Department of Public Service gives 'Electricity 101' briefing to House Energy committee, highlights affordability, grid evolution

Montpelier — TJ Forr, director of regulated utility planning at the Vermont Department of Public Service, briefed the House Energy and Digital Infrastructure Committee on Jan. 29 about the structure of Vermont’s electric sector, results from public engagement on energy priorities, and the regulatory framework that governs utilities and the grid.

Forr told committee members that the presentation was intended to “level set” and avoid policy debate for the day while preparing legislators for future program-level discussions. He described the department’s statutory mission to represent the public interest in energy, telecom, water and wastewater matters and said those duties flow from Title 30 and Vermont’s Comprehensive Energy Plan.

The briefing summarized state goals from the 2022 Comprehensive Energy Plan, including a 90% renewable-energy target across sectors by 2050, and an annual update the department provided to the committee on Jan. 15, 2025. Forr said the department conducted extensive public engagement in 2022–23 — including a statewide poll of 700 randomly selected Vermonters and a series of focus groups — and reported that three priorities rose to the top: affordability, reliability and reducing carbon emissions. “Affordability rises to the top here,” Forr said when describing the polling results.

Forr told the committee the Department of Public Service has not adopted a single, working statutory definition of affordability for policy purposes. He said some studies suggest an energy-burden benchmark of about 6% of household income, but that Vermont’s actual burden and the department’s working definition are still under review.

On how the grid works, Forr walked members through the sector’s core components — generation, transmission and distribution — and explained the increasing role of distributed resources. “I think of the transmission lines, like highways,” he said, contrasting high-voltage transmission with the distribution system that delivers power to homes and businesses. He described the evolving grid as moving from a one-way flow of electricity to more two-way flows as customers add rooftop solar, storage, heat pumps and electric vehicles.

Forr reviewed the types of utility providers in Vermont: investor-owned utilities, electric cooperatives, municipal utilities and a number of smaller public providers. He identified Green Mountain Power as the largest retail utility and said it serves about 275,000 customers; the transcript did not specify the company’s exact share of statewide load. He also noted two cooperatives (Washington Electric Co-op and Vermont Electric Co-op) and several municipal utilities. He said one municipal entity is in transition to become its own utility, with that transition expected to complete toward the end of 2026.

The briefing outlined how transmission is funded in the region. Forr described a regional network service charge that pays for bulk transmission across New England and said Vermont’s transmission owner (VELCO) is funded in part through costs allocated regionally. As Forr summarized it: “we pay about 4% of those lines on VELCO’s lines, and the rest of the region pays 96%,” referring to the regional allocation of bulk transmission costs as explained in the briefing.

Forr also described the layered regulatory oversight that applies to Vermont electric service. He said the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) oversees interstate wholesale markets and ISO New England under the Federal Power Act; ISO New England manages dispatch and wholesale markets for the region. Within Vermont, the Public Utility Commission regulates local distribution utilities, their rates and the siting of generation and transmission projects. The Department of Public Service participates in rate cases and other proceedings to represent customers, reviewing utilities’ proposed costs for being “known and measurable” and for prudency in investment decisions.

The director noted utilities file integrated resource plans (IRPs) — currently on a three-year cycle — that lay out planning frameworks and scenarios (including the expected growth of distributed energy resources), and that the department uses those plans in its review to help limit future prudency disputes.

Forr told the committee that a second session would be useful to focus on programs and policy tools — such as energy efficiency initiatives, the Renewable Energy Standard, grid modernization and federal funding programs — that were not covered in detail in the Jan. 29 briefing. Committee members asked questions about polling details, definitions of affordability and aspects of transmission funding during the presentation.

The session was informational; there were no formal votes or committee actions recorded during the portion of the transcript provided.