 So welcome to the Wednesday, July 12th meeting of the Burlington Board of Electric Commission. My name's Colleen Ruhl, I'm the temporary board clerk. The July meeting is the Burlington Electric Commission's organizational meeting and the first order of business is to elect the officers. At this time, I open the floor for nominations for chair for the commission. I'll nominate commissioner Moody. Second. Are there any other nominations? Hearing none, we will move to a vote. By a show of hands, please indicate your support for Scott Moody. Of the five members present, five votes were cast in support of Scott Moody. Congratulations, commissioner Moody. I now turn the meeting over to the chair. Thank you. Good job. Good job. Thank you. I'll now take nominations for vice chair. Are there any nominations for vice chair of the board? I nominate the commission Whitaker. We have a nomination. We have a second. I second. We have a second. Are there any other nominations? Hearing none, all those in favor of commissioner Whitaker as vice chair, raise your hand. Hi. With a tie breaker. With four votes or did you, I don't know if you, I'll vote for myself. There we go. Five votes for commissioner Whitaker, commissioner Whitaker as vice chair. Congratulations. I'll take nominations for board clerk. I'll nominate Lori Lemieux for a clerk. One nomination for Lori Lemieux. Second. Seconded. Do we have any other nominations? Hearing none, all those in favor of Lori Lemieux as board clerk, raise your hand. Keep us saying aye or raise your hand. Five votes for Lori Lemieux as board clerk. She is, it remains our board clerk, but we thank Colleen Ruhl for stepping in while Lori is out. Thank you. All right. With that done, we'll move on to the agenda. Are there any changes to the agenda? Additions, changes. All right, hearing none. We'll move on to the minutes of June 14th meeting. If there are any clerical errors, I hope you could take those online, but are there any substantive changes to the minutes of June 14th? Yeah, I have one. The public that was, the members of the public that were here last time, it was, it says Ted Agnew and Wendy Agnew. It's Wendy Watson and Tate. And I don't know what Tate's last name is, is that Agnew? Okay. Well, according to what you sent me. Okay. Yes. Okay, so it's Tate, T-A-T-E and then Wendy Watson. Is that okay? Right. I don't know their last name. Okay. So I know it's Wendy and Tate. I just guessed, but yeah, I'm glad to say that. I think everything else looks right, but I just wanted, I know for sure that she's Wendy Watson and then that it's Tate, not Ted, so. Are there any other changes or additions to the agenda? I have a recurring issue here, I guess. It's about lighting and I understand that we're constrained for the short and medium future in our path, but take a long-term view. Maybe things might be different. So here's my concern that when we talk about the IES, we should say recommendations. When we talk about us, we can talk about requirements and we can even define that as our standard, but I think it's not proper to say IES standards. So I'm proposing a word search through the whole manuscript to get that straight. That seems accurate to me. Okay, that sounds about right. Are there any other changes to the agenda that I would entertain a motion? Wait to the minute, you mean? To the minute's right, sorry, the minute's right there. Motion to approve. With changes? With changes. So moved. Second. Do we have a second? Second. All in favor, indicate by saying aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed, indicate by saying nay. The ayes have it. The minutes are approved from June 14th. Next up on the agenda, and I wasn't able to say this right now. Hello, hi there. It's public forum. So we just need to backtrack. Bureau and Electric Commission meets here at 585 Pine Street every second Wednesday of the month at 530, the public is welcome. And we'd love to get your input, your criticisms, concerns, praise, whatever maker that come on down and join the conversation. That being said, now is the time for said conversation. And do we have any members of the public either in the room, I don't see anybody in the room or are there any online? No. All right, with no members of the public here, I just want to reiterate again, 585 Pine, 530 a second Wednesday of the month. Come on down and join us, join the conversation. It is your electric utility too. All right, moving on to commissioners corner. This is a point where commissioners have a chance to talk about any items that concern them or things that have happened over the next month that they want to share. And I open the floor to commissioners for that discussion. I want to thank Emily and Chris for responding to questions that I sent to you. Thank you very much. Yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting what we were talking about before the meeting, like the hydro dam and the impact of the flooding on that and just McNeil. Well, and maybe perhaps we can get a brief report on that or some sort of information on that. That's part of the GM update. And then I didn't see it in the GM update, but I heard there's going to be a protest that went down. That's our understanding. Okay. We didn't organize it, but. Right. I'm sure we'll hear about that too. We're aware on social media that there's been discussion. I'm happy to touch on it. Okay. That'd be great. Anything else from commissioners for commissioners corner? Alrighty, moving on to the general manager update with general manager springer. Thank you. So I'll start with those items related to the protest event. My understanding is that some of the groups who have been vocal in opposing district heat, opposing McNeil are planning to go from gardener supply to the McNeil plant the morning of July 22nd, which is a Saturday. I think the language used is to demand that the city shut down McNeil, which is not currently really part of the discussion, the Duke forum and the various discussions are really about whether we want to invest in district energy as a city and make those improvements to the plant. There's not kind of a discussion around any other alternatives. But we are working to make sure that we're prepared in terms of ensuring safety for customers who are visiting the wastewood yard that day, ensuring, of course, that the protest, if it happens, the protesters have the right to protest that we ensure safety and we ensure, obviously, the integrity of the facility. So those will be our team's focus and priorities. We respect that there are different views in the community. We respect people's right to voice those views. In terms of the floods, I was gonna mention that we've seen the impacts primarily at our two power generation facilities at Winooski One. John Clark was in a couple of the news stories, I think, talking about some of the impacts. There was one in Vermont Digger. In water levels, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, at Winooski One were higher than they were during Irene. So that was significant. We have photos of the top of the platform where you stand when you look out over the river being covered with water. It's built and designed to withstand that, of course, but we have had the facility off as a precaution during the period of time here where that's happened and there's been a lot of debris and other types of items to be cleared. We're rail damage, I think, wood rail damage. I don't know that we've seen any other damage as of this point, documented? That same