 Maria and I were talking about earlier as well, which is I think I think in this building we're all happy to support public access but if there were also let's say money that wound its way into broadband investments or something like that that seems relevant and might get more people interested so so I don't know I don't know no we did we thought about it a lot this summer and we just knew that we only had a certain number of meetings to address it and we felt like we were sort of getting pulled in a lot of different directions we kept coming back to the original charge which was looking at this but it certainly was brought up by numerous witnesses that it could be much larger and but I see your point in terms of getting more eyes on it and what I understand there is another study out there that this could hold it into you know house IT I know James said something about there is a telecom bill or a telecom study out there it's a telecom plan okay the department of public service yeah Council Dave asked for last year you made a number of revisions yeah parents are and you specify that the next plan is December 1st of this year yeah I think there was discussion with the commissioner whether they have a time of resources to complete the plan by that date that's right and you in at 79 said if you feel that you don't have resources you can come back with the proposals to retain an outside consultant as part of the governor's argument in the big bill they are asking for $300,000 to hire an outside vendor to do the telecom plan as part of your own revisions to the department of telecom plan that you made last year there is a section that says to look at specifically the animals that's a media organization okay so I think we'll study this over and look at their money and do what they're going to do with it but there isn't a bigger you won't see it in the work okay did you just for clarification senator some rays do you want this to look at potentially you know these are different financing options that might potentially follow other programs I mean if it is a source of revenue that you know could be an answer to the public access question revenue you know it seems to me we would want to understand that but I don't have more specifics than that I mean you're not precluded from that no no but I wonder if it's worth mentioning I have a feeling the others play so just not to be a dead horse but do you have a yeah yeah I think that would probably keep it in here we do a major all you know change we'll have to take a test well I know I just say that's fine yeah it's the same principle it's just just sort of mentioned that it's not just a way to find a bag it's it's a you know when you don't understand this there are if there are all these people who are right away that I'm getting a freebie right now I mean the study will look at ways to thank you and potentially other yep okay so we're gonna go do that real quick okay all right we're gonna go on to committee discussion possible mark I I yes bring more employment remember just a summary sheet for you all to look at okay and then you may want to start with all right that would be okay yeah I mean everybody had one or two slight issues but they gave us ten sheets of paper and I would like to get down to a one sentence from everybody this is one of the cost us this is what it'll allow this so apparently I don't know who all up and work heads but that's also has a thing on their concern about hydro and what they want and I understand this is being proposed the uses the same and it fills the two apartments together. I knew you were here. Same routine for the record. Thank you very much. My name is Josh Kowson. I'm here with Reno Power. Also with me is Mr. Douglas Smith. He's a more entertaining one, so he should be entertaining, but we're also... He's in the same vitamin routine as... That's right. It's lively. You should put him on that side of me and I don't think I could take the vibrations from two sides. So, we can step through. We put together just a one-pager, double-sided, the other side or some ideas on the tier two proposal, but on the front side is just... To try to kind of sum up both the cost perspective, impact perspective, the things we're thinking about with respect to tier one and tier two, and to quickly step through, you just hit again. In terms of carbon and greenhouse gas, I think everybody knows, but you have the biggest contributors in Vermont transportation, thermal. So, as we think about that, being very careful about the drive-up, the price of electricity at the same time, we're trying to electrify more to decarbonize the system. Tier one, I don't think we got into this a lot last time. We were here, but again, just from our perspective, maintaining that flexibility from the largest providers is HQ. It's the new England Area of Existing Renewable in Vermont and taking such a large resource out of the mix. The concern is that the message also sends the other providers in the region in terms of cost. You take out one of the major suppliers there, and you have the risk of driving up costs from the other suppliers that exist. There's a finite amount of this resource. Also, if you can't buy it, with limiting competition, so what's left is more valuable? That's exactly right. It's not even that we'd necessarily look to do more with HQ or anything. It's just having that player still on the mix is important from putting them on it to benefit the fans. To correctly understand that, explaining that in effect, there would be more hydro available to others if we don't buy it. Why would that drive the price off? Well, it would drive it up from, so if other suppliers of the tier one resource... Yes, yes, yes. Exactly. They would see, OK, HQ's out of the mix. It just changes that. They have to meet the 100% quota, so that gives... That's right. Can I ask you a question? Sure. It is helpful to have these components, and I'll be the first to confess, you know, we drafted this wanting to better understand each other. Yup. Right now, you can buy Brex from HQ and you buy Power from HQ, but they're not all linked together, right? Some are, and you can sell... We have energy contracts with HQ that includes the attribute, and then separately, some attribute only. So the energy is being delivered to New England, and we're taking them back essentially from that. It does feel free to chime in, but... No, that's about it. But you get more rex than Power. That is correct, total. That ends pretty soon, but that's correct. OK, and no other states use HQ Power, is that true? In New England? In short, Massachusetts is the biggest example, and in two ways they are, I would say, planning, since both of these are in the works. One, a proposed new transmission line to meet their so-called CES or clean energy standard requirements. I don't think that is technically their renewable portfolio standard, but that will be something like I don't remember the exact number, but 7 or 8 million megawatt hours that project is constructed primarily large hydroelectric from the other initiative of Massachusetts is so-called CES E, clean energy standard existing. That's only a rulemaking right now, but as outlined that would make use of hydroelectric energies imported over the existing transmission tie known as HVDC phase 2. And does anyone else permit rats from HQ? Anyone? I think the CES is the first. Is that right, John? In terms of using? I'm not a weird of another state that counts that energy toward its so-called renewable requirements like a renewable portfolio standard or RPS, but to meet carbon goals. That's what the CES clean energy standard does. So they wouldn't say ducked, but effectively it doesn't- they don't exactly label it as renewable, but Massachusetts surely will be counting for clean energy goals. I'm not a weird of other states at this time. I don't know. Do other states- because I know hydro has been trying to get a line down to Boston and other states. Do other states have as large a percentage in their portfolio of hydro as we do? Are they using renewable? Hydro runs through here trying to get there. Yes, I don't know that. Yeah, I don't. Okay, so we like 100%, but you'd like to be able to keep using hydro because it gives you a little bargaining yourself. Not one minute, that's right. So what is tier two? So one, thinking about the Senator Beerson's point about it's 20% or the 8%, and thinking in terms of as it has essentially been a mostly PV, it's currently still mostly solar in terms of tier two. So 20% doubling yet to achieve that out of the way is defined today would essentially be more than 1200 megawatts of solar in Vermont. Both the stuff that's used to meet tier two as well as older stuff that doesn't even count in tier two, but all of that combined gives you over 1200 megawatts of PV that would be in Vermont in a state that's has a current peak demand of around 900 or so. So just to put in perspective why now that then feeds into some of these costs I'll talk about, but the transmission being a really big one just a lot of one resource stacked up on top of itself, which is where a lot of the challenge is coming. So GNP, we talked about as we stepped through the bullets here we're looking at a snapshot of because the other thing is just looking at a single rate increase number isn't also a great look because what happens is you have a rate increase but then that's customers are paying that for an ever or exact so and looking at a 10 year snapshot for example you know the 15 to 25 million obviously is 150 to 250 million to get that additional 10% of tier two with the 250 million being on the high end if there were more expensive resources the 50 obviously on the lower end with some flexibility there and then we step to the transmission infrastructure. The point that Velco made about as you start to hit more congestion of the system it's going to take improvements to unlock the system and that's a pretty big range but for GNP's act how that actually flows to GNP's customers and ultimately other DU's customers distribution utility customers the same way but less but probably the same. Yeah it's all relative basically you know the little table of the snapshot here Velco had looked at sort of three scenarios so low, medium high, low being you know really well cited and Velco can step through with more detail what those scenarios are 250 to 500 million of transmission investment and what that results in is this line below where basically it's an additional 15 to 50 million per year to GNP customers. Yeah it's a handy word because what happens would be every year but it wouldn't be would it be the same charge every year it wouldn't be on top of so it would be 50 million one year and another 50 the second. That's right. So it'd just be a 50 million dollar charge. Exactly. But it would go on for multiple years. That's right. So it's not a one time disappointed but it's doesn't go 50 then 100 then 150 and 50 million of additional cost for the duration essentially for. I assume if we're paying it off maybe 20 years? Well it's yeah I mean the assets probably 30 to 40 it doesn't appreciate so that number over time will start to go down a little bit but the first 10 years it's basically about that amount pretty much. And you mentioned the part of the cause of this was transmission. That's correct. So when you were computing these numbers were you assuming that the distribution was random or or in areas that already have sufficient. So in addition yeah that's a really good question so the 150 300 500 million Velco did three scenarios and they'll be better to speak to it but at a high level the low scenario was better distribution you know more optimal cited the 500 is if it wasn't as optimally cited and that kind of gets you some of that range there so you can reduce the cost if it's cited well but you still have a chunk of cost at some point I do I mean I do go back to the point though that even even there we had a state with a 900 megawatt peak to have over 1200 megawatts of one resource so I guess the question that was distribution costs upgraded costs for electricity are about 3% 7% neat when you're so you're talking if you do a transmission that's shared by anyone yeah Ramon gets a 4% share of that but if you were making power in a place that has the real get it out of that place and that's 100% so I'm trying to say transmission costs are whatever are you only considering these renewables in the area where the transmission costs are 3% it's widely different than if we consider locating them where it's 100% to get it out so this assumes that these