Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Andrea Cohen, Vermont Electric Cooperative]: Hello.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Alright. Welcome back, everybody. It's House Energy and Digital Infrastructure, and we are talking today about s two zero two, and acts relating to portable solar energy generation devices. And we are here with TJ Poor from the Department of Public Service. Then after

[Andrea Cohen, Vermont Electric Cooperative]: that, we're gonna hear from some

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: of our utilities. So

[Andrea Cohen, Vermont Electric Cooperative]: my name

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: is Kathleen James. I'm from Manchester.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Scott Campbell from Saint John Quarry.

[Ken Nolan, General Manager, Vermont Public Power Supply Authority (VPPSA)]: Richard Bailey, 1102.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: This is Morrow. Windham, is there anything? Michael Southworth, Caledonia too. Christopher Howland, Rutland Ford.

[Andrea Cohen, Vermont Electric Cooperative]: We're at Horry, Washington too. Laura Sibilia, Windham too.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Great. And oh, that's good. And who's in

[Andrea Cohen, Vermont Electric Cooperative]: your room, sir? Andrea Cohen from Baughan Electric Cooperative. Great.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Gabriel. Oh,

[Andrea Cohen, Vermont Electric Cooperative]: sorry. Gabriel Molina, Delta Rutland. Michelle Farnham, Primer on behalf of the episode, panel beyond Zoom. Great. Katie Erby, M and A towards considered unwanted. Super. Great. Thanks.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: TJ, over to you.

[TJ Poor, Vermont Department of Public Service]: Great. TJ Poor, public service department. You for having me back. So my testimony today will describe the department's current position with s two zero two as passed by the senate. The senate modified its introduce bill to incorporate most of the department suggestions, and original comments. As you might imagine, safety and consumer protections, including affordability, have been paramount to our consideration of the bill, and we continue to support the general concept of the s two zero two, as it's drafted here. I'm gonna offer

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: one

[TJ Poor, Vermont Department of Public Service]: additional language suggestion today that didn't make it into the bill, but I I don't believe it will be controversial. So I hope that it's not. It's just a clarification. And I do wanna just make some other observations today. Similar to what I made in the Senate, but I think it'd useful for you all. So I wanna start just with safety for which I am not an expert on safety. So I'll let mister Dara Torre from the Department of Public Safety and the utilities primary really speak to it, but I did wanna bring it up here and note that the compliance with Underwriters Laboratories 3,700 listing is critical component of the bill that we really support. And so there was a white paper that was issued by UL Solutions in December 2025 on on plug in PV. They now have completed their outline of investigation, which is UL 3,700. And I they concluded that special I I'm gonna just pull this and read it, and I've I've included I've sent to Alex. I ran a bunch of testimony this morning as well. But UL Solutions concluded that, quote, special risk mitigation requirements are necessary to allow the safe use of plug in photovoltaic products. In the absence of these special measures, plug in photovoltaics can present electric shock hazards and fire hazards to consumers, potentially defeating protective technologies required for public protection without any awareness that the previous protection has been compromised, allowing plug in photovoltaics to be plugged into any existing branch circuit with no mitigation for the above concerns is not supported by UL solutions. There are potential engineered solutions that can be applied and will be necessary to promote safe use of plug in photovoltaic products. And that led to, unquote, and that led to the, development in what's in UL 3,700. So, I just wanted to kinda get that into the record. There's a link to the white paper here and why that would really support you all third 3700 being at the point of the bill.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Thanks, TJ. We're hearing from you all tomorrow, and they submitted in December to us a letter and a white paper, which had been posted appropriately at the time under our h bill, and we've moved that testimony over and out of the

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: s bill. Great.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: So it's up

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: there now.

[TJ Poor, Vermont Department of Public Service]: I was a little behind. You're already up to speed.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Well, not not really behind. So it was we just got that stuff posted yesterday, and then you all's coming in tomorrow.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: So Okay. Perfect.

[TJ Poor, Vermont Department of Public Service]: So the utilities are following me today and can test ify to any concerns they have with safety to line workers, etcetera, and I defer to them on those aspects. Okay. To the the structure of how this might work, portable solar will really offset real time consumption at the variable retail rate. It makes perfect sense. Alright? That's, like, the behind the meter consumption reduction that we're talking about. Another so we that makes sense. That's that's a good thing. The bill allows for generation to be exported, but similar to how Utah's structure is upon which this legislation was modeled. It's intended to not allow for compensation for exported generation, and we agree with that feature as well. So the and the bill really clearly indicates that portable solar energy generation devices are not eligible for net metering. So this leads me to my one suggestion to make this bill a little more clear. So on on page two, on line 16 of the bill, there's a reference to excess generation excess generation back in back into the grid. And that's where it set says that exit won't that won't be compensated by electric distribution from utility. Excess generation is really a defined term in net metering and represents really generation from a net metered facility in a month that exceeds consumption for that month. It's like a net billing feature. And so, it really only exists ex excess generation in the net metering construct, which this bill doesn't really people doesn't allow. And so I I suggest striking out the phrase excess generation fed back into the grid and substituting it with generation exported to the grid. And that just clearly, well, just makes it clear. It's a kinda outside the net metering rubric and is, it's, you know, a more clear description of what what's happening, and I feel like the intent of the bill.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Wonder if it should say something like, it's a devil generation exporting to the grid or something like that bigger. Because it generation exported to the grid sounds like there's gonna be generation exported to

[TJ Poor, Vermont Department of Public Service]: the grid, but there's

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: probably not gonna be very much.