group? Yeah, right. So we'll do more. We're documenting everything for FEMA purposes. So there's presidential declaration. We hope to be able to submit these types of costs for FEMA reimbursement. It's typically 75% and Paul's working with the insurance companies on any appropriate actions there. At McNeil, it's primarily the flooding that we talked about in the field and in the gate area to the plant. We've shut the wastewood yard temporarily. We hope to be able to, actually, it wouldn't have been open today anyhow. We were going to open it to help for people who may have had debris from the storm. We weren't able to. We're hoping to be able to open it tomorrow. I don't know if we have a decision on that. We're looking at issues for new, I think that the ground is there. Okay, so hopefully tomorrow open back up. No operational issues at the plant as a result of any of the flooding, other than people just having a little bit of challenge getting in. And we did actively talk with other utilities as the storm was happening and we weren't seeing electric power restoration needs here in Burlington. We were fortunate there were really no outages reported during the flooding, during the storm. We did send a crew, two vehicles, three crew to GMP yesterday to help with their outages. They had, I think at that point, around 5,000 out. Been in touch with Washington Electric. They have recovered most of their power outages, restoration work, and in the areas where they couldn't, it's not for lack of crew. It's because they can't get to the site. So this was one of those situations where we, it's not as if we had 50,000 people out there weren't enough line workers to get there. It was more limited number of people out, but not access to the sites. I've anecdotally heard that there have been situations where line crew have had to hike to a site with their gear and then go up and restore power. So obviously we are glad we were able to send a crew down to help, wish we could do more. And we'll be looking for ways, not just BED, but the entire city to engage. I know DPW has sent trucks and is helping to pump out where people have floods in their homes and their basements. I know that the mayor's offered support for all the communities that were impacted. So obviously recovery will be a longer road and we'll look to be as helpful as we can in that regard. I'll stop there if there are any questions or comments. Okay. So other items on here, carbon fee policy at the city council. We expect an ordinance to be introduced hopefully this month. We've been working with counselors to get it ready to move forward and we expect the two committee and the ordinance committee to be looking at it in July and August and hope obviously to have it implemented perhaps sometime in September given that it's a 2024 start. We wanna give the development community and the effected existing building owners an opportunity to kind of prepare for it. So hopefully giving a few months there between when it might be enacted and implementation but it's a decision of the council and we'll be working with them on that. District heat. So I have a concrete timeframe for district heat. We're at that point. And in fact for the September meeting depending on how things go we may wanna plan for some in-depth discussion around it. So we are having, we have now this kind of unique moment for this project. So we have actionable customer term sheets for the first time ever with district heat. We have the pricing that's built in is based on the actual construction pricing for the project, the expected financing costs. The system is fully designed and engineered. There's one piece that's left. We know the cost of it but we're doing some additional final design on a piece near the medical center where we had a change based on their facilities team outlining a different path for one piece of the project which was fairly recent. But other than that, we are looking at a essentially fully designed and engineered project and we're having the conversations over the next two months essentially with the customers, with the medical center, with UVM, with the city itself of course to see if there is a desire to have a go decision on the project. If the financials work for the key partners and if there is a desire to move forward and we can have signed term sheets to that effect, the idea is we will have work sessions at the city council on September 11th and September 18th where we would present, answer questions. There'd be forum obviously for discussion, both public discussion, I'm sure, public comment as well as counselor questions and discussion. And then if we stick with that timeframe, the expectation is there could be a vote at the council as early as October. And just to be clear that the council would be voting on two things potentially. One would be the idea that we can have an agreement between McNeil and the district heat system to provide steam at certain terms, certain pricing, certain period of time, certain structure. And then also that the city would be a purchaser of a certain quantity of the renewable credits that would be provided by the project as one of several purchasers. The steam, of course, would be going to the medical center and potentially the university. Some condensate return would be available for the intervail center if they decide to join on. So, you know, a lot of discussion on this in the community, a lot with the Duke forum, a lot of things going on, but we've done what we were supposed to do with this. We were asked to find out if there is a viable project proposal that would pencil economically for the partners that would be designed and engineered to work. We have that now. And now we have the moment where we can find out is this something that the various partners will advance? And then if so, we will be able to take this to the city council for the appropriate work sessions and then consideration for a vote. If all of that happened, then you would move towards financing. You would move towards the completion of the permitting phase. You would move towards construction ultimately in 2024 and probably completion in 2025. So, let me pause there. It sounds like there's both a technical question and then a political one. Is that fair? Technical in which way? Like does it financially pencil out to the partners? Are they willing to? Does that seem like a good deal to them? Yeah, I think it, well, it's like an economic question. Cause the technical details I think are well agreed on for the actual kind of system design, the protocols for operation. So it's an economic question and it's not a question that can be viewed, I think in isolation compared to the status quo, but it'll be a question of what is the next 20 years or more look like in terms of carbon abatement for this type of load? And is this a reasonable economic option if our goal is to achieve that carbon abatement compared to whatever other options might be there? Cause we know that you can't use heat pump or geothermal technology for this type of load. So really there are fewer options and it works in a way with the idea that there is gonna be carbon pricing. We've thought about that potentially at the federal or state level. The state's gonna have the clean heat standard and in Burlington we're contemplating having a carbon price for replacing fossil fuel equipment. So this is also has to be viewed in light of that policy as well, I think. And then certainly there's political dynamic to it as well. Could you say a bit more