PUC tells Senate panel it favors a narrower statutory 'plant' definition to reduce litigation and preserve program caps

Seth Hoffman, general counsel to the Vermont Public Utility Commission, told the Senate Natural Resources & Energy committee March 19 that Act 38 of 2025 required the PUC to propose a clearer statutory definition of the term "plant" in Title 30. Hoffman said the commission opened a public proceeding, solicited multiple rounds of comments and held workshops before sending recommended language to the committees of jurisdiction.

The PUC’s proposed default standard would treat facilities as a single plant only when they are both (1) on the same or continuous parcels and (2) use the same electricity‑generating technology. Hoffman emphasized this is an AND test: both conditions must be met. He said this approach is intended to preserve the integrity of capped incentive programs rather than allowing developers to circumvent statutory program limits by siting multiple separately enrolled facilities immediately adjacent to each other.

Under the proposal, the commission would still treat certain arrangements as separate: individual residential net‑metering systems (neighbors may each net‑meter), multi‑owner residential metering in common‑interest communities, and cases where program caps have already been reached on a site. Hoffman summarized the caps used to guide the exception analysis: 500 kilowatts for net‑metering and roughly 2.2 megawatts for the standard‑offer program; other programs such as RES tier‑2 have separate size caps (tier‑2 examples cited around 5 MW). He said those statutory caps limit how much generation may receive a given financial incentive on contiguous parcels, though additional generation under different programs (for example, PPAs) could be sited on the same site if it is not claiming the same capped incentive.

Hoffman argued the change would reduce ambiguity that has driven litigation under the status‑quo test — which asks whether facilities are proximate, continuous in construction, under common ownership, or share infrastructure — interpretation that has resulted in repeated Supreme Court appeals. "This analysis causes a lot of ambiguity and a lot therefore of litigation," he told the committee, adding that the statute’s examples historically were developed for wind projects and do not fit distributed solar well.

Committee members asked whether pending litigation would be affected. Hoffman said changes would generally be prospective — cases filed under current law remain governed by the law in effect when they were filed — though he acknowledged new legislation can be used in ongoing briefing and parties can refile petitions where appropriate. He also stressed that the proposed definition applies chiefly to distributed generation projects under 5 MW (roughly 25 acres) and does not remove environmental screening or public‑good review required by statute.

A renewable energy representative testified in support of the PUC proposal, saying it reduces costs and administrative burdens and enables more efficient reuse of previously developed or disturbed sites. The witness described examples where adopting the single‑plant standard would save tens of thousands of dollars in road and interconnection work for adjacent projects.

The committee did not vote on statutory language March 19. The PUC said it is also working on a concept for a decommissioning fund tied to the definition, and expects to continue discussions with stakeholders and lawmakers in the coming weeks.