[TJ Poor, Vermont Department of Public Service]: Probably not. Yeah. Agreed. But It work as a

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: way of capturing that idea.

[Andrea Cohen, Vermont Electric Cooperative]: So would that suggest that something that is not incidental

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: would be treated differently? I

[TJ Poor, Vermont Department of Public Service]: know if it needs a modifier. Think if it's just, you know, a new generation experience.

[Andrea Cohen, Vermont Electric Cooperative]: Especially family.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. Kind of an all inclusive environment. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe maybe it's this we're talking statute here. Right. Well, right.

[TJ Poor, Vermont Department of Public Service]: So maybe maybe everybody kinda knew what this meant, and they were good anyway, but and I I do think that is, you know well, that is our suggestion.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Kathleen?

[Rep. Christopher Howland (Member)]: So were you involved in the discussion of where they require, they call it smart meter, meters, automatic meter reading for a guy from California who said time of day rating and so forth. So smart meters have all sorts of registry Yeah. Blocks of they can record stuff in so that in the old day, if you suspected somebody who'd be backfeeding, put in a what was called a two ten meter so that they used to have back your vehicle up. You could run the mileage up, jack it up and put it in reverse, they did away with that with odometers. They did the same thing with electric meters. So if somebody's generating on leg A with their outlet, the 120 outlet, but they're using on leg B quite a common coupling is the transformer. You've to go back to change from, get from 180 degrees out of phase. So that essentially would be exported to the grid, converted by a 180 degrees, and come back on the other the other leg.

[TJ Poor, Vermont Department of Public Service]: So So I I wasn't directly involved in conversation in the senate on smart meters, but in general, my understanding is that when we have a utility that has advanced metering infrastructure, those meters will have a couple of multiple channels. Right. Right? And so you will match those up in any given hour and see, okay, well, this channel was was going out and producing generation. This channel had consumption, and then you kinda net that out. Then if the net is above zero or to export, maybe it's

[Rep. Christopher Howland (Member)]: below zero. Time increment. Right. That fifteen minute increment when we talk about demand metering. Right.

[TJ Poor, Vermont Department of Public Service]: And so so I think that is how it would be managed, but, I suggest you ask ask the utilities about their metering also. Okay. Two other, items here. One is observations, just the observation on the cost of these units. So they're they're currently really expensive. In the future, they may reduce in price. It is an option for residents, but it's an expensive

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: one. These

[TJ Poor, Vermont Department of Public Service]: I I put I won't go through it here, but in my testimony, I put a little map in there. And, you know, even if costs reduce, we're looking at over ten year payback for customers. So, again, this is okay if it we're just reducing behind the meter consumption, and it's the customer's choice, and they understand that's what they're, you know, getting into that. I just wanted to make sure that we're all aware that this is really not a solution for low income providers. We still need to continue to work on other solutions here. And so I just wanted to point that out, that really, for now, at least, it's a measure for those who can afford it. But, again, that's okay as long as there's not state or ratepayer subsidies, which there isn't in this. They also have technology. That's a separate choice we could we could make, but we're not talking about that now. And then similar to what we just talked about, that the generation that's exported is not compensated. So that has the potential to turn into, incentive. So, just some observations there. And then, finally, just wanted a note on, consumer protection. You may have been provided this also, but there is a Clean Energy States Alliance publication, that, recently came out in 2025 that noted that, you know, as a new product, states may wanna promulgate consumer protection requirements such as for claims about savings, regulations, and safety, and to encourage safe installations, clear guidelines, educational how to materials would need to be developed. And, there's things like the savings. You know, consumers may you know, they can purchase these things online. Right? You can purchase them from any provider. And, there's some concern that they may be getting purchasing something on a promise that it's not going to deliver. Happens with all kinds of products. But it may be worth, in terms of consumer protections, talking to the AG's office. I'm not sure if they came in or not and sent in for their opinion on that. The other thing that people may be doing this for is for, climate reasons. You know? And I'm serving that we have a 100% renewable standard now, perhaps a 100% clean energy standard in the future, but people may be willing to invest in that payback for climate reasons, but that they're not actually gonna be making, impact of Vermont's progress towards greenhouse gas emissions are requirements, GWSA requirements, as we measure by the greenhouse gas inventory. So, you know, there was years ago, there was, like, a big I think it was the FCC, not the the SEC, but the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission, concerned about, like, the racks and treatment about renewable energy credits and who claims that. And really, this is there could be some some issues there. I think previous versions of this bill had some liability provisions also in them, and those lie those provisions are not in there in this version. And so I I'm not gonna comment too much on them today except to say that they're we wanna ensure that customers are not taking on liability that they don't aren't aware of. And so, you know, if something happens to the grid or to you know, because of export of generation, then customers shouldn't be viable. And