about the wrecks? Yeah, so they're not actually wrecks per se. Cause wrecks are, I always think of wrecks, they're a tradable New England market commodity. These would be renewable credits in the sense that they would represent the environmental attributes from the project. And if you were an entity, an organization making an environmental claim by purchasing them, whether you're the city or the hospital or UVM for the quantity that you purchase, you'd be able to say we're using X amount of renewable thermal fuel, we're abating X amount of carbon as a result of that. So separate from sort of the utility regulatory side, the tier three and the clean heat credits and those types of things, the RTCs as we're calling them, the renewable thermal credits would be representative of the environmental attributes from the project. And because they are separate from the steam, because we would be injecting the steam primarily at the medical center, the idea is that the steam is separate from the RTC. The RTC is the environmental attribute and that would be available for purchase, even for customers who are not connected directly to the steam. We view the steam really as an injection, not only for purposes of serving that load, but it's really a reduction of fossil fuel use in the VGS system. Okay, so we could retire them, but you also mentioned that the city might buy some. Yeah, so the city could purchase as a use against some of its own carbon footprint. The medical center could purchase as a portion, not necessarily the entirety, but a portion. VGS could use some for its own purposes, for its mix. They're not tradable, they're not fungible, they're not commodities. These are environmental attributes that we contemplate being utilized for customer claims, for their own goals that they have for sustainability. Any other questions on that? If not, I've got a couple quick items that are in here. We are likely gonna participate in some sort of legislative working group on renewable energy standard. It hasn't been formed yet, we don't have any details, but that's a big topic, certainly, that's lingering. Wanted to let the commission know that since I wrote this update, we had a proposal for decision, so not a final decision, a proposal for decision on our FY23 rate case that proposed to disallow recovery of the Moran frame agreement in rates. Now we have asked for an extension of time to provide comment back to the PUC on that. This is not a final decision, but I wanted to flag that that issue was raised, and we are working with council to provide a response, you know, relative to that. So I can share more perhaps when we reconvene in September. Hopefully it'll be clearer at that point, but for the moment we have that issue lingering. The FY24 rates will take effect as a surcharge for bills rendered in September, not August this year as we've done in the past. So we'll see that change. We are expecting the other change, looks like it'll be approved based on the proposal for decision other than this issue that's lingering that we'll have some further discussion response on. And then lastly, this is kind of a good news item in a way, and I didn't quite put it this way in the update, but we are seeing really strong uptake for heat pumps and EVs to the point that we have obviously a finite budget under Act 151 for the use of the efficiency monies to supplement the tier three monies and provide the enhanced rebates, to the point that we've had a discussion around what that budget looks like over the rest of the year to make sure that we think we have the spend rate needed to support the customer uptake, which is a point I've always wanted to reach. I always wanted to get to a point where our customers were as interested in this as we've been to provide the incentives or even more so. The good news is that based on the bill that was signed by the governor, we will have additional resource in this space over the next several years, even if demand does stay at an elevated level. But I am conscious that we are looking, particularly in the heat pump space, given the federal incentives that are now available at maybe transitioning over a period of time, not tomorrow, but away from as heavy a capital incentive for the heat pump and towards a reduced operating cost, perhaps via end use pricing like we have for our EVs currently with the off-peak charging. And this dovetails a little bit with work that the department's doing to categorize the claimed savings from heat pumps and whether that's materializing fully within the Vermont context, generally not BED. And Bob, I think Chris may have sent you some information relative to that topic, heat pump savings and what we're seeing from the department's studies. So we're conscious of that, we're conscious of the spend rate being something that we'll keep an eye on. We believe we have enough to get through the end of the year and keep the incentives where they are, but we'll be looking at that for calendar 24 is how do we utilize our dollars most effectively if we start to have a bit of uptake past the level that we anticipated that's great and then how do we kind of encourage that for the future in a way that aligns with our budget. So that's kind of what I was trying to say here with a little more clarity. And I think that's everything that I plan to provide for the update. Question? So the supply chain constraints on contractors and things like that seem to not be slowing where you're hoping to have for uptake? Yeah, I think they did for a period of time, certainly. And there's still challenges if you want to get an electrician, for example, it's not immediate. I think if you're ordering a heat pump, it's not immediate necessarily, but the level of constraint that we saw I think a few years ago has abated to a good extent. So that's positive, certainly. Weatherization, on the other hand, still quite a constraint as we're seeing. Yeah, it's taking about four months to get the people to come do my house there, weatherizing my house in two weeks. All right, that's actually, that's fairly good timeframe. If it's four months, I've heard longer for sure. So that's not off base, but obviously we'd love it if there was sufficient contractor and workforce support to get it even quicker than that. So it's something we talked about with CEDO and we're interested in engaging on. And there might be an interesting ripple with the flood response and all the weatherization that's to happen in the community communities. No, that's right. But hopefully it doesn't throw off the engagement with the statewide, at the statewide level or Burlington level for too long. The demand is there in a more durable way, you would expect there would be businesses and workforce that would want to gravitate to that area. I think the problem is there's been a yo-yo effect in the past where we ramp up, the funding isn't sustainable, and then contractors have seen the funding fall off and the demand fall off. So having sustained demand for a period of time should drive some of the change that we want to see, I hope. Yeah. Any other questions on the CHAM update? We'll move on to the number seven, the 23-24 strategic direction, and do you have a springer still has the floor? Okay. Do folks have this candy? Yeah. Okay. Very much an evolutionary attempt here for the 23-24 strategic direction. We've done extensive work in the past on really getting this document in terms of the mission's values, 20-30 vision to reflect the commission and the department's goals. What we've