center, kind of the larger institutions make up a good chunk of our energy use in Brunt. Fiscal health. So in December 2025, so just last month, we had our a three credit rating affirmed by Moody's and a credit rating update, and we actually had our scorecard metrics, which are indicative of kind of what score you would get, improved than they compared to the last, I think, four or five years. So pandemic was obviously for us a challenging moment. I think for everybody a challenging moment in various ways because we are so heavily dependent on commercial for our energy use and so many commercial institutions were closed during the pandemic. Even though residential use was up, our overall operating revenues were down significantly. And so we had, during the pandemic, our first rate change in twelve years. We went from 2009 to 2021 without any rate changes whatsoever. We had a rate change of seven and a half percent back then, and since then, we've tried to do annual rate changes at moderate levels, low to mid single digits, typically between kind of the three and a half and five and a half percent range. Our most recent rate change that's pending at the Public Utility Commission is a four and a half percent, rate change. And Vermont now has the lowest rates in the New England region. We used to be second or third. Now we're the lowest. And, within Vermont, our residential rates are are some of the most competitive Around our commercial rates are are pretty much in line with the Vermont average.

[R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. Right. Morrow. What what are your cost drivers?

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: I would say the biggest cost driver at the moment is regional transmission costs, which I know you heard, I think, from my son in New England yesterday. We've seen that line item go up by, you know, a million dollars or more in consecutive years, and it's something that's relatively outside of our control. But I would say, you know, at least a third of our our driver for rate change is coming from the regional transmission costs. Certainly, we see, you know, labor costs, health care, other things that everybody sees inflation. But I wanna I wanna call that out as being one of the drivers for certain, yeah, region of transmission. We are independently financially audited. We've had at least thirteen years in a row of having a clean, unmodified audit opinion. Our audits are published on our website. I included the link here so anybody can look at them with our financial statements. In FY '25, our most recently completed fiscal year, we had a net income of nearly $2,500,000 That was even considering that during that year we had an error that was documented, I think, in the news and elsewhere where we were unable to monetize the full value of one quarter's production of Rex from the McNeil plant due to a staff transition issue. And so we've done a lot of process improvement work to make sure that never occurs again. But even in a year where we had that impact, which for us was a a roughly million dollar impact, we still had a net income that was quite favorable. So that's our most recent completed year. In terms of liquidity, we have a $10,000,000 line of credit that we have not touched that we've had for a number of years. It was previously 5,000,000. Now it's 10,000,000. We don't use it, but it helps count towards our days cash on hand metrics for our Moody's credit rating. And in terms of our days cash on hand as of December, estimated at eighty four days when you don't count the line of credit and hundred and forty four days when you do count the line of credit. So that's relatively healthy metric. We aim for around ninety days at a minimum for the a rating metrics for Moody's with the line of credit. So we're exceeding that right now. We have a citizen electric commission as one level of multiple levels of regulatory oversight. We're regulated by our electric commission. I report directly to the mayor, and we report to city council of Burlington. We're regulated there. We're also regulated by the Public Utility Commission and Department of Public Service, and, of course, governed as well by the legislature and the laws that you pass. So we're unique in think, the country relatively in having that many levels of governance. But we report monthly to our electric commission, our financials. They're reported publicly. They're livestreamed on town meeting TV, and they're part of a public packet. So we couldn't be more kind of forthcoming with our financials when we're having a good month or a bad month. We talk about it in public session and we explain the drivers and the reasons why. I think I covered pretty much everything on the slide. Let me pause there if there questions that the committee has on our financials that I can answer.

[Christopher Morrow (Member)]: This isn't on financials, but it's on the commercial. You said 75%. I was just curious if you have, with your large loads, the ability to have them ramp down as needed for peak?

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: We do have some programs in place currently, including with our commercial customers. In some cases, have automated control systems that we can reach out during peak events. With residential customers, we've largely had a voluntary program called Defeat the Peak. However, we have some new tools in the toolbox. We have an EV charging rate for EV customers where we provide you a discounted rate, and we will interrupt you during peak events, and you can charge at the discounted rate otherwise pretty much any time of the day. So that helps avoid peak usage with EVs. We also have a program that's rolling out called Building Giants that is in partly funded with the federal grant in the Department of Energy, where we're going to, with commercial customers and with residential customers, try to do load control on heat pumps and other electric heating technology. We're aiming to have thousand to 1,500 residential heat pump customers enrolled, and then we're working with commercial customers as well. And the idea of being similar to the EVs that we could ramp down usage a little bit during peaks. You don't with a heat pump, you're not gonna shut it off. Obviously, somebody's using it for heating or cooling. But if we can modulate by a few degrees, you'll get a significant savings benefit if you can aggregate that over enough units. Yep.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: Okay.