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: so we just wanna make

[TJ Poor, Vermont Department of Public Service]: sure that base is covered as well, and there may be more discussion about liability coming coming out. So overall, in conclusion, we continue to support s two zero two. Like I said, like reducing the biohedometer consumption for people without subsidy and an option to do that is a good thing. So long as safety concerns are met, UL 3,700 does a goes a long way towards that, maybe the way. And and we look forward to, you know, reviewing any potential refinements to the bill beyond.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Thanks, TJ. I have one of the bill one of the bills that we heard about yesterday and are gonna take a look at is coming out of Virginia, and and I haven't even read it yet. But apparently, the Virginia bill does include some consumer protection language, and and that seems to me to be an important oversight in this bill right now as it's drafted. I think we do need to get the AG in and talk AG in here and talk about how we can make sure that consumers aren't seeing false claims of savings and that there's liability protection as well. I'm really interested in that. Two of the things that you pointed out this bill doesn't contemplate and shouldn't contemplate because I don't think it's relevant is we aren't talking about providing any kind of subsidy or, you know, making ratepayers pay for these. That's not contemplated here at all. I think it would be inappropriate. So just clarify, we're on the same page about that. And I also don't think anybody's viewing this still in terms of Vermont's larger greenhouse gas reductions goals. The the point here is to create a bill so that if somebody can afford one of these and wants one, they can get one safely. That's so it's in some ways a pretty narrow a narrow bill. One of the things that was in the h bill, but isn't in the s bill that we've been talking about a lot too, is notification. So, in the h bill, we had talked about just a simple notification form that folks would fill out to let the utilities know that they have one of these. And I we had heard secondhand, and we're gonna hear from the utilities directly that the utilities didn't you know, maybe didn't think that was important or necessary, but I'm not sure I agree. So I I feel like we should know where these are and where they're being used, and I'm wondering what you think about notification and who that notification should go to. If the utilities don't want it, do you guys want it?

[TJ Poor, Vermont Department of Public Service]: I think, you know, at a certain scale, you know, a number of these, that may be a good time for notification. I'm aware that the utilities didn't want it. And, you know, I think to the extent that UL 3,700, you know, comes close to, if not effectively stops really unwarranted export to the grid, then I'm not sure that it is necessary for notification. Know, if there was a lot of these that really started affecting long term utility planning and the grids and and perhaps some but that's not

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Wouldn't it be better to gather the data from the beginning, though, instead of Yep. Getting to the point where it's like, I I I just feel like we have have such systemic problems with Yeah. Data collection. And so instead of ten years from now being like, oh, I wish we'd track those from the beginning. Why shouldn't we just start tracking now?

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: I

[TJ Poor, Vermont Department of Public Service]: don't we we don't oppose notification and and tracking. I think I am not sure in the near term what we're gonna do, but you make a good point about something like that long term trajectory and understanding what what is on the system from the beginning.

[Andrea Cohen, Vermont Electric Cooperative]: Sure. Yeah. And that just made me think about how much visibility we currently have in the feeder lines, like, not much. Right. That might change.

[TJ Poor, Vermont Department of Public Service]: If you think about these as an as an appliance, right, like, totally behind the meter, like, we don't necessarily have reporting on how many you know, if you purchase a a more efficient product and you don't get a rebate from officially, you're just doing it, then we don't have any reporting of that. Right? And so if we think about it just as an efficient product, we don't necessarily need reporting of it similar to any other appliance. But if it is going to be something that we ultimately you know, we have lots of reporting for efficiency Vermont, as you all know. And but that's because we're providing those incentives and understanding what the state program is is offering. So I could

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: you know

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Like, your fridge doesn't have the ability to vacate the grid. Right. Even if it's minimal.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Great. So

[Rep. Christopher Howland (Member)]: I don't

[TJ Poor, Vermont Department of Public Service]: I like I said, I don't I don't think we would oppose a reporting requirement. I think the the biggest downside is the administrative burden, with what the utilities describe what what that might be. But

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Okay. Yeah. That's helpful.

[Rep. Christopher Howland (Member)]: The utilities are the utility is gonna pick up your more efficient refrigerator because your usage over a period of time Months, March to March comparisons, we're gonna show that you're using less electricity to get more efficient appliance.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: But they're not gonna know why.

[Rep. Christopher Howland (Member)]: No. Well, let me right. Well, right.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Not gonna know you both. No.

[Rep. Christopher Howland (Member)]: Or that you no longer use a toaster oven or whatever. You know, they don't know what your habits are.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: But Right.

