Witnesses urge change to Vermont’s ‘single plant’ rule to speed solar on already‑disturbed sites

Pierce Berlin, director of renewable energy markets at Renewable Energy Vermont, told the House Energy and Digital Infrastructure Committee on April 2 that the state’s current “single plant” definition in 30 V.S.A. §8002 is preventing new solar from being sited on already‑disturbed or otherwise suitable land and urged the Legislature to change the statute as part of S.50.

Berlin said the statute’s sentence that treats “common ownership, continued title, construction or proximity of facilities to each other” as relevant to whether facilities are part of the same project has created a presumption that adjacent or nearby arrays are one project, producing extra regulatory steps, cost and time. “We'd love to talk about how we can more efficiently use land that already posted in solar or is suitable for solar,” Berlin said.

The issue traces to how Vermont handled early incentive programs. Berlin told the committee the single‑plant language was added in 2009 to prevent larger solar projects from being subdivided into multiple smaller projects to capture above‑market payments under the original standard‑offer program. That program had a 2.2‑megawatt standard‑offer limit; under earlier administrative pricing there was an incentive for developers to split projects to reach a higher per‑unit payment. Berlin said that with the end of the standard offer and of off‑site net metering “there is no longer any justification to protect ratepayers” by applying the single‑plant presumption to all projects and that the law now adds cost and uncertainty without ratepayer benefit.

Why it matters: committee members pressed Berlin that the rule has direct cost effects and can block reuse of already‑disturbed sites that towns have identified as preferred for solar under Act 179 enhanced energy planning. Berlin offered multiple examples where legal caution or PUC practice has added expense or delay: a developer in Bennington was advised to build a brand‑new road to avoid the presumption rather than use an existing access road (the presentation cited a cost of “over $50,000”); another developer removed two utility poles installed only two years earlier and replaced them to avoid sharing infrastructure; a residential condo development faced an unexpected eight‑month review when the PUC initially indicated four separately metered residential arrays might be considered a single plant; and projects on the GlobalFoundries campus required additional PUC petitioning that added “tens of thousands of dollars” and months of delay before a favorable ruling.

Technical and policy details: Berlin said Vermont retains a 5‑megawatt ceiling for projects to qualify for Tier 2 distributed generation, while ISO New England treats anything under 5 megawatts as distributed generation in practice. Renewable Energy Vermont’s draft language would: remove the presumption that nearby facilities are a single plant for projects that are not part of an above‑market procurement program, allow independent interconnections, and cap colocated capacity at 10 megawatts total on a parcel or contiguous site so that distributed generation intent is preserved.

Committee members and other witnesses noted tradeoffs. Several representatives observed that if Vermont creates future nonmarket programs (for example a community solar or standard‑offer successor that sets above‑market rates), statutes or program rules would still need single‑plant protections to prevent gaming. Berlin agreed and said protections could be written into any future above‑market program; his proposal would only exempt market‑rate projects from the presumption that they are a single plant.

On grid adequacy and interconnection, Berlin said interconnection costs and upgrades remain governed by the Certificate of Public Good and the utility interconnection process; utilities can and do set interconnection costs, and developers decide whether projects remain economic at those prices.

The committee indicated the single‑plant language could be folded into S.50 as a discrete amendment if members desired, but several members emphasized synchronization with any community solar or other successor programs so that statutory protections against gaming remain in place for above‑market programs.

Ending: The committee did not vote on any change during the hearing. Renewable Energy Vermont asked lawmakers to craft narrow statutory language to allow additional market‑rate solar projects to use existing disturbed sites and infrastructure while preserving single‑plant safeguards for any future above‑market procurement programs.