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: Alright. So the topic we're we're here to discuss, the Energy Efficiency Modernization Act, and I'll I'll go into a little bit why we wanted to come and talk with you about it. So as an energy efficiency utility, we receive an allotment of the thermal energy and process fuel or TEPF funds that the state has as a result of being part of the regional greenhouse gas initiative, the REDGI program, as well as bidding energy efficiency projects into ISO New England's forward capacity market. So we get a share of those revenues that are attributable to Burlington for our customers. The challenge for us is that if you go to the statute, the language says TEPF funds are used for unregulated fuel customers, meaning primarily propane, fuel oil, in some cases, could be wood or kerosene. As I mentioned before, roughly 95 to 99%, depending on the sector, of our customers use natural gas, which is a regulated fuel. So we've typically, historically, had a very limited market, narrow market to use TPF funds in Burlington. For eight plus years now, the legislature has granted us the ability to use those funds in different ways to serve all of our customers. Back in the 2018, 2019 time frame, the legislature passed legislation that enabled us to use some of those funds to do feasibility work, for district energy purposes. Since 2021, the energy efficiency modernization act has been in effect in various forms. Most recent form is act one forty two of 2024. And, basically, what it said is as an efficiency utility, we're able to use some of our funds to help customers more broadly with different types of energy reduction and emission reduction projects as opposed to being limited in this case with DPF just to our propane and fuel oil customers. So

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: Sorry. Just if you could go back.

[R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Yes.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: So okay. Sorry. There was a key sentence I didn't see. So so you get an allotment of TEPF funds. I missed that one sentence.

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: Alright. So

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: you get it, but you can only use it for your unregulated fuel customers, which is a super small percentage of your client base.

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: Correct.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: Okay. On we go. Nope. I'm going back.

[R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Here we are. Does BED as an efficiency utility bid into the capacity market?

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: Yeah. Some of our projects are part of that bidding into the ISO market. That's

[R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: correct. Just like EVTW.

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: Yeah. Same as same as efficiency.

[R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: And proportions can give me a sense of that.

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: I don't know top of my head what the relative proportion would be. We could certainly get you that information. Okay.

[R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: And as far as the proportion of TEPF that BED gets, how how does that align with Yeah. With with what you can do gets, with what your customer base is. You know?

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: It fluctuates. I think on a and, you know, it's hard to say too because going forward, I know the efficiency budgets are gonna change. In terms of the electric efficiency budget, we're looking at probably a third reduction for us and potentially, I think, other efficiency utilities because certain measures are no longer gonna be considered, like lighting and other things.

[R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: But But that's an EEC.

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: That that's TEC. Now in terms of TEPF, in some years, the revenues might be, you know, a million dollars or something like that. So over a three year period, it could be a few million dollars of TEPF money, whereas on the electric side, we would have somewhere between typically 8 to 9,000,000 roughly. So those are just relative BEP proportions.

[R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: You know what? I guess what I was asking is that is not not TEPF funding relative to EEC, but TEPF, the VED gets relative to

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: Oh, I'd have to check on that because I'm not familiar with how much efficiency per month gets. Yeah. But we could we could certainly get back to you. I think it's it's relative to our customer base, though. That's what I meant. It's generally proportional to so we're not receiving more than we deserve. We're we're receiving the allotment based on our customer base and our participation. Right. Yeah. Okay. Thanks. Okay. So I was mentioning just now the act one forty two of 2024, the most recent iteration. What that did was give us the ability during what we call the current kind of three year performance period, which is 2024 to 2026, to do a variety of programs to serve all of our customers, not just our unregulated fuel customers in the transportation and in the thermal sectors. And act one forty two actually said we can propose programs for the next performance period of '27 through '29, which is currently in process at the PUC. But in order to actually implement those programs, we would need to come back to the legislature and ask for an extension of this law. And I'll just mention the artwork here is from our fourth grade public school students in Burlington. We have a net zero calendar we do every year, and I always love to include a little of their artwork where it's relevant in these slides. Keep them sly.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: Love the artwork. Yes. And I'm sorry I didn't have a chance to look into this before your testimony. Is is that all the Energy Efficiency Modernization Act does?