[Rep. Christopher Howland (Member)]: When you mingle that amongst everybody on the circuit, they can know this one. Sure. What about the energy efficiency and the this this 4¢ that if you had new net net metering, you pay 4¢ for everything you generate to for whatever reason, the metering thousand twenty four program. But a charge to I'm not sure. So you're gonna if you generate your own, you're gonna

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: you're gonna

[Rep. Christopher Howland (Member)]: have kilowatt hour per kilowatt hour, but you're not gonna pay the energy efficiency charge of somebody who has a

[TJ Poor, Vermont Department of Public Service]: not their other generation for their home is charged with their consumption. So with with the exportable solar products you're talking about, yeah, you would avoid it's just like another reduction in load is if you, you know, if you shut off all your lights, you're not gonna pay the efficiency charge on that Right. You know, during the day because you're not using the generation. So if it's fully behind the meter, I think that is that's it's okay.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: For example? I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about the life dental issue brought up a while ago. I'm

[TJ Poor, Vermont Department of Public Service]: not sure I really understood. Yeah. So, you know, if there was export to the grid and that caused I I'm gonna get out of my depth really quickly. How's some electrical issue? I I don't even like, a transformative law. Don't know that that is, like, what might happen, but just a cost on the electric system that they wanna ensure that the the customer is not liable or the customer is not unknowingly liable. That would be Like, they may be Right. But it's that would if they are liable, it needs to be disclosed to them. And so I think that is the the clear thing. Like, if if they're you know the utility is not gonna be liable, which, you know, they shouldn't be. Right? Other ratepayers be held liable for something caused, but a customer buys this and has no idea that there's a risk that they could be liable for something. Yeah. We need to make sure that they know that. Like, they

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: a touch of just thought of an example. Maybe whatever the safety device is that prevents back feeding in the case of an outage that safety device fails there's a back feed injure something, a line or something, yes, that could be Who's liable for that? Right.

[TJ Poor, Vermont Department of Public Service]: Or if there was no safety device to start with in the product. Right? Well, that's a and that should be, hopefully, in the UL listing. Yeah.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That's a good word. Yes. Well, it sounds like it would be a product liability issue or something like that. Why I'm struggling a

[TJ Poor, Vermont Department of Public Service]: little bit is product liability. Really my area.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. So you're suggesting that should be

[TJ Poor, Vermont Department of Public Service]: made explicit? So I think we had a suggestion that it it came right at the end of right right before it was going to go, and I think there was some discussion in the senate on liability language, and I could provide some of that language to you on on consumer protection. I think it was really that disclosure requirement of any liability that a consumer might have. Okay. So so if they do have liability, they they know it going in, and it's like And

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: who will make that disclosure? The the product seller. The product seller. So manufacturer. Right. Okay. Thanks.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Right. Okay.

[TJ Poor, Vermont Department of Public Service]: That's it. Thank you very much.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Yeah. TJ, thank you so much. Great. Who's up next? Andrea?

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: So I think I got

[Andrea Cohen, Vermont Electric Cooperative]: some Without. Yeah. Thanks, TJ.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Thank you. Bye bye.

[Louis Porter, General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op]: Thank you. Morning.

[Andrea Cohen, Vermont Electric Cooperative]: Hi. Hi. Your record, Andrea Cohen from Mon Electric Cooperative. And if I ask you to repeat questions, it's because I can't even hear. I don't everything's settled and, you know

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Okay.

[Andrea Cohen, Vermont Electric Cooperative]: Everything's going around. So if I'm talking loud, it's because I can't even hear myself. S202, happy to provide some comments. Some of them directed to what you were just discussing, the one change we might be looking at around liability. Let me hit the basics first. Generally, when we saw this bill, we were like, Who's gonna do this? Low income folks, probably not that appealing as it stands right now, but at the same time, we're open to emerging technologies and new opportunities and how can we see our way to this being a yes to allow people who might be interested in this to partake. So a lot of the changes that happened on the Senate side addressed many of our initial concerns. So generally, we are okay with this bill. There's one change I wanna talk about. But one thing we wanted to level set on was keeping those expectations modest in terms of you know, is this really going to change the system or change the world for folks? Keeping expectations pretty modest. We don't think a lot of folks in our service territory are going to run out and spend thousands of dollars on something that it'll take ten years to come back. But if folks want to, as long as it does no harm, meaning it's safe in the home and on our system, right? And those are separate things in terms of fire protection and safety and kind of the behind the meter work. And then what happens on our system to our financial and safety concerns for like line workers, kind of separate things, but wanna make sure that's all set up and a lot of the changes in the bill, I think, address a lot of our initial concerns. Also, as TJ mentioned, we're not interested in paying for these, having other members pay for them, so provided there's no subsidy or cost shift and somebody wants to do that, fine. Outstanding issue that we Oh, and the consumer protections. I do need to say a few things about that. There's a lot of times when people are sold products or services that they end up not being happy with. We didn't sell them those products or services, but we're the first ones that get the phone call. Why is my bill so high? I put in a heat pump. Why am I spending this much money? We didn't tell you to buy that, or size it too big, but we feel terrible because all of a sudden their bills went up and they were not adequately aware of the implications, whether it's sizing a solar system, it's too big or too small. It's pretty tough. It's pretty tough when folks that can variably afford to pay their bills are now having additional costs and things that they feel like they have nowhere to go. So I really appreciate the consumer protection interest and try to make sure people understand what they're buying and that it's a good choice. There's only so much we could do. We're happy to partner on that to an extent, but it goes behind the meter. Appliances and services are not the thing we're installing or selling, and yet we do get phone calls. So the more we could be proactive, the better, so people are getting into something that makes sense for them.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Curiosity about something you said. Maybe I'm missing something. I understand that you guys get inappropriately placed calls about projects that are not your deal. Why would you guys even have to partner on consumer liability issues? To me, is a clear product thing if

[Andrea Cohen, Vermont Electric Cooperative]: Just because folks interact with us frequently. Don't have to partner, but our members are, we're a co op, these are our members, we care about them. They get a bill from us every month. So the first thing when something isn't what they expect, we're gonna be the first phone call a lot of the times, and we try to work with them and direct them to the right place, but we run

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: out Directing them to the right place.

