Witness urges change to Vermont's single-plant rule in S.50 to lower costs, enable collocation

A witness identifying herself as the climate and energy program director for a statewide environmental consumer-protection organization told the House Energy and Digital Infrastructure Committee on April 9 that S.50 could be improved by changing Vermont's "single plant" definition for certain renewable projects.

The witness explained that small renewable projects in Vermont are currently developed through three principal pathways: net metering (projects up to 500 kilowatts), the standard-offer program (projects up to 2.2 megawatts), and utility power-purchase agreements or utility-owned projects. She said the single-plant definition was added in the 2009 law that created the standard-offer to prevent developers from splitting larger projects to gain program benefits, and that that test made sense when the standard-offer and net-metering programs together supplied most of the state's sub-5-megawatt capacity.

But the witness told the committee the policy context has changed. The Renewable Energy Standard (RES), first enacted in 2015 and updated more recently, requires substantially more annual capacity in the tier-2 category (the witness estimated the need could rise from roughly 25 megawatts per year in earlier years to something on the order of 50'60 megawatts per year later this decade). With the standard-offer program winding down and net metering shrinking, she said much of the near-term tier-2 capacity will be procured through PPAs and utility solicitations rather than the programs the 2009 single-plant rule was designed to protect.

Because of that shift, the witness argued, keeping the same strict single-plant test for projects that do not participate in net metering or the standard-offer can add unnecessary costs. She described scenarios in which two adjacent projects could share roads, screening and interconnection equipment; under a stringent single-plant analysis developers have sometimes built redundant infrastructure to avoid being treated as a single plant. Those extra costs, the witness said, can raise the bids utilities receive and therefore increase costs to ratepayers.

To address the concern, the witness recommended the committee keep the existing single-plant definition for projects in net metering and the standard-offer and adopt a narrower or alternative definition for other projects. That, she said, would preserve protections against gaming of programs that are still ratepayer‑backed while allowing collocation where it makes engineering and land‑use sense.

Committee members asked about statutory limits that inform the current approach, including the 5-megawatt threshold used in RES eligibility (a threshold tied to ISO New England procedures) and the practical details of how ISO treats sequential projects on the same site. The witness said ISO has a separate set of tests and that it can allow sequentially built facilities on the same site to be treated as separate facilities depending on timing and other factors.

The witness also cited the status of the standard-offer program: she said the statute authorizes 27.5 megawatts in the current standard-offer authorization, that about 9 megawatts appear unassigned, and roughly 16 megawatts have been authorized to specific projects but are not yet online. She urged the committee to draft any change so that it does not impair oversight of or protections within net metering and the standard-offer programs.

No formal committee action or vote on S.50 occurred during this hearing segment; members expressed interest in a compromise approach that preserves PUC oversight and program protections while reducing unnecessary duplication and cost for appropriately collocated projects.