seen here is really a focus on updating the strategic objectives in a few different ways. And as a reminder, we send out essentially a solicitation to the entire team via the different managers to ask for feedback on the strategic direction. So we start with that as the base and then we add some things where we're needed. And so I'm gonna walk through just line by line. I think that'd be the easiest. And the first change you'll see is related to engage customers and community. Number two, we really have a wording change, not a structural change around the wording saying now increase education and engagement as opposed to better educate and engage. And then also adding and video with the idea. And some of this came from our equity analyst from ETA who's putting a new lens on some of the wording here. The idea that we want videos as another way to provide customers with education opportunities. So I don't think terribly controversial, any of that, but the next line is partly due to input or really fully due to input, I should say from the city attorney who in reviewing one of our documents noticed this language and made clear to me that we should use language as written here to ensure all programs are equitable and accessible to all, including. And then we've added people whose primary language is not English as another group that we're seeking to reach getting rid of the language of with a priority given because that's not necessarily what the initiatives are about. We're not trying to prioritize a customer over another customer. We're really trying to make sure everything is accessible, equitable and available to all. So that language is reflecting that inclusion from the city attorney to make that more aligned with where we should be. The next one, just a quick question. Can you describe some of the things you're doing to reach out to people who do not speak English? Yeah, so a number of different things. And obviously, you know, website translation is something we've worked on. There is a language access policy from the city from CEDO that we're working to implement. ETA is doing some things that we haven't done before like having office hours at the King Street laundromat, for example. We are working tighter with CVOEO than we have in the past. We've engaged with their racial equity office with they have a community ambassador program. We had our team do a meeting with their community ambassadors and a number of folks and it's similar to the city trust and community voices program where you have representatives from different new American and immigrant communities who are able to take information that we can provide and provide it back and not always in writing. One of the things I learned is translation needs to be verbal in some cases as well. Having the written materials may not reach as many folks as you might want. So we're engaging in those types of forums as well. And that's just really the start. I see a whole lot of additional opportunity too, but I want to provide credit to our team and to ETA for thinking through some new things in the space. Excellent. I would also just suggest, I'm not sure if there could be a synergy, but as you know, I work for Channel 17. We also have the Vermont Language Justice Project there where Alison and her team may also be of help. Excellent. So I would suggest perhaps engaging them to see how they could be helpful too. No, that's good. I'm looking to see, I think Mike might be online, Mike Kanarek who could note that as well. Okay. Next item. Can I just say one more thing? Oh yeah, of course. Sorry, I think this is incorporated in number five where you're talking about proactively seeking customer info with the help of existing strategic community partners, but that I appreciate the number three call out to direct engagement with specific communities and also then part of that engagement being that best practice of co-design and having voices be incorporated into the process. No, definitely. And I'm aware as well of a grant application that we're working on with the Building Electrification Institute who had staff here recently and who've worked with us on the policy side. And if we're successful and they get the grant, part of it is exactly along those lines focused on residential decarbonization opportunities, engaging with CEDO, engaging with community groups and being able to kind of craft policy in a cohesive and collaborative way. So very much along the lines of what we're trying to do. Yeah, so yeah, and that really kind of speaks to number five as well as you mentioned. For number four, very much just some wording changes here, evolving the traditional energy efficiency programs to complement strategic electrification efforts to drive deeper greenhouse gas emissions reductions. Really long lines. What we just talked about with Act 151, we're in a new space. We've seen a lot of progress with traditional energy efficiency, lowering electric use. Now we're trying to reach a different goal and we want those programs to work well together. But that was already in there, just some wording changes. And then lastly in this section, providing website and other educational tools. So not limited to the website is one of the changes. To help customers evaluate both cost and carbon outcomes as opposed to savings, we're not presupposing that there are savings in every event from heat pumps, electric vehicles and other electrification technologies relative to current fuel sources. So just getting a little more granular in what we're really trying to offer customers in terms of information and not presupposing that there's savings in every scenario because we know that there may be instances where it's not. So that's the changes in that section. Comment? Please. And number four in that section, you talk about greenhouse gas emissions. Yes. But number six, it's carbon. And yeah. Okay, and I also, so I would suggest consistency seems to be my thing. Fair enough. But also carbon versus carbon dioxide. Dioxide, yeah. I think we should really watch that. I still think there are people out there in the world who are jiggering that for nefarious purposes. Understood. We will change that. I'll just say greenhouse gas emissions to be consistent as you were saying. If that's good. We'll make that change. Methane from gas. Right. We have no changes to report in the reliability section. Everything remains active and appropriate. We have a change in number five under the invest in our people processes technology. Previously, this was focused a little more exclusively on remote work. We've tried to broaden it to talk about leading by example, reducing VMT vehicle miles traveled through remote work, but also multimodal transit, car sharing partnerships, supporting bicycling, both conventional and e-bike. We had some discussion on that here at BED. We have some e-bike enthusiasts and conventional bike enthusiasts. We're going to try to support both of them through employee programs. So this is just a broader initiative here. So one correction on that. It should be multimodal transportation. Transit is in mode. Right. Got that. Okay. We will make that as well. Little detail. No, that's good. And I think those were the edits that we had. I believe the other sections remain stable. Certainly, you know, next year in the innovation section, advancing district energy may be a different bullet. We may have advanced district energy by that point, or we may have decided not to advance it. And so some of these items are coming to a head