[Andrea Cohen, Vermont Electric Cooperative]: Yeah, try, but just today, we're in the card room today and a legislator who's been dealing with constituent on a certain issue is still calling us asking for help, and it has nothing to do with us. Right. Yet, we are the face, we are the ones sending them a bill every month. We can't not be involved. Right.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: It's not like being the state

[Andrea Cohen, Vermont Electric Cooperative]: legislator. Okay.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: They don't get as compensated as well.

[Andrea Cohen, Vermont Electric Cooperative]: Yeah, predict exactly. So the more we can do no harm, like I said, the provisions that are in there about limits and guardrails and safety, things are in pretty good shape. I will say this liability issue that was just mentioned, I think we totally disagree with TJ's take and this was what I was gonna bring to you today is one issue that I think still needs attention that we didn't get settled up on the body. We wanted to be explicitly clear that we are not responsible, meaning our members. If one member puts products or things on the system that does damage to the system, has some damage to the system, to the transformer, we will go to that member and expect that they will compensate that. Why should we pass that cost on to all the other members as we are today? If somebody does damage to the system, we go to them and our lawyers and their lawyers try to figure it out. Because there's a provision in this bill, a provision that is not in this bill, Utah, I believe, has it, and you were just mentioning Virginia. I think those bills have this language that makes it very explicit that the utility is not responsible for damage to the system caused by these products. The only reason we bring that up is there is a provision in the bill that passed the House, the Senate, sorry I've patched it out for myself today. It explicitly says that the distribution company cannot require a customer to pay any fee or charge related to the device. We're Oh, I okay with, right? You install it, you do it, we're not gonna charge you anything. Good installation. But if you did damage to the system, we'd wanna make sure that we could go back to you and ask for you to cover the cost of the damage. I think it's only fair and right. We don't wanna limit our ability to recoup the cost. So if you look at Utah, you look at Virginia, they have a line in there, something to the effect that says their electric use company is not liable for the damage. So as you're working things up, we can provide you with language that we think makes sense. And again, it is in Utah and it is in Virginia. Understand it's in Virginia. That'd be great. Thank you for that. And I think the notice in reporting, I understand you were just talking about that. Why would we want or not want people to notify us? Originally we did because we were concerned about just the safety issue to our employees. If they're working on the system, we'd wanna know. But because the provision got in there about not being able to backfeed during an outage and because there was a limit on how big these systems could be, we felt that it is really like an appliance on customer side. We didn't see what we would do with that information. Tisha, I don't know if we're opposed to it, it's just not for our purposes do we really need it. I think the question back is, what's the goal of that? What would be the goal of creating people registering with us? Maybe it's more important to the fire safety folks. I wanna ask them, do they wanna know where these are? Because if there's an incident in the building, we're not going into the home. Right. But fire responders might be, they might wanna know where this is.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: If we're at a point ten, twenty years down the road where they are, they're cheaper and more people

[Andrea Cohen, Vermont Electric Cooperative]: are using them, would you wanna know then? You know, I did ask our team that, and outside of safety issue, there was not a compelling reason. And again, it's a behind the meter, it's a load reducer. People are doing lots of things behind the meter. They're charging cars, they're putting an efficient up light. It's so complex. We're relying on our advanced metering systems and other kind of really smart innovation that's happening with like learning a lot more about load and usage and that if we had everybody kind of notifying about every appliance or every load reducer, I'm not sure what Our folks are like, don't do it for that reason. They didn't feel like they needed it. But there might be other reasons. So depending on your goal for collecting that information, there might be really good reasons to do it. It's just not the ones that we are needing. Do

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: you have people installing batteries?

[Andrea Cohen, Vermont Electric Cooperative]: Yeah.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: This seems like this could be an analogous situation where a battery could back to the grid if something if some safety device failed somehow. Right? Yeah. So how do you handle that in terms of liability, in terms of safety?

[Andrea Cohen, Vermont Electric Cooperative]: Yeah, again, think it's more from what I was hearing, again, I'm happy to go back and talk to the experts on this, that it was more of a local, not like on the grid system. Like in the home, right? More on that side of the meter in terms of the safety concerns. Right. I mean, it's a big battery.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Well, mean, what I understand, these plug in PVs aren't going to generate very

[Andrea Cohen, Vermont Electric Cooperative]: much Right. Right. That was

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: the much generation. But with a battery

[Andrea Cohen, Vermont Electric Cooperative]: A bit a large

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: See, two Tesla batteries or whatever. Seems like the whole purpose of that is Right. Is to back feed well, is to be available to for the for the house, and it's also connected to the grid. And then it also makes me think of of vehicle to grid car batteries. We don't have much of that now, but but that's presumably The

