 I am sorry for the delay. We are awaiting the arrival of Senator Amy Kovachar of Minnesota who will be joining us shortly. But at any time, we want to go ahead and kick off the briefing because this is a very important and exciting time, I think, for co-ops. This is a very exciting briefing in terms of the topics that we are looking at. And I think that you too will be very, very interested and glad to share some of the stories that are happening across the country at America's Rural Electric Co-ops. Co-ops are a very integral part of the United States history and their role in terms of their development or their mission to assist local economic development to represent their members. And that makes them also unique as utilities and that they do have members whom they serve, that they are owned by their members, which gives them a very, very special relationship to their members. Very different from so many of the utilities from whom many of us probably obtained service. At the same time, it also means that because of this special relationship and what it means to communities across the country since it was indeed co-ops, it really brought electricity to so many areas across the country decades ago, today because of making rural America a vibrant part of the US economy and providing basic essential services. So there are many, many changes in the utility sector and the power sector. These changes are also occurring throughout the Rural Electric Co-op system. There are many different kinds of co-ops looking at different issues, being responsive to their members' needs, but always driven by the need to provide low cost, effective, reliable access to power and making a real defense in their community. And a couple things that I want to say with regard to Senator Klobuchar, as we await her coming in, is that it is very interesting that she comes from a very, very strong co-op state in terms of Minnesota and that she also serves as the co-chair here in the Senate of the Congressional Farmer Cooperative Caucus, which makes her a very key person to be part of today's briefing in which we're looking at innovative clean energy strategies of rural electric co-ops. In that capacity, she has also had the opportunity to serve on the Agriculture Committee. Where she has provided much leadership with regard to important conference committees in terms of finally getting a farm bill through in 2014. She has made a terrific mark in the Senate in terms of leadership in so many different areas, including her role as the chair of the Senate of the Democratic Party Steering and Outreach Committee and as a ranking member of the Joint Economic Committee and the President's Export Council. She is also a ranking member of the Judiciary Subcommittee. So Senator Klobuchar's voice has been strong. She has been a terrific consumer advocate, a leading expert on energy and environmental issues. And so when she arrives, we will turn immediately to her so that she can address us. And in the interim, what I would like to do is to turn to our first speaker this morning because we think that there are some wonderful stories and we do want to get started looking at those. And for that we will turn to Curtis Wynne, who is the president and CEO of Roanoke Electric Co-operative in North Carolina. And Mr. Wynne has been in this role as president and CEO of Roanoke since 1987, or 1997. And before that, he was with West Florida Electric Co-operative, where he really truly learned the co-op business, which has made him the outstanding leader that he is, because he was involved in so many type roles, learning co-ops from every possible aspect. He has been extremely active in many community and development organizations, and also serves on the National Board of the National Environmental Property Association. I am very pleased to do this, Chris Wynne. The opportunity to be a part of this program today and to share with you a little bit about what we're doing at Roanoke Electric Co-operation. Just to give you a little bit of context about our co-operative. We are, what one would consider a small to medium size electric car to serve about 14,000 meters in North Eastern North Carolina. The average line density of our system is about seven meters per mile. And if you compare that to the typical utility, whether it's a municipal or an investor owned company, that average range is anywhere from 30 to up to 60 meters per mile. So that is pretty much the nature of most electric car to the cost of country. We represent that. Today I want to share with you about a program that we call Upgrade to Save, and it is funded by the USDA really utility services energy efficiency conservation loan program, what we know as ECLIP. First part I want to make is that the ECLIP program slash the Upgrade to Save is part of our overall strategy at Roanoke Electric Co-operative. And what I'm showing you now is actually our strategy map. I want to get into the details of that just to make a point that this energy efficiency program is intertwined and ingrained in our overall corporate culture and our corporate strategy as we try to do what's depicted at the very top of our strategy map is to make a cooperative difference. As Carol alluded there, there is a cooperative difference with electric car, just we want to make sure that our members have high reliability, competitive rates, that they're engaged and active, and that they're very satisfied with the service that we bring to them. So this program is an element of making sure that happens, and I'll tie it in with our strategy map in that manner. So what we have is what we call a tariff-based approach to energy efficiency. And