costs are 100% born by Ramon because if the transmission projects are being driven by generation or too much generation Ramon has to pay for that versus if it's low growth and reliability is correlated and I don't care if it's here you'll be able to speak to that I'm not sure so we assume that we're authorizing more renewables and they're all going to be in the areas that are cost us 100% to market what if in the process of putting together tier two it was stated that they would be located in places where it only would cost 3% to get it to market but those numbers change so anywhere the Ramon system anywhere it's going to be 100% the 4% really only pertains when the need for the transmission isn't generation constrained issues that's when there's a reliability so if it's related to generation it's the 100% regardless of where it's located and reliability some of us might remember when the lights went out but reliability is there with ISO to make sure that there's enough electricity and enough transmission capacity and enough backup transmission capacity so that the lights don't go out in all of well I think it was New York north they went out the first time and so if the transmission is necessary to make sure that we have those backup systems and that there's enough energy available then we all share in the cost because we all benefit so if we needed to get Vermont solar to New York City or to Boston in a time of storm that shut them down or whatever that might come in under but that isn't an ISO New England project in call anything we decide to build on our own to move our electricity around our state is ours is that I mean that's a fair assumption I'll put a unless right right so we might right yeah okay okay you want to care you have just another for the record our company just a few things one has just indicated in Vermont we built about a billion dollars worth of transmission the last 12 years over a 40 year period that was concentrated the reason itself has built about 8 billion dollars worth of transmission those total costs Vermont pays about a little less than 4% of those it was all for system reliability the philosophy being we have we have a shared purpose was 40 million I'm sorry for Vermont or supposed to cost excuse me overall over the 10 years you roughly speak there's a lot of carrying costs 40 million wait a second I just want to make sure of a billion it was more than 40 million we paid there was 4% of 4 billion but not all the construction was usual there was a billion dollars worth of construction that indeed was in Vermont 8 billion regional secondly in terms of Josh has it right if it's not interconnected if it's not driven by reliability concerns and reliability concerns largely driven by low growth peak low growth and as you know Vermont's load has been dropping so thus actually for the latest 20 year plan we did which is what we shared with you Hans president made share last week there were no reliability investments on the horizon the scenarios we put together and shared the distribution utilities largely hinged if there was two major factors that impacted the high medium and low scenarios for two fundamental things one the greater the control over where additional generation is cited the lower the cost and the and the less the use of batteries we try to incorporate some cost of big hallway conversations after that we try to incorporate some some modicum of lower in cost for storage fault is all assumptions but to the degree you count less on storage so we're building more wires as opposed to fewer wires so we're not pursuing non-transitional which we're required to do putting that aside that helps draw so how much control you have over where the generation goes and how much you're depending upon storage of the two major factors that determine the ultimate price so that's how we got the high medium and low scenarios so if we had the power to say it would all go next to all the three largest consumer areas then we would probably be on the low end of that or even maybe a little below it Madam Chair the way I characterize it is this if you put the generation closest to where the system is the most robust from a transmission system perspective where do we have good pipes that can store the energy that's coming in which is if you recall Madam Chair that's why Collins was talking about southern Vermont that's where that would be good because there is a whole lot of transmission lines that were set there from Vermont yet alright but just to come back to your overall point because these numbers are big and scary for monitors in the last 10 years have had to invest $80 million for the transmission upgrades of the region I think it was a longer time frame I want to say it was like from 2000 1998 over to 2006 so those costs have been absorbed and have been paid over the course of time sure it was okay could I ask Josh can we assume that for current law do we just cut these numbers in half or how do we no one has from my knowledge asking for changes to current law I assume there's no cost implications to the current R&D so you mean under the existing 10% tier 2 do we just cut these estimates in half probably that's probably reasonable I think yeah assuming you continue with a spread of distribution of solar and that sort of thing for the existing 10% order I'm sure it is probably reasonable okay and that's I should one of the things too I mentioned last time that we did attempt to make in a little bit to the additional cost is that underneath the transmission system is the distribution system which also has its own limitations we've attempted in our total number here to capture some of that as well but it is another sort of layer that's as well and could I ask one other question you guys have gotten approval to install storage as I understand it without impacting rates is that been the deal with the PUC yeah well the storage we have done has been designed to produce a benefit to our customers over its life and so just to summarize that is a way of saying you've been able to figure out how to invest in storage without having a rate impact for customers yeah and I should be clear there can be an additional rate impact and then a rate benefit but the net of it is a benefit if that makes sense but the reason for that is shake his head no sorry I did matter for the department of public service I just wanted to clarify one thing I agree with everything the reason I'm shaking my head no is that GMP is currently using the tesla narrow walls and other storage devices to reduce peak not the generation which is an important consideration so yeah Mr. Macken the other places going is the reason we're able to do that is we're able to use the storage specifically for those power market benefits the capacity market lower our peaks in some cases do a service called regulation which basically the ISO pays us to have resources if you have to shift to essentially be soaking up solar all the time you're going to you're going to give up some of that value so the equation will change if you're doing battery storage just for the purpose of making sure you can manage the transmission system that's the only point and so how do we factor in the storage investments that you know I guess I'm hearing you say there's a limit to how much we can assure rate payers that storage won't impact rates based on what you're telling me and how is that the limit like is that before talking about 20% of the load does that limit about 2% or 8% or 12% is there a way for us to understand that it's tough you one of the one of the key drivers of the benefits of storage is that peak as we said there's only so much peak before it becomes flat the sense where you're not getting any more better problem yeah exactly the amount of storage that we're talking about to achieve soaking up this I think is still so considerable that when Velco did a snapshot of hey if we just use storage it'd be a $900 million cost obviously you probably wouldn't just do storage you do a mix of things and some of that storage you hope to get some of those benefits but I think it's still the size we're talking about still dwarfs the value we could get in those in those peaks just because there's a finite amount and do we have a sense of what your current strategy storage budget is is it $12 million is it a similar timeline yeah I would say if I mean we're working on a couple things around storage doing storage in the homes and in the grid but it's probably in the 5 to 10 million range over the next three yeah three to four years Senator Pearson this is Kirk Johnson again from Velco I don't want to interrupt you for a little bit I just need to stress that going after peak right now is itself a moving target and every New England state is identified that's a cost we want to drive down are impacting and investing millions if not hundreds of millions of dollars certainly in the case of Massachusetts where they have defined programs and subsidies going after Massachusetts which is 80% of New England's load trying to drive down and address their peak so the the race is on we're trying to do it and so you're asking okay about this assumption might we do that even as the other contestants in the race are doing what they can to affect peak there's an impossible infinite amount of variables and you know I'm just trying to put them all on and the reason we want to drive down peak is because that's when we turn on the really dirty and really expensive stuff sure we used to have this little thing up in Burlington that we'd only turn on when it was really bad but again lastly sorry the only other thing that needs to be aware your percentage of use, Vermont's percentage of use at peak drives a whole host of costs to run the system if you're 4% at peak okay we're going to charge you 4% for all these categories of costs to run the system if you're 2% well then why have to pay 2% of the total cost to run the system so in addition to dirty power on that one off use it sets the framework and the cost for a whole bunch of other costs so that's the more we get the peak under control the lower our overall costs are for power I honestly carbon at the peak so there's still room to reduce the peak there is there's still some room there so the middle estimate if we would need to pay close attention to what we're looking for and those numbers are with the shrink we can distribute any new power that's required in intelligent thoughtful manner in the proper places you're saying the middle scenario if you cite it better yes that's fair better you cite it the more the more south you push it where there's stronger transmission that leads to other questions about land and availability to do it the cost of the land and let us not forget the neighbors who can both your neighborhoods tend to have the resources to fight harder if we're going to block their views and it's a reason it's just cheaper to do it in poorer small and more rural communities that's on the developer because they deliver the price on bid and that's what we pay the cost of the developer more to hassle with the neighbors on that it's not a public expense yeah but they'll figure it into their costs but we take the low spending my husband used to call the PO I'll share with you when you reported the bill line he upgraded whether or not he should participate that we were given a bunch of expenses of benefits of how much the 20% increase of power was and we were shocked a couple years later to find out because we increased the power output down there 20 years later we had we had been all subject to the increased expenses for accounting for that 20% increase for all the lines that had to be rebuilt and restructured following the upgrade and members of this legislature tried to analyze those costs those were never part of the discussion it was only the benefits and the costs were were came to us much later how come no one told us that so perhaps we should give some food o's here in part covering this end of it we're seeing any more I think we may also have estimated the ability of the local economy to handle a shutdown and that was something that we did not give I think due deference to and Vettelbarro was not a thriving community at the moment or as thriving as it was separate to state but it was brought up here and we didn't focus okay I think you have a solution hold on there's one really I can't wait for you to get to this last point what's the next one which one do you want to hit well you've been going right down the line yeah so in that mirror yeah that's basically we put some of the PUC had recently done a quest