[Andrea Cohen, Vermont Electric Cooperative]: PC just adopted rules around battery storage, and there's thresholds, right? So I think with many of these things, when it's not that big, not a big deal, less concern, but when you hit a threshold, it becomes a concern.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Okay. So

[Rep. Christopher Howland (Member)]: there are provisions in place so that if you have your Tesla or your batteries in your home to 10 k w, you're not your neighbor can't use it. Their provisions somehow look correct that that your batteries don't go to

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Well, in this case, with these PVs, plug in PVs, what we heard yesterday with modeling, wherever that was, did modeling about, suppose we had 40% market penetration of these things, is there any chance that that would damage a substation? Their conclusion was that any excess generation would be absorbed by other other houses, other users. The immediate generation. Yeah, within a substation territory. From that, I'm concluding that, yes. I guess if it goes back onto the grid, that it's it's going back onto the grid, and would be available for anybody who's using electrons off the grid. Yes.

[Andrea Cohen, Vermont Electric Cooperative]: Yeah. I'm I'm gonna get out over my skis real fast on this, but I'm operating off of here.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: I'm already face planted,

[Andrea Cohen, Vermont Electric Cooperative]: so. When I brought this in, the limits on the size of these systems so early, you know, and, like, we will certainly come back if we felt like this was causing trouble. He did not feel like, outside of safety issues and the fact that they couldn't back feature in and out, kind of check boxes across the things we care about.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Yep. Okay, thanks. So the the UL's stipulations, as far as I understand it, require an electrician and a special plug and all this other stuff, which would make it completely unpinable. So I think Virginia, to have not read yet, put in a provision so that you could plug in if you want. They have, you know, they have a weirdly defined, I think, for instance, the power output as a true, like, appliance where you just buy it and plug it in with the the proper back pain.

[Andrea Cohen, Vermont Electric Cooperative]: Yep. With the cutout and all that stuff. But

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: do you comment about that one way or the other?

[Andrea Cohen, Vermont Electric Cooperative]: I really don't you know, our folks, again, aren't in the home. Right? They're not and so the electricians, you know, are really well, we're we're not really electricians in installing systems. Think we're more concerned about what gets onto the system beyond the home. That safety concern and those issues there, I think are more you have other witnesses that could probably speak better. Thank you. Thank you.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Hi, Lewis.

[Louis Porter, General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op]: Good morning. How are you?

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Good. How are you?

[Louis Porter, General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op]: Doing great. Thank you. And thanks for allowing me to join you by Zoom. I got a little behind with outages yesterday, so I'm trying to

[Rep. Christopher Howland (Member)]: catch up. Thank you.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Yeah, no worries. Thanks for being here.

[Louis Porter, General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op]: Yep. For the record, Lewis Porter, general manager of Washington Electric Co op, and I appreciate the opportunity to testify on this on this provision. Like, Vermont Electric Co op, we're not opposed to the bill. A couple of points I'd like to make about it and happy to answer any questions, of course, that I'm able to. We don't always talk about safety in your committee, but it is the most important thing that we do. It's more important than any of the other issues, reliability, outage management, personnel, costs, anything else that we do talk about in your committee. It's more important than any of those, as important as each of those are. I very much support the idea that these devices be fully inspected and overseen by Underwriters Laboratory before being deployed. That wasn't the case in all versions of this bill, and we're glad to see that that's there. That gives me a lot of confidence that both the line workers and the people who have these in their homes will be protected. So I think that's a great and important and should be a thorough review by UL, just as it is for other appliances in the home. On reporting, I was the one, I think, in the set aside who argued against having a reporting requirement, and there were really two reasons for that. One is without any ability to enforce or require that that reporting happen, it's not going to happen in many of the cases. And so we're going to get a skewed view of the data and maybe a false sense of security that we know where these things are when they're not. And if they are truly an appliance, then we don't require people to register hot tubs with us or microwaves or any other appliances. And so because of those two things, I would rather, we're going to be separate from these things, then these are not going to be within the PUC domain, I would like to just keep that line clear. We spend a lot of time working with members and educating them and working with them to make sure that the line between our responsibility and theirs is clear and that it ends at the meter. And that's not always easy to do, but this, to me, people register these, report these to their utility blurs that line of where the member responsibility is and where the electric co op's responsibility is. You can see how important that is because if we were responsible for everything being done electrically to code within somebody's home, there is a very large share of my members' houses, including probably mine, that we would not be able to connect to. And so it's important to maintain that line and have that line of demarcation be clear to everybody. So that's my thoughts on reporting.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Those are actually decent. Those are good thoughts. I was thinking only about, are we ever going to need to know where these are? But I have not thought about compliance. So you're right. I mean, some percentage of people, probably a big percentage of people aren't gonna, you know, just like the warranty paperwork. So that's interesting. And then our earlier conversation about making it clear that you guys aren't responsible for these things, that could kind of blur that line. So those points make sense to me. Thank

[Louis Porter, General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op]: you. And that's my third and final point I wanted to talk with you about is I think it's really essential that it be clear that this is outside of the PUC process, and I think that's fine given the size and scope of these and given the fact that there's not going to be compensation for excess generation. But there's one other aspect that I think would be helpful to make clear, and that is the consumer complaints aspect. So I can't share my wording with you, but I have one, and I don't, I mean, I can't share it because I don't have permission to share on screen, but I have one sentence that I would like to amend in subsection B of 1.3, which is just to add that it's not otherwise subject to the jurisdiction of the PUC. And I can send that to you, Madam Chair, for your consideration.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Yeah, that'd be great.