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: Yeah. So the

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: It's current not it doesn't contain 25,000 things and one little bit of it.

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: Right. No. The

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: piece, that is what

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: it is. The whole thing basically says to us and the current version, to us in Efficiency Vermont, you can use your efficiency funds or a portion of them in innovative ways that are not currently allowed. What we're actually seeking as an extension is much narrower than that, and I'll get into that in a moment, but that's the current version essentially. I'm sorry.

[R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: You keep interrupting me also, and you probably said this and I missed it. Energy of the EEM applies not only to TEPF but also to EEC?

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: Correct. Currently.

[R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Currently.

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: Currently, that's right. And it applies both to efficiency Vermont and BEE currently. So what we're actually asking for is an extension that would only apply to TEPF, not to the EEC. As I mentioned, the efficiency charge funds are are we're reducing a lot the volume, and we don't think it's prudent to put those funds towards anything other than the electric efficiency at this point. So we're only asking for a TPF extension, and we're only asking for it for Burlington Electric. My understanding is Efficiency Vermont's not seeking an extension of the program for their own purposes. And, obviously, they have a very different market than we do. They have a lot of different reasons. You know, if you think of the oil and propane market broadly in Vermont, there are a lot of customers to serve as opposed to Burlington where there are very few. So they may have a different dynamic in using their TPF funds than we do. But so I've I've consulted with them, and they're not seeking an extension. But for us, we are seeking it. And what it would allow us to do is continue to serve all of our customers with these programs instead of the relative few who are on oil and propane. Importantly, this does not require new revenue. It does not create any new costs. It's existing revenue that's coming to Burlington Electric. We're just seeking flexibility to use it for different purposes. For us, and I'll I'll get into this more in a moment, we submitted a plan on December 19 to the Public Utility Commission outlining what we would do if you all grant us this flexibility, and it would allow us for 1,700,000.0 roughly of our TPF funds over that three year period between 2027 and 2029 to put that amount towards a variety of programs, which I'll outline in a moment, to help our customers. Significantly, it will help us continue to boost our electric vehicle incentives, which we did following the federal government's abrupt elimination of federal credits, and we know there used to be state rebates, those are no longer funded either. So our electric vehicle credit's the only credit that Burlington Electric customers are eligible for. We'd like to keep it at an elevated level for as long as we can to support that market. And if we're unable to get the extension, the the kind of flip side of it is in 2027, our EV incentives, our heat pump incentives would go down significantly. We would have to reduce significantly the EV charging incentives for rental properties that we currently offer, and we would have to eliminate our geothermal test well program. That's the negative. The the positive, the better way to frame it perhaps, is here are all the things we'd like to do if the flexibility is granted to continue doing. So geothermal test wells, we currently have a program where if a customer, and this is primarily commercial customers, said we wanna drill a test well. It can cost $20.30, or $40,000, and there's no guarantee you'll hit a water level that allows you to do a geothermal system. So it's a bit of a risk for the customer. What we've done through this efficiency modernization act is we helped defray a portion of that cost. And I was just this week on Wednesday at the new Burlington High School that's serving our students starting next year. They were one of the customers we helped drill a geothermal test well. It worked. They have a beautiful geothermal heating and cooling system in that building now that's gonna hopefully, you know, be a sixty plus year investment, I say, as a Burlington taxpayer. We want it to run for a long time that building. And so they're gonna be heated and cooled with geothermal, and that was a direct result in part of our being able to help them drill the test well and make that, you know, an option for them. We've done that with other customers as well. So that's one program that we have. We also I mentioned 60% of our customers are renters. We care quite a bit about making sure they have access to electric vehicles and not just folks who have a single family home. So we've invested in EV charging at multifamily properties. We have had some success with that. I think we're near 40 stations now installed for rental and multifamily properties. We also invest in charging that we own and operate, drop down charging from utility poles where somebody can park on street if they don't have off street parking, and they can using an app, the charger drops down to them, plugs in, and we've even set it up so that they can get an off peak rate as well overnight for that charging so that they can benefit just like a single family home resident would from off peak charging. So we we'd like to continue to be investing in that space for our customers, and the EEMA has allowed us to do that. I mentioned boosting our heat pump and EV incentives. We feel like that's really important. There have been some discussion in the regulatory context about EV incentives in particular. Are they, you know, are the utility incentives too generous? Are they are they causing actual customer demand, or are they just sort of riding along? And I think that would have been an interesting conversation when we had 7,500 federal tax credit, $4,000 state rebate, and then we, you know, we used to have a $2,300 utility incentive. You might have said, well, yours is not as impactful. Now with the 7,500 gone from the federal government, $4,000 gone from state government, we boosted our incentive temporarily to $5,000. For our income qualified customers, it's up to $5,700. And roughly just under a quarter of our EV and plug in hybrid rebates go to income qualified customers as enhanced incentives. This is not a program that simply serves market rate customers. We're actually helping quite a number of our income qualified customers in Berlin to access EVs and plug in hybrids. So this legislative extension would enable us to continue that into at least 2027 as opposed to having our incentives drop back down to pre efficiency modernization act levels. A new program that we would like to propose to meet a need is for income qualified customers to help them upgrade their electric panel. We see quite a bit now that as people are looking at installing different things, whether it's an induction cookstove or an EV charger or heat pump, They may need to upgrade their panel. They may not have room or they may need different service. We'd like to be able to help our income qualified customers with that expense to enable them to participate more in electrification. Did you

[Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: Yeah. So yeah. Well, that was saying the upgrade in rural Vermont, upgrade of panels and or service upgrade above a 100 and half service. But are you alluding to more positions in the panel that there are required? Yeah. And they already do have ample amperage into the

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: the main. Generally speaking, that's what we're talking about. So a lot of customers, not all, but a lot of customers in Burlington have 200 amp service because so many of us were on electric heat, previously. But not enough positions. But perhaps not enough positions in the panel, not enough breakers,

[Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: etcetera. Right. Gotcha.

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: Yeah. Thank you. Exactly. So that's that's what we potentially be able to help with.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: R. Sibilia, where's the income level

[Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: for income qualified?

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: So we use metrics from our SITO department. I believe it's a 185% of federal property. We also we participate with Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund, the Delta Klein Business Accelerator Program. I mentioned our rental EV charging program. The company we've worked with there is actually a participant from this program. We met back in 2019 through this business accelerator program where Vermont Stainable Jobs Fun brings these businesses, seed stage businesses, from all over the country and the world to Vermont to Burlington Electric, actually. Host with other utilities participating, we host these sprints that they do where they bring in mentors and they help, you know, with these seed stage businesses. So EV Match is a company that we work with on rental EV charging. We met them through this program. So the energy efficiency modernization act funding includes funding for us to do a pilot each year with the seed stage energy business to try to, you know, see if we can do things like we did with the EV charging in the rental space with more businesses. And we also do commercial sector, what we call custom projects. So those could be a variety of different things. They've supported in the past electric transit buses with our our Green Mountain Transit. We have seven of their 70 buses are now electric in Burlington and charging off peak, which is great for load. We also do commercial custom projects with other customers looking at, you know, rooftop units and chillers and other things. So we have funding for that as well. So this is the kind of list of things that we would like to be able to continue to do, but we would need a a, as I mentioned, a narrow extension. I think it might even be, like, a page or two at most of legislative text that would enable this because it's only affecting and it's only affecting Burlington Electric, but enable us to continue these programs. And I wanted to offer one last comment before I I stop sharing the slides and have to answer additional questions. I've had some consultation with the Department of Public Service. I know they're testifying here today as well.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: They are next.

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: Yes. So I know that they care, as I know you all do and we do, about weatherization quite a bit as well. And I think a critique of theirs of of these programs in the past has been we haven't dedicated a lot of funding to weatherization. In Burlington, Vermont Gas provides the weatherization services primarily to customers who have gas service. But I've heard from the department that they would be interested in our having a portion of these funds if this is granted dedicated to weatherization. And I just wanted to share with the committee that we're happy to work on that with you and with them. If there was a desire to add different weatherization projects to this list here and and make sure that we allocate a portion of funds to that, we're happy to do that. We love weatherization as well. So I don't wanna get ahead of their testimony, and they'll they'll obviously offer their perspective. But I just wanted to share that we're happy to collaborate on that.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: That's great. And, actually, thanks for that. Great. Thanks for that heads up. That could save us some time. Because they requested to testify, and I don't you know, I didn't gatekeep. So here they come in, I didn't know what they were gonna say. Well So

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: Not to get ahead of them, but

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: we're No. Just Understood. We're very much that is their request, it would be okay with you.