for information through a process this information is straight out of there which is basically just this highlighting over 10 years what's the above market cost that metering program as we look ahead so all we're highlighting there that's happening so there's nothing you know and that will go through its own process but it's just to point out there's some other cost drivers that are existing that this is in addition to sort of the point there the reason that intrigues me is so a couple questions there's a met metering process for the ongoing review yeah and then we just stick where we are or that process sort of doesn't work to your advantage in any way it sort of it assumes that there is a slight decline in the rate and there's a slight increase in retail rates that make because basically you're offsetting the retail rate so if the retail electric rate is going up that's becoming more valuable and at the same time the incentive rate might go down so it sort of balances out a little bit but it doesn't take a drastic cut in net metering for sure but all of this net metering qualifies for tier 2 that's correct so have you backed this how are you merging your two scenarios here this is purely we almost look at the initial tier 2 10% it's just separate and this is part of it for sure this net metering is part of the initial tier 2 I'm not trying to merge those the other costs we're showing here is sort of if we did the second piece as proposed of tier 2 just the second 10% if the 400 is what would be added on if we did the additional 10% no sorry this is what is going to cost under the present scenario so if we add any more on top of it and the same percentage of net metering shows up you could if we double the requirement and the same mix comes in we could assume that that would be an additional 400 so we attempted to capture above what we have the 150 and 250 that is our attempt to show what the next 10% would cost and if we did net metering it's going to do its thing on its own depending on the incentive rates and a lot of different things there and whatever it is it's going to count towards tier 2 but it's most likely going to cover the first 10% of tier 2 which is already happening so then we look at the next 10% will be met with other resources maybe a little bit of net metering in there as well but likely other this 400 is just highlighting the existing net metering that's going to continue today basically it's context as I think your questions are getting to it is a we're looking at as essentially from a policy perspective a sunk commitment and not like a mistake like you blew it but just that as you're questioning elicited our range that 150 to 250 million dollars is going to end up above as soon as they're competitively procured in state renewables like a request for proposals from time to time like the standard offer but sources point being not net metering would provide the difference between a 10% requirement and ramping up to 20 and this cost of 400 million how much how much in the terms of percentage would you expect to get for that is that going to is that going to be effectively how you answer your current tier 2 I don't have the exact number by a large chunk like not a third like two thirds or 70 something percent a large chunk of tier 2 in the volumes shown there a large chunk of that 10% tier 2 requirement would be met by next year so let's just say it answers 80% of your current tier 2 obligation so if I quickly do the math then that costs 400 million to answer tier 2 crudely so then the second if we then double it the second could cost us around the low end around far less 400 million that's an interesting dynamic that's like the 150 range is kind of the low end sure but even okay I thought that when people went to get permitted to build something under standard offer or under smaller projects and there were transmission costs that the developer bore those that's correct today so generation projects have to pay for their interconnection costs I think one of the so at the GMP sort of distribution level that's the case today so how does that factor into these potential transmission upgrade costs so we'll look at that and again Belcom is a little bit better than this almost like an aggregate issue that occurs as you start to stack everything up you get to you probably at some point get to the straw that brings them back and you put 100 million dollars on that project or you're looking at these upgrades need to happen to if I could I think to your question we haven't seen any material manifestation of the transmission bulk system type upgrades yet so we have not seen the costs associated with those in the power purchase agreement or net metering but the sources we've incurred today that's the difference that's why we presented them as two second wines are additive because to our eyes they look like a new layer a new type of cost that is largely not manifesting a full record this is Kirk Johnson in the Belcom what I would say Senator is that we have seen this is a conflict between the regional competitive wholesale market and your ability to connect what impact does it have on surrounding sources within northeastern Vermont that so-called she eyes on the shift of the export interface so many the reason why that is an issue and why there wasn't a cost transmission solution is because they don't care they have cheaper land the delta between the land cost the development cost between what it is in Connecticut, Massachusetts buys them space further they don't do a full buy the developer space in terms of the overall financial metrics of their project further they don't have to pay if they can get in they can get in and say look we can sell our products such that they can write a contract so that someone is deliverable when Iceland says there's a reliability problem because there's too much energy here they go after the projects they can actually control it's not so typically it's the wind project that's over which they have control now they're derby by virtue of it's coming correct and given the fact that they're transmission connected and that's Iceland has a means to effect reliability urban control the PUC as a proxy to kind of solve this wait a minute there's so much head room for transmission capacity and yet these other projects that aren't serving Vermont are taking it up but the PUC said is for a time and all we're going to say no in the derby solar case because this isn't working but in terms of that space that increment of cost for transmission and how come they're not paying for it yet as long as there's something in there they have some way to get into market even if they cause pain to people who are already there it doesn't really matter that would be a question I'll build it back in the matter so Ed McNamara I can also just do a much more simplistic way of explaining this as well the utilities need to buy 1200 megawatts of solar 1200 megawatts of solar needs to get built or there needs to be paid an alternative compliance payment for the renewable energy state so then the question becomes would the utility pay the 60 whatever dollars for the alternative compliance payment for every megawatt effort because they can't get the solar bill because of transmission costs or do they pay front transmission costs to the solar that's built typically yes a solar developer is responsible for distribution upgrades however the assumption that's being made is that solar developers are not going to when it gets to a certain point they're not going to donate the money to build the transmission upgrades that's actually how we control the location at some level they're going to put it in their cost pass it on the only other question I think I have for Josh is about Rygate because we're talking about that what is the rate impact as you understand potential for Rygate we have that if it's kept at the same rate as it is today what is it done we estimate that the rate impact will depend on really two things one what price is established the current bill we can't know that the PUC would determine that if we assume that the price is established at about the same price which is roughly 10 cents per kilowatt hour of Rygate the other variable is how much is the power that it provides to remind utilities it avoids us having to buy sources from elsewhere we estimate that the net of those two which represents basically rate pressure would be on the order of 4 million to 5 million dollars a year for GMP over the next decade the difference basically between the cost and the power savings it provides GMP is the only one that would be obliged to buy from it but I think anybody would take a vast majority on the order of 81% we've been the number we've been working with is 5 million that's and that's for a 10 year shot at 50 million and it has been suggested to us that Massachusetts wind comes on in 3-4 years that will eat up half this recent wrecks that it gets so it might bump up 5.5 or 6 million a year once it's messed with is that a reasonable thing I would say at a high level within some small tolerance yes, our market outlook that underlies that 4 to 5 million dollar a year figure I mentioned does assume a dynamic like Senator McDonald just described that is a gradual, not a crash but a drop in the renewable energy certificate market which is one of the forms of value that we get for that power so yeah I think we have a good understanding we don't renew the contract but it's something cheaper renewables cheaper renewables are filled again GMT would be able to essentially shop for the energy and capacity that we presently obtain from Reige from a mix of sources we wouldn't have any renewable energy certificate revenue we presently get from them but we could shop from other sources again, a rough savings like I am estimating 4 million to 5 million a year for 10 years would you buy that off the grid or from in-state renewables it could be from a wide range in-state it could be from a broker or from the ISO New England market we'd have to look at that but it's not a large chunk of power for us that requires us to have any sort of we can handle those differences in the normal course of forecast no prices we buy cheaper 50 million okay thanks okay and we're ready to go on to your solutions yeah sure so basically what we hit on a little bit in the last time we were talking about is that we just look at the next the second 10% doubling of it to be there's already a defined term new renewable in statute and essentially it's new renewables after 2015 and it's welcome to that date as well so it just wouldn't have size cap or location cap or location requirement and that's that's the extent of it it would basically be looking to be able to procure new renewable energy from within Vermont or outside of Vermont okay so go to the 20% but give you the flexibility of getting it at the least cost least cost right in diversity again as we think about the importance of other technologies in the mix that may allow wind to be part of it that may allow hydro's tough I don't see a lot of new hydro being built but resources into the mix that help balance things out as well as get more cost effective is there new hydro hydro Quebec are they building massive new dams they are because that's I think the concern with hydro Quebec is methane and flooding and but I assume we can't tell which dam are well yeah and we are I think the grand scheme of things Vermont is so miniscule in their mix that I think they dumped last year twice as much as Vermont uses in an entire year just they'll help not producing so so we don't have a market power yeah well we'll market power but we only have our rooms yeah I mean we they got them they're not going under if we pull out it yeah all right thank you hi Melissa Bailey and I'm just following up on testimony from last week we did have some proposed statutory language related to small scale miniscule hydro facilities in Vermont their request from that set is to have these under the definition of care to resource okay we have that what I didn't we have one that's marked up but I couldn't find out who it was from so it might help if some people write it top who sent it because then I'll know who wants it it's the one that is red marked yep okay that's okay it's just it's a I can't tell if it's from alleged council or a member of the public or where it is so okay I apologize so I'm happy to answer any questions around the hydro request tell us what this would do is this in tier two this would be making existing community owned hydro facilities eligible for tier two in Vermont and that would