and will be subject to edit next year. But of course we will make those two other edits and also wanted to ask if there were other items that commission saw that required any updates. I have a broader question still. I don't know how long I can play the new B card, but is there a way that you track down from that strategic plan to, I mean, I know every meeting so far, you've pretty much hit a lot of these. And so I hear you reporting out, but is there any, just curious if there's any other way you kind of track the objectives? Just before I answer, I don't know if Mike had his hand up and I didn't see it on teams. He might have had something he wanted to add on the language access before I answer that if that's okay. Mike, go ahead if you can hear us. Sure, I can. Just based on the questions I heard, I wanted to let you folks know that we've done a couple of things and it says really spearheading it. One is we have a new flyer that's about, it basically is titled need help paying the bill. And it talks about the 12.5% energy assistance program and we've translated it into Vietnamese, Swahili, Somali, Lagala, or Runde, Bosnian, French and English, of course. And it is working on making sure that these flyers find their way to the communities where those languages are spoken. And then the mission chair Moody to your point, we have been in close touch with Allison Segarz at Channel 17 TV with the Vermont, what is the way, the Vermont Language Justice Project. In fact, just as recently as Friday, Eta was emailing with Allison about a video we're working on. We're trying to create a very short video that helps people basically understand their electric bill. And so we're making some good progress in making sure we connect with as many members of our community, no matter what language they're speaking. Excellent. Thank you for that, Darren. Yeah, thank you, that's great. Thanks, Mike. So in terms of the strategic direction, so a couple of things, we posted all around the building and on our website, so people are aware of it, they see it, it's our one page document. We include it and kind of reference to it in a variety of contexts, including sometimes with job applications, job interviews, talking about the strategic direction goals. We track a number of the initiatives via our dashboard. And in some cases, we have additional reporting like the net zero roadmap that really tracks kind of other pieces of it. And we try at least, I won't suppose that this is 100% correct, but we try to make sure that it's a document that everybody at BED sees some of their work in. So part of doing these updates as well is the idea that, and we came to this, I think a few years ago, that some people were feeling like maybe their work wasn't as well represented within this concise one page document that has a lot on it. It's been a challenge to keep it at one page. And so I think we've done some work to really capture a piece of everybody's contribution, hopefully, to BED and to the net zero mission kind of within it. So it serves some kind of data-driven purposes in terms of kind of the dashboard, the net zero roadmap, but also more hopefully kind of inspirational collaborative purposes as well, if that's fair. Other questions? All right, hearing none, and we'll move on to item number eight. And that's the, may- Oh, oh, sorry. I think we need your vote. Oh, tweet. Yeah, absolutely. All right, so. Is there suggested language? Before you do that. This is hard hitting. Good. Thank you. Thank you. And obviously, I don't know if we have motion language. I think it would be to adopt the 2023-2024 strategic direction with the two edits that I think we captured here. So with the draft, with those two edits from Bethany and Bob as well. You got something worth Smith? What's that? You got something worth Smith? So you want a motion? Please do. I move that we accept the strategic direction as presented subject to two or three corrections which were suggested here tonight. The motion has been made. Do we have a second? Okay. Made and seconded. Discussion on the motion? Hard hitting. Hard hitting. Alrighty, so I'll in favor of the motion indicate by saying aye. Aye. I'll oppose indicate by saying nay. Five ayes, the motion passes. Thank you, all right. Now we'll go on to number eight, the fiscal year 23 May financials. Raise yourselves. A lot of red. Okay, good evening everyone. So for May, I'm gonna scroll this so you can see the bottom. Yes, so for the month of May, we had a net loss of $540,000 compared to a budgeted net income of $836,000. So about 1.4 million rounding up. Worse than budget. Looking at the details of that, starting with operating revenues, sales to customers was worse than budget by 388,000. We're down only about 2.2% for the year to date in terms of sales revenues. Other income was mildly unfavorable, a hundred and a variance of 103,000. Most of that timing of EU reimbursements. And then power supply revenues or rec revenues. There is a negative variance of one and a half million, but if you recall, that's because you received the rec revenue in April where we had a positive variance instead of in May where we had budgeted to receive it. Now moving to operating expenses, power supply expense net was about $350,000 favorable to budget. Always some various puts and takes within that large amount. Fuel was favorable by $495,000 largely because McNeil was offline during the month of May, or most of the month of May. Due to economics, energy prices were fairly low. So we stayed offline to conserve wood and build wood supply heading into the summer. Transmission fees were $65,000 favorable to budget and purchase power was $209,000. Worse than budget, that included a $38,000 mystic charge, some variances in the wind production, both positive and negative. And we were, because McNeil was offline, the ISO exchange was negative, but we were helped in that regard because energy prices were low. So we were taking power, but at relatively low prices. Other operating and maintenance expense was favorable to budget by $358,000. Favorable items within that, including labor and overhead due to vacancies, material and supplies due to timing, and EEU rebates due to timing. Looking at the year to date, we have an actual net loss through the end of May of 309,000 compared to a budgeted net income of 2.798 million. So that's a variance of 3.1 million worse than budget. I think that's all I wanted to say at that point. Any questions on this slide? So I guess I just have this ongoing question, like what happens at the end of the year? So we'll have less cash than we wanted to have, and I have an update for you on that. We will make that accounting adjustment to amortize the lost sort of winter excess energy revenue to amortize that over a period of seven years. So it will take the roughly $4 million of expense that we would otherwise record and reduce it. And so that will help our net income. Our net income will look better than this looks right now. But of course our cash situation won't change. And then we just, from there, we continue to move forward, kind of managing as best we can. We're positioning McNeil, it's online. We've seen some decent prices in June and July with the warm weather. We are slowly ratcheting down the wood price to kind of mitigate that cost pressure and we'll move immediately into monitoring the FY24 budget very actively as the year progresses. So did I answer your question? Yeah, I mean it's just, so I think the one thing that's interesting I think is that