[Louis Porter, General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op]: But, oh wait, I've got sharing now. Thank you. So this would be my hopefully simple amendment, would be this one phrase additional in subsection B.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Can you make that much noise, please?

[Andrea Cohen, Vermont Electric Cooperative]: All right.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: We cannot see you.

[Louis Porter, General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op]: Oh, you can't see you?

[Andrea Cohen, Vermont Electric Cooperative]: Well, can see

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: you some of us probably can. Well,

[Louis Porter, General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op]: I will share it with you. One phrase, so I will share it with you by email. The reason this is so important is

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Where to Andrew this going?

[Louis Porter, General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op]: Is It would go in subsection B, which begins the installation of a portable solar energy generation device.

[TJ Poor, Vermont Department of Public Service]: Page two. Two. Line three. Line three. And

[Louis Porter, General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op]: I would simply add to the end of that subsection B, or otherwise subject to the jurisdiction of the Public Utility Commission.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: End the sentence.

[Louis Porter, General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op]: At the end of the sentence, yep. And then I think there's an or that would have to be eliminated since I'm adding to the list there, but I'll send it to you by email. Okay. The reason I think this is important is to Andrea's point, which is that we get wrapped up in things related to people's home energy use that are really not our responsibility or that we're particularly well suited to solve. Sometimes that can be solved just with a conversation with a member, which we're happy to do, but sometimes that goes into a PUC complaint by the member, which can be very costly for us to answer. We recently had a PUC complaint by one of our members who had a net metering system that was undersized, and that member believed and argued that it was a metering issue on our end, which as it required us to prove a negative became quite complicated. We ended up spending about $20,000 in legal fees and experts to answer that complaint. We were shown in the end not to be in the wrong, and so it was resolved. But that is an expense that the rest of our membership had to bear. And if these things are going to be outside of the CPG certificate of public good PUC process, I think they should be fully out. That would still leave open to the consumer who buys these consumer protection through the court process, through the AG's consumer protection office, and of course, any other issue they have with us, including wanting us to check meters or wanting us to respond to other complaints, would still be open to them through the PUC. But I would suggest that we do not want to open up the possibility of expensive PUC complaints based on these when there isn't a CPG or other engagement through the PUC

[Andrea Cohen, Vermont Electric Cooperative]: process. I

[Louis Porter, General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op]: don't know if that was as clear as mud or not, but

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: No, that was good. Thank you.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Yeah.

[Louis Porter, General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op]: Happy to answer any questions.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: I think Ripolland has one.

[Rep. Christopher Howland (Member)]: So I think you raised a point on what I would call or refer to as power quality issues. So with the advent of all the electronics in a home today, computer systems and what have you, if when somebody had an issue, with power quality, electrician was supposed to balance the, low between the two legs of the of of the panel. And if somebody has a very nominal low low in their system and they plug this

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: what

[Rep. Christopher Howland (Member)]: 200 watts into the one leg, the effects it has on the other leg within the home for power quality may be an issue, particularly if the other leg has a single phase water pump or something with a large starting current or other effects.

[Louis Porter, General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op]: Are you concerned about and let me just say at the forefront here, I'm definitely not electrical engineer or or an electrician. But are you concerned about breaker masking or are you concerned about damage to other devices?

[Rep. Christopher Howland (Member)]: No. That the yes. That the that the other electronic devices gonna get affected. The the computer on leg b is gonna be affected because of what's happening on leg a because the secondary the additional power source is solely on leg a. And these are the types of issues I experienced with people who had 120 volt jet pipe, jet type water pumps. So large starting current and, you know, like you say, the complaint only comes back to the source of the electricity without separate generation.

[Louis Porter, General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op]: Yeah. So I think this is exactly a case of why we should rely on UL to inspect these things and certify them, because that will be something they will take into account and consider when they're when they're approving these for sale, as well as the prevention of backfeeding when the grid itself is down.

[Rep. Christopher Howland (Member)]: The in the initial net generating era, the inverters were all UL rated. And then for a period of time, UL removed their underwriting of the inverters. And so the utility didn't know which inverters were preUL remover and which were postUL remover. But back feed in the initial development back feed was an issue for the utility I worked for.

[Louis Porter, General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op]: Yeah. And we've had issues more recently with with some what are called hybrid inverters also where where they might be connected into both a solar system and a home battery system. We've had questions and done some digging on the inverter in those for exactly the reasons that you point out. I think given the size of these and given the relative simplicity of them, I'm confident that if UL does list them, does register them, they will be they will work as they're supposed to. But I hear what you're saying, and I we have had some questions about that, very fact, both from a compensation net metering question. You know, we definitely do not want to be compensating people for power that originated either on the grid or from a fossil generator. And also, of course, from a safety standpoint of of line crews or others who might be coming into contact with with wires during an outage. I don't know if I've answered your question or not, but

[Rep. Christopher Howland (Member)]: I'm I'm all set with that. We'll

[Louis Porter, General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op]: Happy to talk with you offline too if helpful.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Great.