place a value on existing renewable resources as we promote development of new renewable resources and we believe this is appropriate because our hydro facilities are seeing reduced output as they adhere to the new updated clean water standards and this is resulting in lower generation and lower value flowing back to the community from these existing renewable resources so making them tier two eligible would essentially improve the benefit the financial benefit to the communities that own these facilities I'm having tier two is supposed to be the development of new resources but these are existing resources these are existing resources and so it would be a change in the definition of the way that hydro facilities that are now adhering to new water quality standards should be encompassed under tier two in order to keep them financially viable so basically it would let you out of tier two it wouldn't let us out of tier two we would still have the same 20% requirement that is being updated here but right now some of you are already at 100% hydro hydro is 100% renewable and utilities that are 100% renewable which include Burlington, Swanton and WAC are exempted from tier two or all under current statute so this conversation doesn't contain the two main utilities but a handful of our other utilities we have 11 municipal members and five on hydro facilities and those would have a very important of their existing power supply and this would allow them to use that hydro generation or the benefits flow 100% to the community there's no out of state ownership no out of state developer those that value would remain with the utility there would still be added I think it's implemented last week we're developing time by lots of solar that would also be going towards our tier two requirement of course we're operating a metering program so this wouldn't let the municipal utilities out of tier two but it would give us an added resource that could be eligible for tier two what can you give us a sense of the range like the utility with the one of these dams what percentage of their load is generated by that team sure it really varies and I think that was my testimony from last week I apologize if you don't have that in front of me but Swanton it has 100% of their generation that essentially comes from hydro contracts and would not be part of this conversation I believe the others range from maybe 5 to 15% of their portfolio their own hydro comes from their own hydro that the utility owns and I will clarify that BEFSA's tier two obligation applies in aggregate across our 11 members so it wouldn't necessarily be that one utility that has 12% hydro would apply that 12% to tier two it's our overall portfolio that is required to meet the tier two requirement is this the chart to look at? nope there is a table that lists the hydro the municipalities that own hydro facilities so I will note that the facilities that have gone through this re-licensing are the Morrisville and Lindenville hydro units so those numbers are reflective of their reduced output typically they see 30 to 40% production in their generation after going through re-licensing so this future so some of these other numbers would not be reflective of the reductions that we are anticipating over the next our re-licensing processes go over the next roughly 4 to 5 years I think we have any questions but all the other proposal in the markup that I was again to have the same hydro-covac limit across all utilities whatever the community size is appropriate for a limit on H2 as a compliance with tier one our position as to that should be equitable on all utilities amongst all utilities are all vets that you can all utilities fill as drafted says you can have 35% of your basically tier one compliance come from hydro-combat unless you currently receive that in which case you can stay at the level you are currently at and so our position is that whatever level the set should be consistent across utilities so is it all right as written everybody can have a control of 5 change this allows for different limits to apply to different utilities I think this is well qualified to make this point as she represents utilities that may have as many as 30 almost per mile and other utilities that have half that many per mile and this one says equity I think she means that those figures in account don't make having one size fits all regardless of each utilities are the difficulties in reaching those standards is that a fair characterization okay thank you all right committee we have got about 5 minutes left for what was paid as committee discussion we have 4 days 3 days next week and then the week we get back but this one really needs to come out next week it needs to go back to natural resources so we need to start doing some fish bait and we don't have time to do that now and we have another very heavy agenda heavy witnesses coming up but I think you can assume we are not going to get out of here at 3 o'clock on Friday okay we may we'll see how we do today and perhaps start doing some thinking about what you want to do to get us through this tier 1 seems to be fine except for the percentage of hydro Quebec or the limit which they prefer not to have it's the tier 2 do you know what's the mix how much I don't feel like I have any power as to where to say hydro siding should go but I think I could tell the p... not hydro but I think we might be able to tell the PUC that we would like them to achieve certain goals within and percentage and no impact or minimal impact on the transmission it sounds like I know we have lots of transmission lines running into Brattleboro so if we can find a way to do some solar there it might be very helpful that just might get shipped off to Massachusetts but see but just think through we've got some alternatives proposed we've got the bill and we've got a whole lot of issues okay this we are going to repealing the sunset on the 240A process and I've got a gray because they can each tell one but this is the 240 you can go through the 240A or act 250 I believe this is telecommunications it's been 248A we have extended the sunset seven times four times yeah yeah this is the fourth just at this point been asked to just put it in do away with the sunset and make it the law of the land so and I took the testimony on the 5G before we took this bill back up we went through it once because that seemed to be the concern was the dispersal of 5G in public notice I heard I don't know if anyone else heard differently that other than screening we have pretty much reempted from doing anything and screening meaning Bush is not like she from doing anything with 5G so I think there's some still getting emails about some creative solutions but I think we can look at those you know at some point but the general rule is the fence have preempted anything other than those local screening location as long as they don't have the effect of banning it from the marketplace I think okay so we're going to start with Ellen and Greg and you come up together but that's the balance it used to be 250 or a choice we put it in the 248 which was a little faster maybe not as comprehensive we've had lots of experience so go to the Office of Legislative Council so Act 250 and Section 248A are different they are both permitting processes but they're administered by different agencies so broadly to start Act 250 is a permitting process for development there are 10 environmental criteria that an applicant has to demonstrate that they comply with in order to get their Act 250 permit the permit is submitted to district commissions those are local three hundred panels there are nine of them in the state so where your project is located you submit your application to the local permission and they review your application to see if and if it's a major application a hearing is held there's the ability for interested parties and citizens to participate in that hearing process decisions by the district commissions are appealable to the environmental court de novo and a final layer of appeal can be brought to the Supreme Court so that's the high level of Act 250 permit do you want to talk about the PUC? I'm doing a similar high level I'm trying to do side by side here so 248 it's optional you can either go through Act 250 or use the 248 process it's sort of usual now it's optional and we use the same criteria that Act 250 uses so that's similar in our review but under 248 we've developed three different flavors if you will of telecommunication installations hopefully one isn't mental inside inside you guys what the smallest is de minimis modifications the second largest is limited size of scope and then everything above that larger installations de minimis modifications are basically when you're swapping antennas on an existing facility or perhaps you're attaching antennas to a farm silo something like that very small installations limited size of scope a little bit bigger you can actually permit a small telecom facility a brand new one it's not over 140 feet in height of the tower and you're not disturbing more than 10,000 square feet to build your road and your facility compound and then above that it's everything else typically what we see at the PUC is probably 80% of the applications we get de minimis modifications so basically swapping on antennas and putting stuff on buildings farm silo and things like that the majority of the rest are limited size of scope facilities let's see as far as the notice goes for de minimis modification the town gets notified the host landowner gets notified and the department public service gets notified however the only thing you can object to for de minimis modification is whether it qualifies as a de minimis modification these projects have been deemed to be de minimis very minimal in impact so there's no real there's no real objections you can make limited size of scope that goes to the typical limited size of scope and larger I'll give it to the joining landowners the town, ANR, all of us folks and there are, you can raise any objections you want under aesthetics or what have you flood ways whatever you want to raise let's see what else I think that's about it is there an appeal on this one? and you or the public public facility commission is appealed to the Supreme Court I think there are not hearings on these cases unless of course someone calls a motion to intervene and that motion to intervene is granted then we'll have hearings the vast majority are done without hearings so this is much faster for hanging a new antenna right and like I said the vast majority are swapping out antennas on existing facilities maybe attaching antennas to a building or a farm side or something like that okay but the town and all the joining landowners are notified so if anyone's concerned well for the very small ones the joining landowners are not notified just in landowners but again the only thing you can object to for the very small ones is whether a cloth of ass is being very small so there's really no reason to though you really couldn't say much even if you were notified so that's kind of the way it works and this is all set forth in statute these aren't our rules these are statute rules and active 50 can basically set almost any standards or requirements to get a permit is 248 limited to screening can you do screening we use the same criteria that active 50 some of them are waived for the smaller ones but they have to meet all the same criteria but the public utility commission makes that decision right not that's right so it's all done at the state level as opposed to the town and the district commission level okay local zoning planning is that that's part of it if you go through active 50 you probably have to get a local zoning permit also also and under 248a you're probably going to have to be consistent with any existing active 50 or local zoning permits so they are considered or they have to be consistent alright active 50 can overrun a local permit though for these states I've had it done also I think with 248a another difference is it has to be found to be in the public good we don't necessarily find that in an active 50 that's right yeah so it's a difference criteria it's a goal okay so I can't just put it up because I feel like putting it up I have to show that there is a public good connected with it yes you have to show the objective and why you're doing it and why it complies with the telecom plan okay okay committee tell me all clear that's where we start alright okay alright so we're going to start through our witness list at this point you can ask