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: Yes. We would be happy to work on that. Okay. Robert? I'll stop sharing screens here as well.

[R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Do we have a bill on this yet?

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: Or No. We do not have a bill on this.

[R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Then what's your time frame on this?

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: Well, we'd be happy to work with you on any time frame that that you have. We definitely would need to have something this session because we're in the midst of our demand resource plan, which will be adjudicated this calendar year. Right.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: It's a crossover thing. There I didn't draft anything because we hadn't we hadn't heard the testimony yet. So there's nothing kicking around. Yeah.

[Christopher Howland (Member, Rutland-4)]: Yeah. I would just say having worked on this before, I I definitely am in support of extending this, and hopefully, we can. I don't know who's next.

[R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Don't Well, I don't know if

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: you mentioned it. What's the scale of money that that would be effective here? 1,700,000.0 for us over a three year period.

[R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: And would it just be for BEDs purposes?

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: Yes.

[R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: How did how did how did the EEM, the energy efficiency EEM Act, how did that affect EBT? What does that enable them to do?

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: Previous iteration Yeah. The one that's currently in effect, Efficiency Vermont, if I remember correctly, to put up to 2,000,000 of their EEC funds annually, or or I don't know. Yeah. I think it was annually. It might have been over a three year period because I'm I'm fuzzy on their details. I'm more familiar with ours. But it was $2,000,000 cap on how much EEC they could put towards these programs, and they've developed their own list of programs and submitted those. The the most current version of the legislation didn't require these programs to be approved at the PUC, provided that they met various metrics. We essentially had to notify the PUC of what we were doing, and then we were able to move forward with the program. So they would have had their own set of programs. We also had EEC authority in the prior version for up to 800,000 of programs. We're not asking to continue that, as I mentioned. And uniquely, we had TEPF authority as well. There was language that said, and typically in law when we refer to BED only, we say a distribution utility that's also an energy efficiency appointed provider because there's only one of us. And it had language like that and it said can use TEPF funds to reduce emissions, do projects that reduce emissions in the thermal and transportation sector. You're getting a right of

[R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: bell now. The effect of this act was to allow shifting of EEC money into thermal programs Correct. And also to allow BED, the only utilities subscribed, to use to to use some TEF funding

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: and not only for regulated fossil. That'd be a great summary. Okay. That's exactly right.

[R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Okay. What was the scale of funding of, I guess, TEPF funding that you used for the last three years,

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: Several current 3,000,000 because we had available to us carryforward TEPF funds that were unused from a previous period. Then we had, as I mentioned, we get several million typically in a three year period of TEPF funds, some of which I should say we do continue to reserve for those traditional programs that serve propane and oil customers. We have a very limited number, but we do have program offerings there for weatherization as well as the zero energy modular home program. So we have the North Avenue Co op in Burlington. It is a modular home community, a cooperative community, and we offer and have done some rebates for the zero energy modular homes, which are way more efficient. And so we we offer those. There's usually a few 100,000 of our TPF money that's going towards those traditional programs and then several million in a given three year period that's available for these types of programs that we talked

[R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: was that annually then? No. So the

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: next period of of our TPF total budget, which I think is roughly 2,000,000 north. So 1,700,000.0 would be, if you pass this, enabled to fund these programs we talked about. And we would reserve a little under 300,000 to continue to do weatherization and a zero energy modular home program for

[R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: our oil and propane customers. Okay. I got it. Alright. Good. I think I got it. For

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: Bailey?

[Richard Bailey (Member)]: Yeah. So do you have money currently that you haven't spent? Because you all probably can only use it for propane and fuel oil.

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: We would if if not for this this legislation that's already enacted for the current period. So we're using or we anticipate using by the 2026, which is the end of the period, the bulk of our TEPF funds. And because we we would be in that situation where we had a bunch of unused if we were limited only to oil and propane, but because of the legislation you all enacted back in 2324, we've been able to put it towards these other programs. So we're fully utilizing it for our broad customer base as opposed to just the oil and propane customers.

[Christopher Morrow (Member)]: Quick question on induction stoves. Do you offer incentives?