the budget was that there was gonna be a lot of revenue that wasn't realized, but the negative piece was much smaller. Like you'd think it'd be. It's 300,309. Is that correct? Yeah, the net loss is smaller than that, right? But because we had budgeted a net income of, at this point in the year, almost $3 million. So yeah, I guess what we could say is that we've managed to sort of cover expenses with our revenues, even with those revenues being diminished close, but not quite, right? So that's why we've got that $300,000 variance. Started shrinking the spending to max the reduced revenues. As best we could, yeah. So that delta is not as, because the 3.1 numbers big, but 309,000 seems really close. Into granskiness. Actual loss of $3 million, it's just what they thought they were gonna do. It's a very, it's a very extra budget. It's a weird budget, yeah, but it probably is. That's it, like it gets lost in all the numbers, I think, and that's what I'm trying to articulate, yes. So you thought you were gonna earn more money than you were. Yes, that's too bad, but you didn't overspend your resources by very much. And that's the thing that has to catch up. Cause if I spend $300,000 more than I have, I've gotta find that $300,000. But if I thought I was gonna make $4 million, well, too bad, but yeah, I can. So I just think that that story is a little bit, and I don't know if anybody's paying attention other than us, and maybe that's our job, but that's the thing that I just wanted to clarify and make sure that that's the salient point from my perspective. Right, and that, you know, the so what of that, right, of what your net income or your net loss is, is it, you know, that's what shows up and affects your debt service coverage ratios, right? Because you didn't have as much income as you budgeted to have, right, in order to cover your debt service. So we are able to pay our debt service, right, but the ratio isn't as high. It's not as favorable. Yeah. And is it also the case that all the incentive programs that other funds associated with them so that, no, or is that also contributing to this? Some of them do, and some of them are being covered through liquidity created by the revenue bond proposal in a way in terms of how we finance an account for them, but the incentives are not the driver of this. Right, it's the energy prices. It's the energy prices. Yeah. And that's just a real... I think people pay attention to this through what our rate change is. They're not looking at it necessarily in this detail like you are, but the fact that we had the outcome that we did or hoping to have by the year end, even with the impacts that we saw, the fact that we could hold the rate change to five and a half for this year instead of the 12 and a half that it might have otherwise been. I don't know how much anyone can appreciate that given that they're seeing other cost increases and they're sensitive to that, but it could have been worse essentially than what it was. So... Right, and I guess I also wonder about that public perception like you're subsidizing someone's Tesla, but you're losing money. Like that the taxpayers have to... Like that there is a little bit of... But I don't hear that. I don't know if anybody else hears people complaining about that. Right, the Tesla subsidy helps keep rates lower in the long run, right? Because it's... But the perception... Selling more electrons, yeah. Also only certain Teslas would qualify for our emissions. We do cap the vehicle price levels at levels that are more consistent with maybe a Tesla Model 3 entry level as opposed to a Model S Plat. Great. But yeah, that's the thing I think that... But I don't hear anybody complaining or questioning or... Okay, then with that I'll go to our next section which is on capital spending. So by the end of May we were about 81% spent through our capital budget. We had budgeted to be at 8.9 million at this point in the year. We had spent 7.4 million down to cash and the ratios. So operating cash as of the end of May was $7,750,000. That compares to a budget at this point in time of 8.... No, budget at this point of 9.9 million. So that's a gap of like 2.2 million in terms of actual cash versus budgeted cash at this point in the year, which is actually a little bit of improvement from where we had been. We'd had like a $4 million delta since kind of December through the end of April. And you can see the credit rating factors there. For the most recent 12 months, our debt service coverage ratio is 2.71, the adjusted debt service coverage ratio is 0.84 and the days cash on hand, 107. I do know our operating cash balance as of June 30. It is 4.463 million. So it's less than where we were in May. However, it is pretty much right in line with where we thought we were gonna be forecast, where we were gonna be at the end of the year. And it's a little bit less than we had budgeted. So in the FY24 budget, we kind of had to pick a beginning cash balance to our best of our ability to forecast based on when we submitted the budget to you in May. So it's about $217,000 less than that amount. But then with our subsequent forecast, we kept revising and it's pretty much where we expected it to be. I don't know the exact number of days cash on hand that that number represents because in order to do that, I need to know my team needs to know the complete operating expense for the fiscal year, which we won't know until we close June's books. But we had been forecasting around 65 days. So I expect it will be close to that number. And that's all I had for my report. Any other questions, Remily? Great, we'll move on. Thank you, Emily. Thank you. You're very welcome. Item number nine, the IRP update discussion with James Gibbons. Good evening, everyone. How are you? So I'm gonna start with the quick verbal update and then I can at last go through the PowerPoint that I think was scheduled for March. So, but unfortunately I do wanna be clear that I was not actually the lead of that team that did the forecast. So I may be somewhat limited in my ability to answer detailed questions. If those come up, I'll have to research them and get back to you. On the informational update, first and foremost, the reports on McNeil have been finished and are now available on the McNeil website. So there are three reports. There's a carbon report done by VGS. There's a carbon report done by Innovative Natural Resources and there's a McNeil Economic Report likewise done by Innovative Natural Resources. Those are available on the website. That's the easiest place to go grabbing and have been provided to the Department of Public Service as well. The generation chapter draft has been finished. It has been shared with and discussed with the Department of Public Service. The Department of Public Service has provided comments and we are incorporating their comments where we thought they were reasonable and we will send you guys the post comment draft to take a look at. The T and D chapter is done in draft form, has been provided to the Public Service Department and we are waiting for comments from the Public Service Department on that chapter at this point. And lastly, Zach Sears, the intern that I mentioned to you last meeting has started actually working on the NetZero chapter and that chapter will have, will probably take out the section that simply regurgitated a lot of the NetZero roadmap information, replace it with NetZero roadmap update information in terms of actions taken to date and accomplishments to date. It will have