what that means simply is that through the, we have a non-profit affiliate called the Roanoke Center, and they operate this program that I want to explain to you for the electric car. And in that, we take complete control of and we finance the energy efficiency work from start to finish on behalf of our members. This is a voluntary program. It means that the member has to opt in. They have to ask us to come and serve them. The tariff piece comes in where the repayment is made. They're co-opted. It's not a grant program. We do these efficiency, energy efficiency upgrades, and we're paid back by way of a bill tariff. That means we're able to put a charge on the member's bill to collect the funds that we invest in that location. And a location is very important because the connection with our program is not with the person or the member. It's with the location. We're treating the upgrades as a part of our overall system improvement process so that we can make sure that energy efficiency is in that whole mix of what we do as an utility. One component of the program is that the repayment that we charge on the bill is that the program is designed so that it never exceeds 75% of the savings that we calculate for the members. And there are methods that we have in place that we're able to predict those savings before we do the measures. And the repayment never exceeds 75% of that. The obligation to pay for the measure stays with the location. So whoever is at that location, whether it's the first person or subsequent members who come into that location, are obligated to make that payment back to their receiving event. So why do we choose that a tariff-based approach? The reasons are pretty simple for us. First of all, if you look at the demographics of Roanoke Electric Co-operative, what red means on that map is it means a lot of things, but mostly it means poverty. It means low wealth. It means health disparities. It means loss of population. So this section is where our territory is. Every county that we serve has those issues. So that was one reason. There's a drastic need. The bottom graph that I'm showing you is you can't sit in the back, but these are benchmarks that we get from survey work that we do as a cooperative. The yellow block is Roanoke Electric Co-operative. And what these sections mean is how much does a typical member pay for electric consumption on a monthly basis? If you move to $200 a month plus, 46% of our members have bills that are over $200 a month on average, compared to the national average of 17%. So you may ask, well, why is that? The reason is not because of our rates. We explain that to our members, and we'll be explaining that tonight at the community floor, but it's because of the consumption. And consumption is driven by the lack of energy efficiency measures in the home. So I hope you can see the reason we are so excited about the EQUIP program and are excited to have this program available. The other point I want to make is that previous attempts to put on-bill financing problems together have failed. We have gone through a perpetual cycle of members coming to the office complaining about the amount of their bill. And we would go out and do the energy artist explain to them, OK, you really need to do these measures to fix your home, cause your bill not to be so high. But when you get to the point of telling them how much it costs to do that, the conversation suddenly ends. And the next year, when their bills go up, the next time around, they come back. So this perpetual cycle has gone on for years and years. And now at the point in time, we have a program that can get the members to say yes. So getting the members to say yes is where we are now. It costs the previous attempts to put on-bill financing problems together have failed. We have very low take rates because previous attempts have involved the members having to take out some type of additional debt to get those measures in place. This program is different in that the cooperative is taking on the obligation for that debt. And these other measures that we've explained to members all along have been things that would have worked, but they just can't come around to cause, well, if they would like to come around, most financial institutions, because of the credit worthness of most members, they don't pass that measure, then that threshold will be able to get a loan to do the measures that are needed to cause the bills to be lowered. So we have taken that on and removed that barrier from the members by putting the e-clip in place and not causing them to have to take out that obligation. So here's how it works. So the member comes and we determine that the location is one that we can do and operate. The member pays nothing up front. This, the financing, as I've said earlier, is kind of about a cooperative. We will do the measures, and we won't do it unless they can see an immediate improvement in their cash flow, as I mentioned earlier. As long as they do their obligation to their part, that obligation is there. If the measure that we put in place fails or if for some reason we can't fix the measure, their obligation ends. There is no debt. There is no laying on their home. There is no loan for the member. And the other big component of this that we've been able to pick up is that renters. You can imagine if someone's renting a piece of property and it's not very energy efficient, it's a pretty broad stretch to ask the landlord to make those improvements, to come out of their own pockets and make those improvements to that facility. And that's been a huge barrier for a lot of our members because a lot of them rent properties