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: We do. Not through this particular set of funds, but through our tier three program, which is our through the renewable energy standard, we're all required to offer tier three incentives. We have an incentive for induction stoves. We just launched it relatively recently in the last couple years. We just got over a 100 recently, so I think we're at around a 119 rebates that we've done. And I am a personal induction stove customer, and I I I love the technology, and I have learned a few things about how it works in terms of which pots and pans I can keep versus replace and how to size them correctly for the for the use on the induction stove. But they they boil water in, like, you know, two, three minutes if you have the right cookware, and it's pretty amazing.

[Christopher Morrow (Member)]: And there's even a new a new kind that has a battery in

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: it. Yes.

[Christopher Morrow (Member)]: So you don't have to do two twenty?

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: Yes. So this is a really interesting technology, and we're seeing this a little bit in the heat pump water heating space as well. So we talked about, you know, electric panels, amperage, you know, having a two forty or two twenty, you know, type of outlet you need for an induction cook stove or for a heat pump water heater. Increasingly there are companies that are working on 120 or 110 level where you can plug into a regular outlet with a heat pump water heater that might be a hybrid unit or with an induction cook stove that has a lithium battery that can be used to store energy so that when you're using the induction at the level that required a 200 plus amp, you're using the battery to supplement the the cord, and you don't have to upgrade your service. So I think that's really innovative technology and could be used in power outages and other things. Yeah. So so

[Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: are the induction stoves replacing gas stoves in Generally speaking. Generally. Yeah. And I thought the induction stove was like a traditional resistance stove. Leg a, leg a, leg b, leg b for the burners at one twenty, and the two forty or two twenty was just for the the oven.

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: Yes. It looks like that. And you can get just the top kind of what we call a hob, like a a one or two burner hob and plug that into a regular outlet. You know, like, you know, renters sometimes can do that. But you're right that, like, if you're getting the full oven is when you need potentially to upgrade. And they do use magnetic technology, I believe, as opposed to the electric resistance, which do lot different type of condensable induction. Yeah. That's right.

[Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: Do most of the homes have both 20 amp circuits, or are these I would imagine with an agent stock that any other circuit would still be just 15 amp.

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: I I I don't know what the relative breakdown is. I know in my home, which was you know, it's in Burlington. It's built in 1983, for example, had electric heat at one point because we see the Westinghouse thermostats around the house that are no longer in use. We had to do an upgrade on our panel to be able to enable just for breaker space to be able to enable the, you know, the circuit for the induction stove. But we're we're 20 amp most of the Right.

[Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: Right. The 83 in Yeah. Yeah. I would expect in late seventy seventy five, so that era that 20 amp became the Yeah. Norm and the 15 amp. I think So

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: we do have a mix, and some homes would look quite different.

[Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: To back in Burlington, a lot older.

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: We do have older houses, like, in some areas. And Yeah.

[Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: Maybe even some 60 amp five amp panels kicking around.

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: Well, what yeah.

[Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: Maybe that hasn't been sold. That's true. That's true. Yep.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: I do.

[Christopher Morrow (Member)]: Dara, do you handle a new school bus that's been?

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: So interestingly, we don't really have dedicated school buses. So Green Mountain Transit serves the students. So we do have some we have electric buses within their fleet. So in that case, they might ride on an electric school bus, but the students who ride the bus are riding typically a Greenmont Transit bus.

[Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: Yeah. Do those electric buses last for two shifts for sixteen hours? So Or do they

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: Yeah. Like, what I understand from them, they bought two back in 2020, and they bought five more recently from a different vendor. The original ones from 2020 were intended to run all the routes in Burlington and some, I think, regional routes that might go out to, like, Williston or different places. The range was more limited, and particularly in the wintertime, you might face some constraints. The newer ones, I think, have a more robust infrastructure and may be capable of running even longer routes. But what we've worked out with them is they're using them during the day for whichever shifts they're running. They come in and they're charging overnight, you know, for probably, I'm guessing, about eight hours or so. We have kind of a similar thing. We have an electric bucket truck for our line crew, first in the state, that we got with a grant from ACCD, and we have a second one on its way. So we're excited about that. But it's a similar thing. It's a, you know, heavy duty vehicle. It has a really significant battery. It gets maybe a 100 to a 150 miles of range, so I think that probably pretty similar with the electric buses. So the great thing is if you're idling, you're not using you know, you're not emitting anything. You're not using as much energy if you're sitting at a bus stop, but they're great for kinda going around town. The heavier duty vehicles and the battery infrastructure, I don't think is quite developed to do lengthy out of town trips on a regular basis. So for us as a line crew, we have to keep some conventional vehicles if we wanna do mutual aid or other types of out of town trips. We wouldn't send the electric bucket truck for that, but it's great for around town in Burlington. Yeah.

[Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: I can't go twenty four seven.

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: No. Correct. And Have to stop and recharge at a certain point.

[Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: And how long does that take to recharge? Just a eight hour shift?

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: Yeah. I think, like, eight hours overnight, roughly. Yeah. So I don't know. I think, Green Mountain, we could we could get more information for you if you're interested. No. It isn't, but I

[Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: would just say if the school if the school had a school bus, they make the morning runs. It's parked in the lot. Certainly. But but it's parked in the lot while you're on peak. Certainly. Or or whatever. You could make arrangements.

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: You could yeah. You would probably If

[Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: it does a charge during the day and it has doesn't have enough to make it out at night, you're gonna have a Yeah.

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: We don't have that exact situation. No.

[Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: Yeah. But you the purpose of this battery is for the off off peak. Yeah. To the extent

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: you can charge it off peak, you're really benefiting yourself as a customer because you're gonna pay less and the broader utility base because so when we talk about peak, just roughly 15% of our power supply costs in a given year are gonna be attributable to how much energy we were using during the one hour of the year when the ISO system is peaking. Around 15%, roughly speaking. So the reason we run these peak production programs, every kilowatt hour we can reduce during that time frame is gonna have some value. And the reason we can offer customers the equivalent of around 75¢ a gallon to charge their electric vehicle is because we're we know we can interrupt them during those higher cost peak times and really, you know, differentiate. So I think for us, we haven't had as much battery storage. We've been a laggard intentionally around that because our reliability is very strong. We have a compact service territory about half our infrastructure is underground. So we're looking at batteries mainly for peak reduction, but we did do an RFP last year for five megawatt battery storage, and that's in review currently at BED. And we may locate one or more five megawatt batteries for peak reduction purposes, and we've done some piloting some mobile battery storage that we were able to use during last summer's peak events as well. So so that's what it's all about is saving money when we can on peak.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: So oh, I'm sorry. Rutland, Sibilia was next. Just the 15%, is that typical for

[Christopher Howland (Member, Rutland-4)]: all the Vermont utilities, or is that

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: just I don't know. And I we are a laggard on battery storage relative to a company like GMP has done a lot on battery storage, so they may have shifted some of their burden potentially in a meaningful way. I know they've achieved savings that we would be, you know, starting to look at when we install batteries. So that's been a number for us that we've kind of looked at, but I don't know if it's holds true for others.

[Christopher Howland (Member, Rutland-4)]: And then one other, just in terms of deploying batteries to Yeah.

[Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: Shave the peak.

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: Yes.

[Christopher Howland (Member, Rutland-4)]: Those bucket trucks, could you they'd used in that regard?

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: They're not two way chargers at the moment. So we can we can avoid charging during the peak, but they can't feed anything back. We did look at another company actually through the Delta Klein, the sustainable jobs program that had a vehicle with grid, and they were gonna do pilots. But at time, it only worked with Kia EV nines, and we only had, like, one or two customers with a Kia EV nine at that point. I think we've seen more of them around Burlington now. But we would like to, at some point, you know, pilot some of that technology as well. And, certainly, the couple 100 kilowatts that's in that bucket truck, you were able to feed it back during peaks and it wasn't in use, that could be an interesting asset to have. Perfect.

[Christopher Howland (Member, Rutland-4)]: Yeah. Thanks. That's right. Thank you, sir.

[R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: I think we have Chrissy next. When is your peak, and is it shifting? So, you

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: know, our peak as a utility is almost not the relevant piece. It's really about the regional peak, because it's how much energy we're using when the region peaks, and that's gonna be driven by what's going on in Boston and Connecticut and other places, But it's summertime right now, and it's typically gonna be between June and kinda late August typically. And it's gonna be it used to be kind of more of a midday type of thing. It's moving. And so what we're seeing now is when we call peak events, it's three to seven or four to eight when the air conditioners are running, people are coming home, and they're turning on the air conditioners, whatever's going on in that kind of late afternoon, early evening window on a really hot, sunny, summer day when there's been a few hot, sunny, summer days beforehand that have kept the heat high, that tends to be when we peak as a region. There's also monthly peaks in Vermont. And if you have battery storage, you can, you know, try to reduce your share of the monthly peak in Vermont as well, but it's that annual peak is the portion that I was talking about earlier. Yeah. And it's entirely conceivable if we do a good job as a region putting in a lot of heat pumps. That may change altogether. We might be peaking in the wintertime, and that'll have a different set of challenges. Yeah.