the PUC well great if the PUC have a position on this bill okay great is on the witness list alright we've got two chairs we've got an empty one over there alright good afternoon committee thank you for giving us this time I'm Chuck Storrow from Lane Line Public Affairs I'm here on behalf of AT&T my right is Owen Smith he's president of AT&T for Vermont New Hampshire in Maine we're here to support the S301 and what I'm going to do is go through section 248 a little bit and talk about some of the features try not to repeat we just heard too much and we have copious paper I don't know if it's in your folders but it is online it should be in your folders it's also a bunch of documents to the committee basically an online and live testimony an online and Mr. Smith's testimony a listing of the sites that AT&T macro sites which are the larger sites has constructed since it acquired themselves a network held in 2009 a document from the Department of Public Service that dates from January 2017 which was the last time we were talking about extending the documents that this shows that through that period of time 566 certificates of public good under 248 a had been granted and broken them out to those various categories and then some documents of women's sizes for petition of the minimists and then some documents showing how the company interacts with municipalities regional planning conventions 248 a was enacted in 2007 in connection with the creation of the telecom authority it was intended to provide for a streamlined permitting process for the permitting of wireless telecom facilities it came originally with a sunset of July 1, 2010 the sunset has been extended four times since then we would submit that over the 12 years that the statute has been on the book there's been a large volume of activity under that statute that's been relatively free from controversy and that it now is recond to repeal the sunset 248 a one of the advantages of 248 a is that it does provide for one stop permitting without 248 a we would have to go through in the towns most of the towns also have to go through local zoning you have to satisfy both regulatory regimes I've done a lot of active permitting work in my capacity as a lawyer you get a situation where you get bounced back and forth you get printed from one that's got conditions that then require getting the conditions from the other regulatory authorities so it's easier in that regard nonetheless 248 a requires that a project the utilities commission gives substantial deference to the local plan and to the local zoning bylaws and the phrase substantial deference is in there it's not an absolute standard the PUC can permit a project that doesn't strictly comply with local zoning and that's as it should be because sometimes local zoning is simply incompatible with being able to site a wireless telecom facility and I can give you an example of the towns that have bylaws that say a tower can only extend 20 feet above the existing tree line because you're going to have trees that are about 109 or 100 feet tall so that means you can turn the heat based upon the tree lines cells technology is a line of sight you may not be able to propagate very far if you can only go 20 feet above this tree line and it certainly makes it very difficult to cultivate multiple carriers on one power because each carrier has its own related antennas that have to be separated from the other carriers we've been very clear we want co-location so we don't have lots of towers in fact the 2488 has within it basically a requirement that if you can co-locate thou shall co-locate so that's one reason why you know local zoning should not be an absolute criteria but the utilities commission has been very good balancing the need for coverage and the need for propagation of the civil and civil local zoning in cases where providers can be where the public utilities commission said no you can maintain the setback from the boundary line some lot of zoning says you can't build within so many feet of the boundary you can still have adequate signal if you move it and comply with that but when there's been other cases really saying no to the town you may go above the height restriction because otherwise you're not going to cover enough and you can't have basically what that would drive is that you have more towers so there's tradeoffs that are involved in each case that 24888 allows of the utility commission to factor in all of these variables that are unique to each site and come up with the best results and you don't get that fit through the local zoning and you don't get that too active 50, either active 50 is an absolute standard in other words you have to meet the criteria and if you, it doesn't matter how good it is what you're proposing if you don't meet the criteria you don't get a permit and on balance again I would submit that given the volume of activities going on the use of 24888 has been relatively controversial for and therefore there's nothing going on out there in the world that is running Rothschild over any of our values Jack I'm going to have to ask I think everybody to kind of limit it to like five minutes because we've got a long witness list okay so I guess to be honest with you the towns have a seat at the table there's a requirement to meet with the towns in advance the company does that even if they're not required we've been doing that, you'll see from the documents in your files speed back if you can get to the individual planning commissions and I guess with that I would turn over to Mr. Smith to talk about the statute being for the company okay thank you Chuck and thank you Senator Cummings and the rest of the committee for allowing us to be here today AT&T uses 24888 extensively it has since it came out in 2007 since 2014 AT&T has invested well over a hundred million dollars in our network here in Vermont we've added over 50 cell sites since we've been doing business in the state since late 2008-2009 we've done over 400 upgrades to our network from 2G to 3G, 4G looking at 5G doing preparations for that data traffic on the network since we introduced the iPhone back in 2007 has increased 470,000 percent so a lot of the work that we do in those 400 upgrades are putting more radios more antennas on hundreds of sites that we have here in Vermont recently we were the recipient of a contract to build out the first responders network across the country including here in Vermont our first site came on at the end of December in Townsend a town that had no cell coverage before AT&T put a site there we also turned on a site last month in Berlin we've got 18 new sites forecasted for this year it's going to be a big year for us around this first net project we also have a company a roaming partner called Great Northwoods Wireless they're putting sites up in Essex County Norton and Avril have been permitted so we have CPGs for both of those sites I'd like to talk a little bit about those two sites I just want to question with these these special sites do they also provide cell service to commercial coverage? one of the same when they get built our commercial and the first net network are one of the same okay Norton was the first site that this roaming partner permitted they did not know about 248A and they took it through Act 250 and by the time they hired the attorney that does all of our siting Will Dodge it was too late to switch gears a year and a half later in a court case in the Supreme Court that site got permitted two months ago after a year and a half with three times the legal cost would cost through 248A Avril also just got CPG that went through 248A and took four months to go through with a fraction of the cost to get that done both of those are going to start construction over the next 60 days and will be built this year along with four other sites went A-Rigour Loonenburg and Canaan this company also just recently turned on a site down in Greensboro the community that has had no cell coverage and today they have they have coverage so we've got a lot of work to do and not only are we expanding geography wise into areas that don't have coverage we're continuously upgrading and always we'll be upgrading our network to the latest and greatest and adding capacity for various reasons we have an obligation through FirstNet with the federal government to go to places where we typically we haven't gone before with our commercial network because it wasn't a business case so we need 248A more than ever to expand this network out of these areas at the same time we need to densify using 248A whether it's Bennington or Burlington or SCO we need to build capacity for those networks 248A and I've said this before is the most efficient wireless permitting statute in all of New England we talk about it all the time in these other states it's good for the municipality it's good for the company we pride ourselves in working with the municipalities we have met with townspeople planning boards select boards 75% of the time and we don't necessarily have to do that but we choose to do that we've made changes to the original proposed plans more than 50% of the time based on feedback from the community whether it's aesthetic design difference in height you want to move different possible for environmental concerns we work with the community we've attended over 100 meetings with communities on these issues and that includes municipalities regional planning commissions to talk about coverage what our objectives are but also to listen to the communities on what their concerns are in some cases we have completely aborted sites and walk away from them or move them completely so I've got three quick examples that are all very recent the original site a place called Lover's Lane owned by the water district there were some avutters that came out in opposition we had a couple of meetings with the planning board select board and quickly decided that we needed to move this location which we did and actually as of this morning we received the CPG certificate of public good I'm sorry we're waiting to be filing this CPG for Grand Isle but we got a letter from the select board which I've included in the paper it's in Mr. Starr's paper highlighting what Dave said same thing with Mount Holly we've changed the design based on input from the planning commission we have taken a monopole and turned it into a monopine that looks like a pine tree with certain colors and buffers built into it at the request of the town also in the town of Derby based on feedback from the neighborhood and Bill's trusty opposition we completely pulled out of that site pulled back on the CPG and found a different site in Derby so all of these are examples all in the last 60 days where we have listened to what the community has had to say and we've adjusted our plans and have been commended by the various municipalities and planning commissions so we understand what the legislature wants what the department wants we listen and interact with municipalities most of the time whenever we need to we do this exclusively for over 10 years and we think that it works extremely well we don't see a reason to change this ratchet it up at all and having to come back here at least 3 years and get it renewed and I guess we ask you to pass 301 and make it permanent okay thank you any questions from the committee thank you Wes do you have more to add here more or not yeah I really don't have too much I don't want to take up any time here but we support living in the sunset as you can imagine it's a bit of a workload problem for us this thing is sunsetting every 3 years we don't know from year to year how much work we're going to need to do it's also hard to plan just last month I got a motion to amend our standards and procedures which govern this program and one of the reasons I denied the motion was because hey this thing is going to sunset in July why would we amend the procedures now why would we do that so it makes it hard to plan ahead is it 248 something or the requirement for CPG 248 is an optional section so that we go away our authority under 248 it would all be 250 exactly this is telecom right it doesn't do solar fields that's 248 that's 240 so this is a whole different section windmills this is telecom only telecom that's what this is alright who's going to be the sponsor on this one have we heard from him some joking okay thank you alright any questions as compared to this point alright so we are on to Annette Smith who was on the phone are you still there yes I am can you hear me I can hear you fine I know you know the routine just introduce