and they still are obligated to pay the utility bill. Now the landlords are pretty much standing in line because they don't have to take out that debt obligation to do those measures. And that's to the benefit of our members. I want to explain to you some of the target measures. What are some of the things that we'll do at the location where we will do the upgrades? Most of the things that we do are the things that are most likely to produce immediate savings. But any cost-effective measure that could be proposed is to go outside of this room. But for the most part, the measures include energy-efficient, energy-star heat pumps. That is a huge savings. And most members are converting either from a strip heating situation or some type of other fuel to an energy-efficient heat pump that's going to cost them a whole lot less. Another area where a lot of our members are having a lot of difficulties is in the air and duct ceiling. Duc work is a big problem. And we see a lot of situations where a lot of the heating and cooling is going underneath the house and other places except for in the house. We were teasing earlier about sometimes the pets are more comfortable underneath the house than our members are inside of the home because of poor duct ceiling. So that's a huge way that energy is being escaped from the system. Captain. Curtis, could I interrupt? No, sure. The Senator Klobuchar has arrived. And just as we got your slide back up, so I will come back to you and have Senator Klobuchar come. Yes, yes. Great, thank you so much. Because there's lots more that we want to hear from Curtis about this exciting program. So at this time, we would like to welcome Senator Klobuchar, who, as I said earlier, is providing very, very strong leadership throughout the Senate through her assignments on the Senate Committee of Agriculture. She is the first woman elected to the Senate of Minnesota. And she has made a wonderful mark in the Senate through her extensive leadership in so many different areas. Senator Klobuchar. That's a whole other story. Much of it, a good work. EESI, Jim Carroll, I wish I knew all of it. But I want to thank you for that. And I'd like to acknowledge everyone, especially Gary Cahn, the Director of Environmental Stewardship at Great River Energy, which is a Minnesota-based electric co-op, as well as the other leaders that are here today. I do bring you greetings from the state of Minnesota. We're in the words of our Co-Lawry of Gears and Healer. The women are strong, right? The men are good-looking, and all the electric co-ops are above average. Minnesota has one of the highest number for capital of electric co-ops, and it's been a really important part of the energy outlook in our state. And just to give you a sense of our state, we are a state that early on really went into renewable energy in an aggressive way, and it was a bipartisan way. Tim Palenti was actually the governor when this happened. It was in 2007. And we passed a renewable energy standard, requiring 25% of our electricity come from renewable sources by 2025. It passed the House 123 to 10, and it was sent in 63 to 3. It was actually some of ethanol. So a lot of the rural groups liked it as well, because they were getting ethanol standards at the same time. So we kind of did both things at once, and it worked politically, and it has worked for our state, and we're proud of the work our rural co-ops is harder to do when you're rural co-op to meet those kinds of standards. And they worked with us to do it. And then Excel, which is our bigger utility, actually had a 30% requirement and was on track to meet that requirement as well. So it's kind of an interesting story and a bipartisan story, something I hope we can start doing a little more up here in Washington. I really see the states as our laboratories of democracy to quote Justice Brandeis, and you can learn a lot of what the states are doing. I think especially with rural co-op, we have to acknowledge that not one size fits all. They have very different situations, even among themselves depending on their size, and we have to look at those needs when we look at federal policy. Obviously with regard to the greenhouse gas emission standards, I've been working hard to make sure we get credit across state lines. Minnesota gets a lot of wind from North Dakota, and they like to call themselves the Saudi Arabian wind, but so does every state in the country, but in their case it's true. And we also want to get credit for early action because we're a state that did a lot early on. So those are two issues we're working on as well as working with some of our smaller electric co-ops to make sure these rules work for them. But other than that, what I've seen is some tremendous work with our electric co-ops all over Minnesota. One of the best examples that I can use is one I recently visited, which was Steel with Sika Co-op. And when Steel with Sika Co-op is done, I asked if they've seen it anywhere else in the country. They've given out free water heaters, which I'll get to in a minute, something Senator Moven and I work very hard on, free large water heaters for their customers in exchange for them buying a solar panel. This is a true story. And they have, the solar panels are not installed on the huts, those are actually right near the utility building I went out and looked at them. And for some reason, this get a free water heater thing has really worked. And they have costed it a lot and figured out they're much better off because they save so much money when their customers buy one of these, get for free one of these water heaters. And then they've also figured out that they can