[R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Appreciate that. Likewise.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: So Okay.

[Richard Bailey (Member)]: So if you were to buy that electric bucket truck, was right. How much would it cost? We did, and

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: it was about I believe it was about $750 or or $600, something in that range depending and we reduced the cost significantly because of the grant from a c ACCD. So, yeah, clearly, we've seen those in, like, the 500 to $700,000 range for those types of vehicles. It is more expensive upfront. No doubt. We do save money on operations and maintenance with the electric versus conventional diesel. Similar thing with the buses like we were talking about. I think those are have a premium relative to a conventional diesel bus, but then there's some savings they can pay back over a, ten or twelve year period. But it'd be nice to see the upfront cost of that technology come down. It'd be nice as well to see the batteries become denser and be able to hold more energy so we can get more range out of them. And what I'd like to see, what I haven't seen, and I I hope some company makes this, would be a plug in hybrid electric bucket truck. Like, we have plug in hybrid electric vehicles. Because if you think about it, for Burlington, you know, if the bucket truck is going around the city, you may be gonna use 25 miles, 30 miles, 40 miles. A lot of the time, they're sitting there and they're idling at a spot because they're doing work on a power line during outage, whatever it might be. We're replacing some infrastructure. Having a plug in hybrid version that could use the battery during those times would be amazing, but having a extended range, you know, engine of some sort, so the limited number of times we need to go out of town for helping another utility with an outage, we could do it unconventional and not have to worry. That would be an interesting business case, and I'm curious what that would cost if it would be cheaper or more expensive. Only have

[R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: to have one truck instead of two. Exactly. Exactly.

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: Right now, we're kinda going through this balancing act of we're gonna have two electric bucket trucks, and we have currently typically five to six trucks in the fleet. We may have to retain at some point, you know, additional vehicles just for those out of town trips that are seldom used versus being able to have a vehicle that could do both very easily. So

[Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: I think GMP had a hybrid

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: Yeah.

[Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: Back in 1614. Yeah. With the solar generation, you met you mentioned the regional peak between you said June and August, and June is the longest day of the year. Yeah. When when does the solar start to drop off, in production? Yeah. So Perhaps in a August day, August 15.

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: Yeah. You'll start to see some dipping around the four to 05:00 time frame. So solar and versus peak, you know, we're still getting a benefit. It's not as big a benefit as if the peak was at, say, two

[Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: or three o'clock. Right. But the the the day load is is not peaking because of the input of solar self generating Correct. Correct. Or whatever, and it's really shifted in that It has shifted. Peak. And then so the cooling peak is late July, August, and not June. In June, the days aren't hot enough for Yeah. But so the heat the longest day of the year is the hottest day

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: of the Not necessarily at all. That's right. That's right.

[Laura Sibilia (Ranking Member)]: So okay. So Yeah. It's that it does start drop off at six ish 05:30.

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: Yeah. So you'll still see some benefit of solar when you're hitting those peaks, but the later in the day it goes, the more you might need solar paired with storage to get that benefit, for example. Thank you. Yep.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: Okay.

[R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: What what time are we?

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: I have a question. Okay. You also float is the senate taking this up? Have you floated this in the senate? Did you get any bites?

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: We've had conversations with chair Watson

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: Okay.

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: In the senate, and I know that that committee worked on this the last time around as well. So I I I think there may be interest there as well, but we haven't testified there yet. Okay. So this is our first testimony.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: Great. I just we try to do a little bit of air traffic control. So I will put that on my list to control.

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: And we I can stick around. List. I can stick around as well.

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: So Yeah. That'd great.

[Darren Springer (General Manager, Burlington Electric Department)]: DPS testimony in case you have any additional questions. But thank you so much for your time. We appreciate I

[Kathleen James (Chair)]: think we're on with DPS at 11:30. So why don't we go off live, and we'll be back in fifteen.