the section I talked about on T and D requirements to meet 102.8 megawatts, a section on T and D requirements to meet 120 megawatts. We are hoping that through the pilot project we awarded to Prosumer Grid to have an evaluation of the implications of going to hourly renewability and we will have a discussion of district energy. Those are at least the plan right now components of that chapter. And that is my comment update before I go to the PowerPoint. Any questions on any of those items? Okay. I will switch to the slideshow and share my screen, hopefully. See if this works. I'm having a little trouble with that. Give me one second. Oh, there we go. Let me now see if I can actually share the screen. Well, the problem is it seems to take over my monitor when I do this. So did that work? Oh my goodness. So this was originally dated for the, I think the April 12th commission. I've noted that it's being presented on 7, 12, 2023. The IRP is still due September 1st and we don't have any expectations of not meeting that date. Unfortunately, I can't switch screens. All right. I'm trying to figure out how to advance the slides. That'll work. It's a hard way to get there. I'm not gonna spend any particular time just the lease costs. This is statutory language about lease cost integrated plans that you've all seen before. This is the forecast section that we're talking about in arrears, as it were. The resource evaluation is what I call the generation chapter that's been presented to the DPS and we've received comments on. The distribution evaluation is been provided to the DPS and we're receiving comments on that. And we'll be moving into the economic impacts next. And actually finalizing the forecast chapter as well. The forecast summary, we contracted with I-tron. The vast majority of the forecast work was done by I-tron. The base case includes traditional information such as historical class sales, weather data, information we know on appliance saturations, economic data and really represents a continued historical trend of solar EV and heat pump adoption. That's what the base case represents. It doesn't represent no adoption. It doesn't represent accelerated adoption. It represents adoption as demonstrated by the historical trends for those devices. The base case was then adjusted for some higher levels of adoption to create alternate cases. And what is not included in this IRP forecast compared to what is included in the net zero energy 2020 IRP forecast. Well, sorry, the net zero energy forecast. And again, I want to qualify that even that's not a forecast. The net zero energy load estimated impacts of net zero are primarily around the commercial industrial heating and cooking space. And the net zero roadmap effectively assumes total conversion of the small vehicle fleet in Burlington. And our highest case right now in the IRP does not go to that level. Yes, I'm figuring out how to do the slides. So go ahead. Great. Can you just say the why? Why is it not included in the model? It's really, it was really difficult. It's not just our model. It doesn't. I thought it was the forecastings for Velco, Green Mountain Power. It's just a very difficult sector to project. So it's not that we don't think anything will happen there. But there's not a lot of evidence of it yet. And it's not quantified. It is being covered in a way by us continuing to evaluate T&D impact scenarios that exceed the forecast here. And the way you would get to those T&D impacts is by converting some of the commercial heating and cooling, heating and cooking. So again, it's not that we're ignoring it. It's just not right now forecastable in our opinion. Just take a second to get to the slide switch. So this is effectively, I think we actually had talked about this slide already. This is the projected market share of light duty vehicles. The net zero road map effectively moves it to 100%. Right now we're capping at 81%. And those are increases and decreases the high and low case against the base case that I have that I've generated. So in our high case, we're projecting an 81% EV adoption by 2042. Honestly, that's fairly judgmental. We did look at like GMPs adoption rates for EVs and we're not inconsistent with those in our cases. I think they're baseballs within our bandwidth. It's not clear that we have the tools yet to get to the 98%. Again, I wanna emphasize the road map was not a forecast. It was a statement of, if we give you a date of 2030 and 2040, what is required to be net zero by those two dates? And internally to that document, it didn't say what happened. It said, that's what we need to do. And that's what we're working towards. But right now we're hesitant to put a 98% market share in our IRP forecast. Keeping in mind, the IRP forecast will be redone in three years. Though it's an every three year analysis. This is the heat pump deployment. For this one, we had a GMP curve and we think it's interesting. We do have a high case that is in excess of GMPs base case. The reason I'm not surprised to see GMPs base case higher than our low or our base case because large parts of their service territory are competing against propane and oil. Their conversion sales pitch, if you will, for installing a heat pump is much better than ours compared to natural gas. It would take a heat pump rate that created an economic benefit from operating heat pumps to move us from the base case towards the high case. And we are working on that, but we do not yet have a heat pump end use rate. So in Burlington, you can look at it and say, well, we've got an incentive to help you with the conversion costs, but you're going to be looking at an increased operating cost after you put it in. And we're trying to address that barrier. And the obvious way to address that barrier is an end use rate. Now, to offer an end use rate that's better than current electric rates, you really need to have some form of control to control some of the cost causation. In other words, you want to try to unload transmission and capacity costs and then offer a lower energy rate because of that. And the pilot project we're working on through the DOE funding and the Department of Public Service that Freddie and our two interns from UVM are working on is going after that potential end use rate and seeing if it can be done through a combination of hardware rather than a single device like the level two chargers that we're using for the EVs. In addition, that grant just as a side note is also addressing whether we can do a meaningful level one EV charging end use rate to back up our level two charging rate, particularly for hybrids and things like that. So that grant has been extended through like October I think is when the report is due. So that work is progressing. And I've heard more Eurekas than Damodals from our interns, which I consider a good sign. So you like to hear general noises of contentment and success coming from those people while they're working on the pilot project and I have. So they are two interns have been doing an excellent job and Freddie has been doing an amazing job of coordinating the team of three people working on this grant. This is the unadjusted base case forecast in peak load on the right scale, winter and summer and the energy forecast in the line on the left axis. So right now we don't have a lot of growth in the load forecast and we have some growth in the peak forecast, but we remain a summer peaking low utility under the base case forecast. I would also note that under the base case forecast we