gain on the solar and that the individual customers will gain over a period of only a few years. And so that is just one example of something that you might not see a big electric company do, but a small world electric co-op is able to respond to the needs of their customers and be our own laboratories of democracy. So Senator Hoven and I got very involved in this issue of the water heaters. And that's because we thought this was something that needed to change. As many of you know, demand response programs use off heat electricity to conserve energy and reduce cost to consumers. The programs also help electric co-ops manage loads during periods of peak demand and can help integrate renewable energy in the grid by enabling power to be stored when renewable sources are not producing power. The Department of Energy had planned to phase out the water heaters that helped us get to the place we wanted to be with renewables by April of 2015. But what happened was the DOE's rules didn't take into account the value of the water heaters to both consumers and the electric co-ops that served throughout rural America. And what we have learned, and you all know, is that these water heaters save money, optimize energy management, and because the water heaters are energy efficient, the environment benefits. So we had an interesting coalition of the rural electrics and environmental groups helping to get this passed because the deadline was coming and they weren't gonna be able to manufacture these water heaters anymore. And we somehow attached it to three in the morning, which was a true story, when everyone was really tired, along with Senator Shaheen and Portman with their energy efficiency bill and got it passed just under the wire and we had a lot of fun working on it actually for about a week to get it on the bill. And it's an example of our partisan work but it's also an example of something that has benefited our small co-ops. Another thing Senator Huffin and I, my neighbor next door are working on is the Nonprofit Energy Efficiency Act. Just this is more for your knowledge. It's a pretty popular provision, started out with our churches and synagogues and others that have really old buildings and obviously a lot of them are in rural areas and other non-profits. And what this does is allow these non-profits to get some tax benefit for installing energy efficient windows or solar panels or whatever they can do to make these older buildings more energy efficient. And you can imagine, especially when you look at like that the Catholic bishops have made this one of their priorities. I'm not giving this the Pope mentions it, just kidding, I probably won't. I'd like to come out Senator Huffin, this is great. And Huffin for their bill, but the Catholic Church is very interested in it because they have so many old buildings and they have parishioners and others that really want to do something about climate change and energy efficiency and by just giving that little extra benefit through this bill, it's just gonna be a great gain nationally because so many of these kinds of groups want to add some energy efficiency to the mix in their buildings. So that's something to watch for. It's not something that justice involves the lack of co-op, but I thought you'd be interested in knowing what's going on with that. Other issues, besides the major energy ones going on that I know you guys care a lot about, I continue to be a strong supporter of rural utility grants and loans and financing, which is so important to our electric co-ops. And I'm continuing to be the chief sponsor along with Senator Vitter of the bill to lift the entire trust exemption with our railroads because that is another issue for rural co-ops, which has been a huge one. They were the last, oftentimes the last leg on a train track and paid some exorbitant rates, we call them captive shippers. So we have been working to try to either do that or also try to change some rules before the service transportation board so that these rates can be challenged more easily. So those are some of the things that I learned walking around and driving around our state. I visit all A7 counties every single year, almost as many as Senator Brasley, but he was 99. So I really have gotten a sense of our electric co-ops. I've been up in buckets with them, repairing lines, don't worry about me personally. And I've visited many of them. I visited at their meetings with all of the citizens who are investors and it really gives you a sense of the different business model of a co-op and how much individual people care. And what I think is exciting from an energy standpoint is that this model where you have individuals who actually are trying to save money for their homes, it makes them really interested in energy efficiency. All these studies have shown that the big companies have done is that one way to get people to save energy is if they know what their neighbor's doing, right? They may not know their neighbor by name, but they get on the go. A house that's very similar to yours saved $100 a month because they didn't do what their washing machine, whatever it is. And with electric co-ops you have that model baked in because these are people that are in a small area and are really trying to save some money. So I think it's really exciting as you look at models for energy efficiency, reducing greenhouse gases, whatever it is. Going forward, this is one really great way to look at it and that's our world co-ops that we're very proud of in our state and across the country. So thank you very much for having me here and looking forward to getting my next bill passed with Senator Coven. We work so well together at the East Grand Forks Herald which, or not the Grand Forks Herald, which maybe you guys have read, and they declared that he and I should take over the Senate. Gladly, Senator McConnell and Senator Reid don't have a subscription to that newspaper. But thank you very much. So we're looking forward to our next bipartisan effort, but the Water Leader was a great fight, the Water Leader fight, and something that we got a lot of people on board with. And so now we're moving on to this nonprofit issue, which I think will really give us some energy efficiency. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. And they all want to say thank you for that big help on the Water Heater bill. I even have a picture of me next to 10 water heaters. It's really cool. You know, not everybody can say that, Senator Klobuchar. You know, it's not that heavy. I've been like, there's loads of things. So we'll see if we can steal a co-op and get one for free. You know. And then, of course, a couple hundred dollars is the thing. So everybody knows that. And now you also know why Senator Klobuchar is such a powerhouse and such an important leader here in the Senate. Thank you. Okay, so now we're going to turn back to Curtis to hear more about the specific measures that are involved in the Roanoke program. So just to talk a little bit about the measures, specifically what we will do with the program as it is today is replace the heat pump with, well, if they have strip heating or some other source of heating or cooling with a more efficient unit that saves energy that cuts down on our costs. And it's a big win, the duct ceiling, capping insulation, floor insulation, and changing out some of the lights and shower heads. Pretty simple package, but that's where we are now. There will be times in this program where those numbers that I mentioned earlier don't match up. And the member always has the option to co-pay or make a payment or investment into the program to get the numbers to work and get it approved by the cooperative. Those are the measures. So the other added benefit to this is that the economy, the local economy is benefiting by putting contractors to work. And our plan, we are planning to use about $6 million over the next four years of the USDA E-Clip dollars. And that equates to about 200 homes per year. And that's a lot of work for contractors. And they are getting a constant flow of contracts that they can come out and do. So that's gonna help the economy. The members are satisfied, their bills are lower as a result of the program. And what a successful program means to us is that it does fulfill our commitment to our members, which I mentioned earlier as a part of our strategy map. So just to wrap it up, overall we're seeing some huge benefits to Roanoke Electric Cooperative in addition to the benefits our members are receiving. We pay for those spikes in the energy usage when there's real cold weather or real hot weather. The more we can level that out, the better off we are as a utility because we pay premiums when those extreme cold temperatures come into our area. And if we can cut that down by having the efficiency measures out in our system, that helps the cooperative. It cuts dollars directly off of our expenses and increases our bottom line. The other thing that we have in North Carolina as a state, we have a renewable energy portfolio standards law that requires us to make investments into solar and wind and other renewable efforts. Energy efficiency just happens to be one of those qualifying elements that we can invest in. So we're taking the energy efficiency credits that we're creating through this program to offset any investments we'd have to make otherwise, which is another savings to the cooperative. And of course, member satisfaction is huge and we feel like we're doing that. Just wanna say in closing that this is not something Roanoke Electric created. This model has been around. Kentucky, Kansas, there's two states that have gone ahead of us. Fortunately, we have one benefit they didn't have and that is the fact that we have the USDA E-Clip money to finance our programs which they didn't have. So we see a stream of financing available to us. That's a huge benefit. And we think that it's gonna benefit our members in the long run. We see huge opportunities in the future for other opportunities like community solar, potentially battery storage is our other things we have on the horizon that we can make sure that every member on our system has the opportunity to benefit from those new technologies that come up regardless of their status. I'm sure we'll have opportunities for questions later but I think we're gonna move on with the other presenters and we'll do Q and A later on in the program. Thank you for your attention. Thanks, Curtis. Thanks so much, Curtis. And I think what Roanoke is doing with regard to on-bill financing and really scaling this up is really, really important. And as he also made clear, there are just so many multiple benefits that are delivered through this kind of an approach. And I know it's an whole area that we at ESI have been very excited about over the last several years as we've worked with COPs, particularly in South Carolina, with regard to doing a pilot, a very similar pilot program there and that really achieves so many different benefits. So we're now going to turn to someone from that great state of Minnesota that Senator Klobuchar talked about. And Gary Connit, who is the director of member services for Great River Energy is here with us to talk about some of the innovative things that they are doing. And Gary has been at Great River