[Louis Porter, General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op]: I think that the state fire inspector, electrical inspector's office came in on the Senate side, they may be able to shed some light here as well.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: They're coming in next week, I think.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Great.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Super. All right. Thanks, Louis. Appreciate your time.

[Louis Porter, General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op]: Yeah. Would you like me to email just to you to the full committee or to somebody else, the

[Rep. Christopher Howland (Member)]: line

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Send of me the to the full committee and copy our committee assistant, that'd be great.

[Louis Porter, General Manager, Washington Electric Co-op]: Will do. Thank you so much for having me, appreciate it.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Yeah, thanks for your Thanks for zooming in. Alright. Hi, Ken.

[Ken Nolan, General Manager, Vermont Public Power Supply Authority (VPPSA)]: Good morning. I'm sure thanks for the opportunity to speak. For the record, Ken Nolan. I'm the general manager of Vermont Public Power Supply Authority. I think my testimony is gonna be pretty short because we are generally in agreement with what, Andrea and Lewis just described. We had pretty extensive testimony on the senate side and the committee and natural resources there addressed most of our concerns. The two left, really around worker safety, that Andrea had talked to initially. The UL 3,700 listing helps quite a bit there. I think the line linemen we're hearing from are still nervous about this, and I I noted that you have IBEW coming in tomorrow. So I'll I'll defer to their business manager as as far as their thoughts, but would would encourage you to to to listen carefully there because there is concern amongst line worker working force that without a a physical disconnect, they're not completely comfortable relying on the UL device to disconnect it when when there's an outage. So you may hear more comments there. The other is on the liability, and I I would echo that both the Utah bill and the Virginia bill in process have included specific liability language saying the utilities are not responsible, and we're happy to provide that that language out of those bills if it's if it's helpful. But we would also like to see that for exactly the reason Andrea described. We wanna be sure that if there is damage done to the system, utilities aren't having to to cover that cost and spread it to to other customers. Also, we we agree with Lewis' language. You know, the customer complaints that come anytime you electric bill comes out away a customer doesn't expect can not only be expensive in legal fees, but they they take an enormous amount of staff time and administrative time just to to document what's going on. So being being clear that this is truly an appliance and not subject to, discussions with with CAPI or other state agencies if the customer is not liking what they're seeing, would be helpful. And on the the registration side, I think as as long as we're treating this as an appliance and we're not counting on it for, as was described earlier, electric vehicles or batteries where the utility is including them in utility programs for peak reduction, and and there really isn't a strong interaction with the grid. In this case, it's just intended to be reducing the customer's load, and that's something the utility doesn't need to be involved with. And I I think it would actually create confusion and administrative burden if we're now trying to track these, especially as stated in the title of the bill, they're they're portable. Right? You'd have to not only track where they're installed initially, but where they move to over time, which can can be pretty complicated to keep track of. So with that, I I'll stop. I'm happy to answer questions.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Yeah. Rick Campbell.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: So if a customer buys a battery and installs it, not using any any incentive money, that still has to be registered with the PUC. Right? There's still a CPG involved?

[Ken Nolan, General Manager, Vermont Public Power Supply Authority (VPPSA)]: There's yeah. Under the rule nine nine point hon 9,009 that just got put out, There would be a registration requirement, potentially a CPG requirement, and those would have to be tracked.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Yeah. Okay. But that involved a lot more a lot more potentially a lot more juice than a portable solar.

[Ken Nolan, General Manager, Vermont Public Power Supply Authority (VPPSA)]: Correct. And in those in the batteries, even if they're on the customer side, but they have the potential to, you know, in some cases, double the cost the the home load when they're charging or put power back onto the grid. So there's actually an argument there that the utilities need to look at transformer sizing, the connection to the house. There there are interconnection issues that the way this bill is structured would not apply to the solar the portable solar project.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Oh, so there could be there could be infrastructure that the utility has to adjust somehow to accommodate a behind the meter battery, even if there's no incentive and no ratepayer money involved in incentives. Right?

[Ken Nolan, General Manager, Vermont Public Power Supply Authority (VPPSA)]: Correct. I mean, if the ratepayer chooses to not participate in the peak reduction program and then just gonna put a battery in for themselves, they they're still affecting the load at the home enough that it could have repercussions at the the distribution transformer level or the service line level that we wanna make sure are taken care of. I think that's the purpose of the PUC rule that they just put out.

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: Okay. Great. Alright. Thanks.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: Any more questions for Ken? Alright. Ken, thanks for being here. Appreciate your time.

[Ken Nolan, General Manager, Vermont Public Power Supply Authority (VPPSA)]: Thank you very much.

[Andrea Cohen, Vermont Electric Cooperative]: For Yeah,

[Rep. R. Scott Campbell (Vice Chair)]: thank you.

[Rep. Kathleen James (Chair)]: And we can go, we are on the floor at 01:00. We're actually done with testimony for the day. We can go We'll be on the floor at one, and we are back here tomorrow morning at 09:00 with more testimony on 02/2002.