remain well shy of the 80 megawatts relatively speaking that the system can notionally handle without significant upgrades. Above that we go to the 102.8 case. Above that case we go to the 120 case. This is really a recap of the slides but adding in the high case now. This one is the summer peak demand and the high case doesn't change that peak demand very much. EVs for example are under load control in most cases or in the majority of cases now and their forecast to be under load control. So they don't drive a lot of summer peak and to the extent that we're picking up heat pumps they may be replacing air conditioners at a higher efficiency. So we're not also seeing a lot of change in the summer peak but if you look at the next slide you can see what happens to the winter peak in the more aggressive heat pump scenario, okay? That's where you see the load increase, okay? That's the first place you see the load hitting 80 megawatts. Again, if you injected commercial industrial heating, cooking and water heating into this now you exceed the 80 megawatts and move to the 100 such 120 range. Again, this is just a recap. This is the forecast of the winter and summer peak. Under the high case you can see that we switch around 2031. Again, absent the assumptions about commercial space. This is the forecast of the net zero energy peak demand. Okay, and so you can see that again I use the term forecast it was to get to 2030 or get to 2040. This is why we're testing at the 120 megawatt level. You can see that the 120 megawatt level actually covers all of the cases except for the spike in the net zero energy 2030, which is as I understand it, when you've deployed all of the end uses but the efficiencies haven't offset any of the increase yet. So again, we're testing 100, which puts us around here. We're testing 120, which puts us around here. And qualitatively distribution has told me that the 120 is really where the cost for serving load increases dramatically because at that point you're starting to touch interconnection substations with the outside world, the bigger substations. So Queen City, East Avenue, things like that. This is just the peak demand from the net zero energy versus the itron. Again, I think we've explained the difference in that. Same thing in the loads. So here's where you can just sort of see how much commercial cooking, water heating and commercial electric heat was in the net zero energy roadmap and how it does explain something like the difference between the 80 megawatts and the 120 to 130. So this is backup to support that the forecast in or around 80 absent that commercial load is not itself unreasonable, we don't think. Okay. Wow, Tom likes long PowerPoints. I keep thinking I must be at the last slide. I'm not sure exactly what this is showing other than that EVs are not contributing to the winter peak day peak load. It's being added to by the heat pumps and we'll never be able, I don't think, to take them all offline. So concurrently, like we can do potentially with EVs. Like I say, I'm a little struggling with what these last few slides were to do. This is showing what happens when the EV charging comes on. At some point we might have to diversify EV charging or you created a peak that's driven in the evening by the EVs all coming on at the same time. And we knew that, that's why we've got the option in our rates for much more dynamic load control of EVs than a simple signal to turn charging on at 11 p.m. That's what we're using right now where we've got a couple of hundred chargers but if it were ever at full saturation you'd need to do something more dynamic to keep that from happening and we can. And we actually have a couple of dynamic chargers that are being actually field tested right now where we're actually sending load control signals to the EV chargers to make sure that works. There we go, that was the last slide. Questions? Questions for James? So what's the right number? Absent the cooling load, I think 80, somewhere in the 65 to 80 range is the number for the foreseeable future. If we can figure out a hook to get into the commercial heating space and I don't know if an end use rate will do that or not then it goes up from there. And obviously to address the net zero roadmap you need to address that large chunk of the market. But I personally, unless Darren has an answer, I mean, it's interesting district energy actually goes after a piece of that too but it's a different piece that's separate and distinct in the net zero roadmap I believe. Case and how many years? We're rephrased the question, I'm not sure I follow you. To maximum demand by when? When do we, well, if you, let me go back and see if maybe this answers it. I don't, yeah, again, this is maximum demand but I'm looking for the net zero roadmap peak load slide. Yeah, so under the net zero roadmap, right, under the hot, under the 2030, we would be exceeding 80 megawatts. We actually be pushing 90 megawatts today. We're not pushing 65 today. So there is a, again, a material gap before. And so, you know, to get from 65 to system capability was three years under the net zero roadmap. I don't think that will happen. So, you know, again, you really, the important thing is the planning horizon and time to construct T and D upgrades relative to how unexpected the load increase could be. But again, we're clearly not on this peak trajectory or even close right now. In fact, it may be that our peak is slightly down from where it started here at this point. Any other questions? I love being able to check something off my task list from March. All right, here are no questions. Thank you very much, James. That was very, very informative. Thank you all for the discussion of it in the fall. Last but not least, we have the commissioner's check-in. If anybody has anything for that, I know GM Springer and I spoke earlier and he didn't believe that the department would have much of a agenda for us in August. So I think we're going to take August off and let people do what they want to do. Sorry, Trav. So that's my part of that. Does anybody else have anything to say on that or any last? Oh, Leo, you guys doing the net zero energy day in September again? We are. We are. Really, you start talking about that like months in advance. Yes, we've had a number of planning meetings. We have posted some things, I think, on social media and elsewhere, asking people to hold the date. But I believe it is the 23rd. That's right. With rain date on the 24th. Just confirming that in my calendar. That is correct. 23rd and 24th. We'll ramp up our outreach, including likely trying to do some advertising as well to let people know about it. And we're going to do some new things this year. I think we're contemplating some different additions to what we did last year that will hopefully even draw more folks out and engage more of the community, including we're also moving the time. It was 9 to 1 last year. It's going to be 10 to 2. And so we're hoping to get more folks interested in lunch at the fossil fuel free food trucks. And we'll have live music and DJs as well, like we did last year. Pretty sure Champ's going to be making an appearance again. A number of other great activities. So we'll definitely be highlighting that in this September meeting, which comes before the NetZero Festival. Yeah, a lot of great exhibits. Anybody who hasn't come to it before? It was really cool last year. Anything else going once, going twice? We are adjourned. Thank you very much for watching. See you in September.