Energy for over 40 years. And that's another thing that I've also noticed about COPs. So many times people really stay for a very long time because they so love what they are doing and what the organization means to their communities. At Great River, he is responsible for member services programs that includes demand response, conservation energy efficiency, electrification initiatives, which we'll hear more about and economic development because that's all part of the whole picture. And as is true with regard to all of our speakers, Gary also is involved with a number of other organizations and committees, all of which help to better understand how to provide always a better way of delivering efficient productive energy services and making a difference on the economic development side as well. Gary? Well, good morning, everyone. It was great to see Senator Klobuchar. She was, like she said, she was absolutely instrumental in a bill that helped us with all things, something as simple and maybe as boring as a water heater. Senator Klobuchar, she mentioned Garrison Keeler as anybody heard of Garrison Keeler. He's retiring. The word is he's retiring this year. And I was thinking about Garrison. And my high schools claim the fame. Garrison Keeler graduated from Anoka High School a few years earlier than I. The high school also graduated our representative, Michelle Bachman. Boy, there's a contrast. But about any of the case, that's my high schools claim the fame. At Great River Energy, we're a G and T. That stands for generation and transmission cooperative. Think of us as a manufacturer of electricity. And we manufacture that electricity and we deliver it to our retail distribution network. And that retail distribution network is 28 member co-ops. They don't make electricity. They distribute electricity to about 700,000 members out there. And those members represent about 1.5 million people are thereabouts. And so we're the manufacturer of the electricity and they're the distributors. And you can get a sense of our service territory there. It goes from Canada to Iowa and there's some metro areas. And our co-ops are different. Some of them are incredibly fast growing, incredibly suburban and others are agriculture and others way up in the northern reaches of Minnesota are very resort kind of focused and so on. So it's really an interesting service territory. You know, at Great River Energy, we're trying to power what we call as a new way of thinking. The new way of thinking of electricity. Electricity is becoming greener and cleaner. And ultimately it's gonna become the preferred energy source to power many of our new technologies in our homes and businesses. At Great River Energy, we call it electrification. Electrification has become one of our strategic imperatives. Promoting electrification is empowering us to meet our conservation goals. We have a 1.5% of our annual electricity sales we have to save each year. And so through some of these electrification strategies we can help reach that goal. It helps us to increase revenue through the selling of strategic energy programs. And it's this crazy notion that not every electric sale for a utility is a good electric sale but some are far better than others. And if we can strategically guide that we become a better business for it and our members benefit. Engage in efforts that widely support widely support by stakeholders. One of the things that we like to think about is when we go forward and try to encourage electrification we wanna do it in a way where we don't raise the eyebrows of legislators and regulators and environmental groups. Is there certain things that we can promote that are good for society that no one's gonna be concerned about? And clearly there are. And some of those that I'm gonna speak about briefly are water heating, community solar and electric vehicles. I start out with this slide and I think of this one partly because I'm a juggler. And juggling's difficult. And the needs of this new electric grid are difficult. It's a juggling act of sorts. You have variable resources. And Carol mentioned I've been around this business a long time. And in resources, our generation resources. It used to be that our generation resources were coal or nuclear or whatever. But we knew how they operated. We knew with precision how an electric generator operated. Today we have a lot of wind resources. We've gotta meet this renewable energy standard that Senator Klobuchar talked about. We have a lot of wind in our resource mix today. Nobody can predict how those wind resources are gonna produce energy tomorrow or next week. It's a variable resource. We didn't have variable resources too many years ago. Solar is another variable resource. Solar can literally change in a few seconds with a cloud cover. Variable resources, variable load. Load is what we do in our homes and businesses. And it used to be pretty state and true how we used energy. But that's changing too, how we use energy. Part of it is that some of us will have our own renewable resources on our roof. And that'll take away from the load that we serve and it causes us variation in load. The last one is variability in pricing. We buy all of our energy at Great River Energy in a wholesale market. And that price changes every five seconds in the real time market. And so is there opportunities to look at your load and adjust as prices are adjusting as well. So that's the Juggling Act. And the first program that I wanna talk about that kinda deals with this juggling is water heating. And boy, Senator Klobuchar set me up well. Think of a water heater as a battery. And by the way, if you're into the