yourself Annette Smith I'm the executive director for monitors for clean environment thank you for hearing my testimony today I prepared two documents for you one is the statute with some red lines adding and deleting the other is I'll update the section 248A and might just start with that okay I've been I've seen quite a few in the last year I do support eliminating the sunset but I think that the statute needs to be updated it's been in place for 13 years and there are some inconsistencies that I found in it and also there are some new technology coming along so you'll see in the future on the front page there are two churches these are two churches that have permits for antennas and the C-press they're both Verizon however one of them went through the regular limits open size process which gave notifications to adjoiners and there was a historic review and the other one was de minimis and contained no notification to adjoiners and no historic review so I thought that usually you made a mistake and called them on it and they said no it had to do with the size of the extension of the generator shed to the addition of the church and if it's more than 10 feet then it goes through the larger process and it's less than 10 feet it goes through de minimis that I'm sorry it just doesn't make any sense to me and so I'm going to propose that there'll be some changes to the three different areas my written comments here follow the order of the statute so I'll just go through them from there I'm going to suggest that for small cell installations and that's the new technology that we're seeing that this committee consider granting municipalities the authority to site small cell installations are we talking 5G cells here well I'm not being specific about whatever the frequency is but you understand the fence something that we only have been seeing in the last couple of years so it was not in place in 2007 when section 248A came to play and I want to thank Ellen of Legislative Council for her very good review of 5G preemption and issues and she did say that the SEC does have preemption but it lets state local governments the authority over-citing wireless telecommunications facilities so the specific issue I'm looking at is siding so I'm suggesting that a definition of small cell installation be added to the definitions and I got that off the CPIA that's the wireless industries organization that's the definition that they gave means small radio antennas that can be placed on structures such as street lights besides buildings and poles the categories I admit I thought they were only two categories because usually I see regular limited size and so forth together versus the minimums my suggestion is that regular be specifically for new facilities including towers including new utility poles I've seen petitions for small cell antennas on brand new poles and I believe that those new structures whatever they are should require the full notice and the full application the second one limited size and scope that's addition modifications replacements that's already existing facilities and that includes any increases in the radio frequency antennas that are being put up my suggestion about the minimums which has been pointed out is being used a lot and it's being done in a way that I believe the price of public and adequate notice I suggest that to be limited only to previously permitted telecommunications facilities with no increase in radio frequency these are suggestions but I'm bringing this to your attention after having studied a lot of the CPGs and trying to understand the process and what's in place right now in this as you does not make sense because of what I pointed out in the church issue on findings one of the new issues that I haven't heard anybody mention is the need for potential co-location of small cell networks and I don't understand how that will work so for instance let's say in Burlington you have Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile and some other carriers all building out small cell antennas is there any opportunity for co-location for different providers that some company would come in and sort of gobble up all of the best space and almost create a monopoly this is an area that I don't I don't know how other states or cities handle it but that's again why I'm suggesting that it might be in the interest of a municipality to play a role in how these networks are built out so that they might say well how about not that whole but how about that whole and they think that they're viewing a lot of the files and every time I click on the public comment nobody participates in any of these things and I think that that may change as the build out of more of these small cell installations happens I notice I think that the notification except for the demand that I'm suggesting should be all to everyone to the adjoiners and then for small cell installations I think it should be for all property owners within 500 feet and then that would give people the opportunity to say well hey I want it in front of my house or I don't want it in front of my house so this goes to aesthetics and property values and so I'm suggesting again adding in an option for the municipalities to permit deciding on small cell installations only those not I'm not talking about the other types and all point lists under eyes what I'm told people are doing in cities like in Elk Grove, California those are some of the things that they've done not permit a cell antenna in residential neighborhood or immediately adjacent to a front yard of a residential dwelling or say hey could you just move it down the street and maybe have a certain distance between the antenna and the nearest home there is a section in the statute about retention of experts I'm seeing places where and this is what Vermonters are bringing to me places where they have real questions about whether the installation is actually in compliance with the SEC or as a mission standards some people have suggested that it should be just required of every facility once a year I'm suggesting maybe that or maybe as the request of the municipal legislative body planning commission or a joiner or so that's the section that I think could be beefed up a little bit I do support eliminating the option of going through active 50 and that will close the loophole that exists there because right now somebody can put up a brand new pole that's I think it's 49 feet tall and not get any regulatory review at all and I understand that Vermonters has done that I've seen one installation in Marlborough that when I tried to track it down I learned through active 50 but it's a 49 foot pole and so there is absolutely no regulatory record of it anywhere and so on page 3 I've got just some examples this is I think an AT&T small cell installation outside of a residence in Burlington we've documented several of those and maybe that's okay with the community but I do think that these small cell installation can present an opportunity for perhaps a better way of citing its municipalities play a role in it the next one is two antenna facilities next to Rice Memorial High School in South Burlington one of them is WCAX that's on the last one of them is WOK of radio and the ball field is within 400 feet the high school ball field it would seem like an appropriate place for admissions monitoring but recently there was an application to add one antenna to one of those installations so I thought that was a public comment and the company immediately responded and said we don't have to do that this is de minimis so I think that the way it's written right now is too narrow and I think it's reasonable to ask when there are these sites that have a lot of antennas on them that they are in proximity to a school that is reasonable to have an option or a requirement to actually assure that they're in compliance with the FCC standards and finally on the last page I just wanted to show you what we found in terms of what's been developed so far in Chittany County it's mostly AT&T summits Verizon it's not a complete list of the small cell antennas on the utility poles that's my testimony and I'm sorry I want to move forward no that was very concise thank you committee do you have any questions for Smith okay thank you thank you you're going to say you want to listen I'm sorry I just hung up you hung up? I did I thought that would can you get her back down the hall that's okay Senator Campion it's not it's not no she wants to listen she was in here to listen so in terms of our our charge right now I know we don't have a whole lot of time to take up a lot of these suggestions but is there time to go to the house yeah there should be because these are changes to the present law and I know great testimony was it's going to sunset so you know and that's an ongoing thing you don't so I think we can ask them to look at it and make appropriate updates given new technology something like that at the end okay Annette you're back on yes I am okay I apologize Senator Campion got only enthusiastic with his job I believe there's a question from Senator Sirach thank you Senator Camp absolutely okay in your proposals about the municipalities for an exciting small cell installations I'm not following the difference between a small cell installation versus the terminology that's used in the categories existing right now for towers poles telecommunication facilities that's because it's not clear which it is I think that that might be a better question to ask great favor is what categories so do those fit in I think that they go in as de minimis but as if you're understanding the small cell installation is like I wish we had some maybe we have some pictures here actually there's a picture in one of the minutes on page three that's a small cell installation outside of residence of Burlington is it the little the pieces of that installation are the cancer antenna is on the top of the pole then there is a box I don't know what the box does and then there's also a meter so it's not a small installation I mean this this issue goes to aesthetics and goes to property values and there's a lot of good evidence that having these telecommunications systems next to it on can reduce property values it is a concern for some people I appreciate that but I guess I'm trying to understand whether when you're talking about small cell installation you're talking about these little boxes going on an existing pole I mean I think the aesthetics and property values are more a pole than a small addition I'm not even talking about all the wires at a company and that's the issue which part is the antenna on top on the top of the pole around the street light it looks like an extension of the pole to me for the property value issue it is that people will choose to not live near some of these things it is a real issue okay alright any other questions if not Annette this is Senator Ballant I just wanted to let you know when Senator Campion accidentally cut you off the question that I was asking the chair Senator Cummings is to clarify the amount of time that we have in dealing with this bill currently and what the chair said is that we really need to move this out so that we can deal with the repeal first before we move that over to the house before crossover and then they can look at some of these changes that you have suggested in this document these are true that's good at this point what we can do is ask the PUC to look at the regulations I'm not trying to write legislative statutes or anything I'm just putting in placeholders for ideas because there actually is some discussion recently that I've seen for instance about Brattleboro and I wanted to get involved in fighting and I think that it's time just on the small fell to consider that okay thank you good afternoon Steve Whitaker this is a complex bill at the same time that Act 250 is being reformed at the same time as the rulemaking on public attachments just went through including small cells which was unknown to some folks the responsible thing to do would be to extend Act 248A by another year or two and get your head around the complex ramifications of this in effect the wireless industry here is trying to preempt local prerogative and opportunity and it's not all peaches and cream you've heard that a certificate of public good and a finding of the public good is granted by the PUC but there is no definition of public good that's something you should consider in this the ten year telecommunications plan will be done supposedly by December that will have a significant bearing on these issues so I would ask that action on removing the sunset of 248A be informed by the first ever complete telecommunications plan done by the independent engineering firm participation Act 250 provides a process for participation Act 248 the PUC has been in effect rubber stamping hundreds and hundreds of these things not only that they've converted all the records into a database which is not usable by the general public and if you are able to mine some records out of it I got a list from the PUC of all the 248A projects that have been permitted and each one of them would necessitate downloading 20, 30, 40 documents all with a gibberish file name so the access to documents to even review and participate in these antenna reviews has been greatly impeded by the implementation of the PUC that's another topic that this committee needs to take up I've been raising it for several years now and you still haven't had time to address it our statute now 202C 30VSA 202C requires two of its goals and policy statement are open access and competitive choice unless we're going to cite towers and make neutral hosts a imperative in these permit reviews so that all carriers are represented within a small cell or a tower we are in effect impeding the goal of competitive choice and open access we're a tourist based economy in many ways and we need to have a different cell phone or three different cell phones in order to have coverage as you travel per month the neutral host model which we experimented unfortunately an ill-prepared experiment with coverage code is what we should be pursuing save with coal locations, shared infrastructure we shouldn't be building double towers and yet you look up on Irish Hill here in Montpilers and there's two towers up for Lin that was not supposed to happen that is an example of the PUC rubber stamping these things without adequate review in some cases they tear down another tower if they have to build a stronger one they force everybody to move over to the stronger tower but to have two permanent towers there should not have happened under current law the natural resources board is really required by statute I can't remember the exact statute to maintain an inventory of wireless infrastructure unfortunately when AT&T started working exclusively with 248A that obligation fell apart the natural resources board does not get the information because they're not filing under 250 and the PUC does not take all the obligation of maintaining an inventory so the other initiative that's going on that relates to this is the resiliency the power additive resiliency planning that is now finally getting underway many years later and we should be looking at whether or not we're going to condition these antennas on adequate battery backup reviewing the propagation coverage from these antennas because that's not going on right now the propagation is essential for emergency planning for filling in dead zones with municipally owned cells and absent that kind of more thorough review which the PUC is self-described as very overworked with a lot of other projects I think it's appropriate to allow these types of permits to go back to 250 I'm not confident that I'm going to prevail on that argument so generators in diverse routes should be part of these reviews that's not happening now that's again part of the resiliency planning it should be so I'm asking you do not remove the sunset extend it one more time if you must if you're not willing to just let these expire and let these permits go back to 250 but then give clear guidance on integration with the resiliency planning the local prerogative of citing the propagation analysis from these powers so that we actually start to build enough information and see how the 10-year telecom plan once adopted it can be argued and it was Senator Shumlin's bill in 1995 to implement the findings of the joint legislative committee on the telecom plan that recommended that all CPGs be required to be consistent with the telecom plan okay and if you're going to finally have a real telecom plan it would be appropriate to consider making every one of these CPGs for towers consistent with that telecom plan that would address the open access, the resiliency, the backup the diverse routes, etc so I know I threw a lot of technical stuff at you but I can't do much in 5 minutes the question is do you pose models in the examples? Europe most of Europe is on them, I'm in the US I have not researched I don't see that no but in rural areas it's the only cost effective way it's absolutely wasteful to have three different carriers trying to build three sets of towers often AT&T is building these towers and then not even retaining them they're selling the tower off to a tower so that there's no incentive to have a neutral host model or to even co-locate the other carriers so it's not cost effective to pursue other than neutral hosts for these rural areas and I have asked AT&T presidents to run it up the chain and see if they would participate as they finally did in Heverage Stone as a result of the first-net contract if they would participate in a neutral host model of small cells around the world okay we are now going on to S193 and last committee I have this on four possible vote is anyone ready to vote? do you want to let this sink? can I make 10 seconds on that topic since I was just wrapping up on which topic? the new bill 193 we're still deciding if we're going what we're doing with the old bill we haven't taken that one up yet so on 301 committee do you want to let that I look to Senator Brock he's the lead sponsor he's comfortable with it I was a little bit as you know mental chair but I'm feeling fine I don't see any worst case scenarios something could always be put back in again if we have a telecom plan and the telecom planning is done in accordance with our bill in the past last year if there may be changes in 248 then I think that's the appropriate time to make them but for now it's not continue on with the process that we've done four times and it takes a lot of time and resources except we're not by putting another sunset well we're forced to come back and do it again that's the point I see that the pressure to do this kind of review after 17 years where maybe some I would be fine I don't know if it's appropriate handing over to the Public Ability Commission to write us a report about the recommendations of any changes I just want there to be some pressure just what the telecom plan is in my mind that part of the telecom plan and so when we get the independent review with the outline of what we should do for a long-term telecom plan then that's the place for us to act on this and all of the other things that we relate to are we sure the telecom plan will take that granular? I'm sure that Mr. Whitaker will tell the consultants to do that I think we should discuss it with the consultants and I think they should yes because I think that's an usual part of the planning process I think this is the one leverage we have to make sure it gets reviewed I have no idea whether these are good ideas or bad ideas but it sounds like this is a hot enough topic I'm not talking about 5G whatsoever I've gone through so many years to see if there should be some tweaks and I think a lot of people in the room sort of disappear once they don't have the necessity to come back into the room to protect their interests We could ask the PUC in this to report back to us if they see the necessity for any changes or updates to these rules I think what we heard is when they sunset every couple years you kind of just let it roll that would be okay my drafter is not here or is here is not here we will ask Alan to draft that and then I'll get it up for a vote next week just on the process of the PUC I don't know whether there's methodology where they open a docket I don't know if it needs to be that formal but will they reach out to consumers as well as interested stakeholders in asking for input on any changes to 248 if you require rest of the piece okay but make sure that's clear well that's not our drafter no I was talking to Maria's not our drafter not on that issue Alan is tied up with Act 250 okay but we will ask the PUC to report back to us on any changes they feel are necessary after holding a public hearing with stakeholders or talking does that know a workshop help us find the right language I don't think we need a full bucket investigation if you want to have us conduct the workshop process invite stakeholders at what period what period of time before the next session after the public after we have a a telecom plan okay okay we'll find a date when you have a lot of things we'll just do and we'll try not to hit that date alright yes on the coverage co-stuff yeah give it up any leverage on that I'm not sure that the last witness talked about your the plows used to plow the places where you could pull off use your cell phone on coverage co plow those places any workers there's no coverage but a step backwards I wonder if I think we might want to ask the department because my understanding is they worked very closely with towns trying to get towns to take over the small cells and they got no takers and I think that's really kind of a report from the department not part of this you know sometimes you just got to shoot again what do we do with those we have to cheer don't just meet the people or shoot it don't care I'm trying to get you out of here before 8 o'clock and if we don't get through this agenda we're not going to get out I'm with sir I think adding that language at the end would be great we will ask Yellen okay deep breath we are going on to another exciting this is the penalties for violation of the E911 outage reporting rules and I think where we want with this is we wanted the report to come in so that we knew how much of a problem there was with people not being able to reach emergency services it seems like there is a reporting standard nationally I believe she's done I think she hung up that sounds huge to us and goes through a formula and if the companies reveal that number they're revealing proprietary things probably market share and we're trying to find out I'm starting to say so what do we do with it once we find it out because the only solution is to build redundancy that gets expensive senators this still tied up in the rules or is this the 9-1-1 do your homework at home 9-1-1 rule is that still sitting there waiting it's been postponed is the reason it's been postponed is we have not we didn't get to we have been postponed for a reason but we didn't do it to that so we postponed it it wasn't my fault that you had trouble this morning this just increases penalty S-193 itself it requires reporting more there is a penalty S-193 S-193 S-193 we have the final proposed rule S-193 S-193 S-193 S-193 S-193 S-193 S-193 S-193 S-193 specific to electric companies the Voigt providers the White House providers I think Barneal that's the rule that's been put before Elkhart for the penalty this week S-193 just specifies an administrative penalty for violations of that rule when it becomes effective okay it doesn't change the substance of it it just recognizes that there will be a rule at some point and it doesn't matter if we were to pass this before the rule is out of Elkhart just when the rule isn't put down correct could we need this if the rule says the same thing could that be done in Elkhart I don't believe there is a penalty in the rule now so if you wanted to add or require that the rules would be a penalty so how did we get we spent a lot of time in here on when because it seemed like you could just make a simple phone call and say we're down in the Townsend but then it started to get no there's FCC you know it's not like there's a local office that can call the 911 board or does and there's FCC regulations as to when you have to report an outage how did how do we get bogged down in that there are FCC regulations reporting requirements and they have thresholds about when you're required to report an outage to the FCC and that information is confidential I think what you are trying to get at is should we have reporting protocols at the state level and you already have them for the landline providers companies but this will say have additional outage reporting requirements that would apply to the wireless providers and the void and this was there were something like 9,000 and we were at 10 right the rule calls for if 10 people with 10 phones are down for more than am I remembering 3 hours correctly and that is that correct the final proposal which is the bell card is 25 subscribers a