electric utility business, the entire industry is looking for a battery. And we're working on some high tech battery technology. I'll argue that a water heater is a battery as well. A water heater is a thermal storage battery. And think of a large capacity water heater that Senator Klobuchar mentioned as a battery that can store up to say 26 kilowatt hours. That probably doesn't mean a whole lot to you guys, but it means a lot to me. It's a two day supply of hot water. And at Great River Energy, we have 70,000 of these batteries in 70,000 homes. And those batteries star about, we call it a gigawatt hour of energy every night. As the industry is looking for this battery, I'll tell you, we have the biggest battery in the US right now. It's in the homes of 70,000 people in Minnesota and that stores energy each and every night. Much wind energy at night as we do during the day. And our load goes down, down, down in the middle of the night. And so there's this notion that as utilities, we're looking for a way, when the wind's blowing at night, we're looking for a way to store that energy. Keep in mind, we're probably the only business that you know about that has to provide the same amount of product that's in demand at the very same second. Just about every business that you're familiar with has a way to inventory, to store, to warehouse their product. We don't. And so this notion of balancing supply and demand becomes super critical. And this idea of these variable resources like wind becoming more up and down and having something to store that energy when it does becomes critical to utility. Enhances the value of renewable energy. It's this idea that sometimes there's so much renewable energy being generated in the Midwest that we don't know what to do with it. We have to ramp down wind. We have to ramp down something because the supply is greater than the demand. If you had a fleet of batteries, water heaters, you would have a way to absorb that renewable energy. If we had it in a good way, it actually can reduce the carbon footprint of water heating. And of course, we're always thinking of our members. As a co-op, that's first and foremost. And you doing this gives us a way to allow them to heat their water for far less cost than maybe the alternative. And the last bullet there can provide ancillary service to the wholesale market. I don't expect you to understand that one. But it's the notion that in the middle of the night, when you're charging these water heaters, these batteries, you can also provide other services to the wholesale market, to the wholesale electric market that are keen to the wholesale markets and keen to utilities. That's what a grid interactive water heater is. That's why for years we were really excited about working with Senator Klobuchar and changing that DOE rule. You know, this is my only really geeky slide. And what it shows is the months of the year. It's a heat chart. And it shows the months of the year. We're on the left, on the right, on the left hand side, it's upper right. January, February, March, April, May, June. What it's showing is the prices in the wholesale market for an entire year. And the hours go across horizontally. Midnights to the left. And midnight the next day is to the right. All I wanna show you is that prices change throughout the day. And the red heat map indicating is when prices in the wholesale market go negative. Imagine that. There's hours in the middle of the night where they'll pay you to take electricity. Imagine if you have a battery that can charge in the middle of the night when prices are negative. That battery being potentially a water heater. I wanna switch gears now and talk about solar. Our members are expecting that their energy comes from a more cleaner and greener resource. Today, about 12% of our energy comes from renewable resources. It goes to meet that requirement that Senator Klobuchar talked about that Minnesota has. And we have to have 25% coming from renewables by the year 2025. In Minnesota, we've built out 24 solar projects. These projects weren't part of that mandate. Our mandate is being met through wind energy, through big wind turbines. These are projects that we've done on our own. They vary in size from 21 kilowatts to 276 kilowatts. They're fairly small if you know that sort of business, if you will. 11 of those 24 are what are called community solar projects. Those are the projects that members can buy into and buy a panel. They may not want the panel or don't have the ability to put panels on their roof, but they can come into the co-op and buy part of this community solar project that in many cases is near the co-op or somewhere in the area. Our customers are also, members, are also asking for options and choices going forward for their energy supply. And it brings us to another thing that Senator Klobuchar mentioned down in one of our co-ops called Steel Waseca. They've dubbed it the Suna Project. And this Suna Project is really matching community solar with load management. And the idea is that they are providing a free water heater if you buy one of their solar panels in their community solar project. Well, what's a free solar panel worth? About probably 1200 bucks. That's what a panel would cost if you bought one in their community solar project. But they're giving it to you free. Well, they're giving it to you for 170 bucks and they're giving you the water heater free. And the idea is that if you're gonna buy into a community solar project or you're going to put solar on your home yourself, you ought to be looking at how you can use electricity in your home. You ought to be looking at is it possible to reduce