telecom service provider with 25 subscribers out of service unable to reach 911 for 30 minutes or more and then for wireless it talks about telegraphic areas so that's where referencing the towers but we were much lower in numbers and I believe some of the testimony was they don't know and they have to go through this because of the limited time if they just have to go up and change a battery or restart a generator and I ask the providers to see if they could come back with something they could do I understand the proprietary issues but is there something between 25 and 9,000 that would give us the information that we're seeking which is to know but at this point we're seeking the information without a viable solution I mean if they're out we don't call up and telling the local fire department you might be aware that some of your people aren't getting cell service they yeah I mean well the issue we had last year was that we did not have a clear picture of just how big a problem we had and where the problem was we knew about the telephone isolation issue with the legacy carriers but as far as the other carriers we didn't know we then ran into the situation in Shrewsbury for example where they were out for two or three weeks because of a battery problem so that caused us to ask well where else are we having a problem that's when we added this to the build that we passed last year that went through several iterations at the end because we were running into things like a smaller wire carrier was saying well we can't give you a report within two hours and that's about it so we made a change as far as soon as reasonably possible now we have some folks coming to us saying like the Comcast as we talk about battery back up where the battery is down we may have an issue that the battery is not a battery like in Shrewsbury that covers a number of lines the battery may be in a subscriber's line and did we intend to include that we did not intend to include that and so that is another thing that we may need to do a fix for that and with that in mind we also had various discussions with some of the larger carriers Verizon and AT&T about because part of our goal was to see whether or not we could accomplish reporting from those carriers based on reports that they already submitted to the FCC rather than require and creating some additional regimen that's where I gathered in the discussions with the I-11 board we ran into some difficulty because the recording that they do is at such a high level it didn't have sufficient granularity to inform us and that's why we're perhaps back here talking about it we are and there is a rule about to go through or not go through I don't know what they're going to do I did get that little package that asked me to say if it meets legislative intent or not and at this point I'm not sure we believed that the rule was being promulgated as before but that the requirement that the I-11 board meet before sending us the rule or having some sort of discussion perhaps we could ask why the I-11 board met this morning was in an effort did you meet this morning? no then I don't know what I'm talking about I can speak first of all I've got one witness I'm going to take the one witness and then I think I was hoping maybe the industry and 9-1-1 could get together and find wording that worked because it's very dangerous if we try and do that is there a provision in the current law that says that the 9-1-1 board will adopt rules that have reasonable fines and sanctions for failure to carry out the for people to fail the report no in the proposed rule there is not a penalty our remedy is to take whoever to Washington Superior Court to enforce was that your question? so you would have to go does the current law direct you to come up with a rule that has a penalty but I don't believe so no I think we have the authority to double check on that but I'm sure I will can I do my one witness of them that we're getting into committee discussion so Jeff Austin come on up thank you for the time for the record Jeff Austin from Consolidated Communications I just wanted to talk about S193 just from a provider standpoint that actually has been reporting that effect 9-1-1 service for decades now at this point so everything that we're talking about related to that rule Consolidated and its predecessor companies have been doing this for about 20 years now so as it currently stands we report to 9-1-1 anytime we have 25 or more customers affected by finality so they don't have access to 9-1-1 so we do that through reporting through our network operations center so it's a pretty you know we've been doing this for a long time so it's a pretty standard process of course. I'm just looking at this penalty part of it you know the we have really good and so are the other carriers open communication with the 9-1-1 board obviously but invoking a penalty as we're actually trying to revamp the rule seems to just be a little bit premature putting a penalty in there because one of the things that we see is based on the 2019 data for 9-1-1 origination 70% of 9-1-1 calls in Vermont in 2019 originated on the wireless carrier network. 10% originated on the Asia over IP carrier network and then 20% originated on the I-likes the landline services out of that 20% about 12% came over Consolidated's network so as we were kind of talking I know you were talking about the rule a little bit we're just trying to figure out the right ways of putting the right requirements you know in the right levels of outage you know affecting customers together I just thought it was helpful to just kind of review that information and again just on the penalty as we're trying to figure out the best way to incorporate that you know putting a penalty against that just especially with new carriers coming into this the wireless and the voice over IP carriers would have these new reporting requirements might be difficult especially as they kind of get into this way of working that process so you know certainly one of the things that we support is going through that biggie 9-1-1 outage reporting rule you know based on the fact that you know the wireless carriers are originating 70% it does make sense obviously to incorporate those carriers into this new rule process how to do that exactly what those numbers are might be you know still kind of a question mark that 25 just so you know everybody you know this might be helpful that 25 number that we've always been working with you know for the last couple decades I believe that came from our smallest copper distribution cable and our entire network is a 25 pair cable so you could have 25 customers on a 25 pair cable so if that gets cut we would have the requirement but you know so that's one of the things so I think the question about where that 25 came from and is that applicable you know as we're talking about wireless carriers or IP carriers maybe it is maybe it's not maybe it's a good place to start and it gives us something to work with so ultimately the end result will just be much better and you know much more actionable and really meaningful reporting to the 9-1-1 board from all the companies and you really get a good big picture right now the reporting we do is good for the 9-1-1 board to know so they can notify the local fire department as you guys mentioned but it doesn't really draw a really good picture of the potential issues that we may have around the state but if my landline is down I've got a cell phone and it's up we're fine but more and more people just have a cell or they have VoIP and I don't think a lot of people especially some of us that are pre-tech age understand that that's not the same as your landline and that it can be down without your electricity or it can go down when your electricity is going out even though normally your landline would have had a phone or you might get a signal and still not be able to get 9-1-1 but I am not sure just listening that this is ready for prime time I don't know yes and maybe I will get that maybe we'll do that next we're going to get I think 318 out but we haven't voted yet Senator so in reading this I feel very uncomfortable imposing a penalty by law on a rule that I have you have the rule in your folder it's not adopted yet it's changed it's not passed it also says the $25,000 penalty applies to outage reporting protocols I think we're after the number but there could be all other kinds of protocols there that could be fairly minor that we don't know whether $25,000 is the right fit it doesn't seem to give a choice of up to $25,000 I would move to table this group but we have a rule that is before so this rule has been postponed by Elcott I think we could ask that section be struck and that a 911 and the utilities work with us other than that I think I'm going to have to check the little box it says we're not sure it's in compliance with legislative intent because we're not sure what our intent I think we know what our intent is but we're trying to figure out how to get it and I don't I think the technologies are different for wireless, they're right they've got a cell phone tower down but they don't know how many people are out because I could be pinging off of three towers the the request of you to check off a box does it have anything to do with the statute? it has to do with whether or not the rule complies with legislative intent but this has nothing to do with it but this particular statute just imposes a penalty whether we do anything with this has no relationship whether you check that box or not does the rule it does not have a penalty if you don't believe there are any penalties in the proposed rule that is correct is the reporting requirements, the number is that the 25 yes, the thresholds for the record I have our Executive Director of the 911 Board I think say that, the thresholds that we propose in that rule are defined in the rule so it's 25 subscribers for 30 minutes or more and I would add that the reason we went to those thresholds, which are astronomically lower than the FCC thresholds for wireless envoy was to level the playing field in a sense so that the data that we are collecting about any kind of telephone outage is more apples to apples than apples to something entirely different that's the way that we saw we would be able to meet the requirements of section 25 which was to provide an assessment of the impact of these various types of outages including electric power outages on access to 911 so the reason the thresholds are listed that way in that proposed rule are so we can meet that that assessment, the requirements of that assessment I think we probably, yeah until we get this worked out I don't think we need to put penalties in I would hope because I was hoping that the utilities could come back the providers could come back to us with a number that would work I understand that cable probably knows if their cable line is down maybe I can understand that wireless may not know how many people are out because there could be numerous cell towers and because blood is down but it seems like if you've got a tower down you probably got 25 people in danger of not getting service so the FCC has calculations in place that actually the wireless carriers could better explain for how they determine how many users are on a tower at any given moment and it's kind of a nationwide number that number is proprietary to each company my conversations with those wireless companies lead me to believe that assuming 1000 users per wireless tower is reasonable and so that means for if we kept the FCC thresholds we would not know when a wireless tower was down for 15 hours that's before that's when we would get to the 900,000 user minute threshold but if a tower is I'm struggling with what they have for infrastructure is towers so I'm not seeing how 25 unless a tenth of a tower went down that's a thousand maybe as granular as they can get so there are in the proposed rule there are outage reporting thresholds for wireline and for for line power for the traditional wireline telephone service and for the non-line power telephone service and for wireless and they're all defined a bit differently in the rule or at least the wireless is defined a bit differently is 25 people 25 subscribers for 30 minutes that applies really to the wirelines and to the non-line powered fixed phones your VoIPA phones the way we describe an outage in the rule for wireless is a bit different because of technologies different excuse me so that's why okay so I think we at this point are not going to do the penalty okay Mr. Storo any questions for Mr. Austin okay