the carbon footprint in my home? Yes, you can do that through using electricity, that's coming from a renewable resource. And so in still Waseke's service territory, they have a number of members that are buying the panel for 170 bucks. And in that exchange, they're putting in a electric thermal storage water heater. It's a great example of coupling renewables with a storage technology, short of being a real battery. A couple of, they've gotten a lot of pressure this. It's been kind of fun to see the articles come through. The one thing I'll mention on this one is small co-op, big idea. I like that. It's really important that we can have co-ops that are flexible and do things. The last thing I wanna talk is about our electric vehicle campaign. We wanna help with the transition to an electric vehicle economy. Work to participating with advocacy groups, state agencies, and car dealerships in an effect to get electric vehicles on the streets, if you will. We call it our revolt campaign. And for those of you that are really sharp, you might see the word love in that revolt. We've spent a lot of time in the last year or so having different outings and different conferences and different things around electric vehicles. We're keen on them. And part of the reason that we're keen on them, it's really no downside to electric vehicles. No downside to electric vehicles. For our members, there's benefit. For our business, there's benefit. For the environment, there's benefit. And we see benefit to the local economy as well. And so the offer that we have for electric vehicles goes like this. Purchase or lease a plug-in electric vehicle and you qualify for renewable energy at zero additional cost. We'll provide the electricity to that electric vehicle and of course you're gonna pay for that electricity, but we'll make sure that it's renewable energy for the lifetime of that vehicle. And we've got some calculations for that and you can trust that they're there. You may also qualify for a $500 rebate to get that charging station that you need in your home as well. Well, let me finish up where I started. Electricity. I don't think there's anybody in the room that would deny we've got a pretty darn good product. Looking forward, new technologies and new ways to use electricity are going to be nothing less than revolutionary. At great river energy, we're trying to stay abreast of those technologies, of what they are, what they can do and how they can benefit our membership. Thank you. Thanks so much, Gary. We're now going to go to another part of the country, to the Northeast, and we are going to hear from Ken Colburn, who is here today in his capacity as a board member of the New Hampshire Electric Cooperative. Ken is also a senior associate with the Regulatory Assistance Project, RAP, where he has led numerous state exercises with regard to looking at energy, climate policy issues and how best to put that together. Through his capacity at RAP, he has long been involved in helping advise state and local regulators on air quality and environmental and energy issues. And he also has served as the air regulator in New Hampshire and was the executive director of Nescom, which is essentially the Northeast Association of State Air Quality Regulators. And so we are very, very pleased to have Ken join us today. Thank you, Carol. I'm also delighted to be here and to appreciate the efforts of co-ops like Curtis's and Gary's. I'm thankful that I, as a board member, have some good materials because otherwise I'd be, this would be a tough act to follow. I also want to echo their appreciation for Senator Klobuchar's efforts and not just hers, but Senator Hovind's, Senator Schiffahin's and Senator Portman's that have made energy move forward in some constructive ways here on the Hill. What I want to talk about today is net metering. And we had a situation arise at New Hampshire Electric Cooperative that I think might be helpful in other areas of the country as well, or at least as indicative of how co-ops can approach things constructively. As you all know, net metering, which is the process by which typically solar installations are made at residences or small commercial facilities, and then their paid full retail electricity costs for their, the kilowatt hours that they provide has become kind of a contentious area across the country. This is from National Geographic, Disputes Flare on CNBC, solar firms and power companies battling each other over net metering. In HECO, the Hawaii Electric Company, they're gonna cut the solar net metering rates in half. And of course, when you do that, this from Salt Lake City, your citizens don't like that idea much. So now the utility trying to preserve its interests creates a citizen anger. And in Nevada, it says NV Energy wrestles with looming cap. And that was a situation that we faced in New Hampshire Electric Cooperative. A bit of background first, New Hampshire Electric is a little bigger than Roanoke. We're a good sized distribution co-op. We don't own any generation or transmission. It's about half the state of New Hampshire geographically, not population wise. The important notes there are that we're about 14 members a mile. So about double Roanokes, but still well short of most IOUs at the 50 or 60 level. Perhaps the most important thing is that New Hampshire Electric is not generally regulated by New Hampshire's Public Utilities Commission. There is a way of regulating the actions of the co-op and that's to throw bums like me off the board and replace them. So there's no need for co-op, no need for PUC regulation by and large. We are still subject to state law, of course. And speaking of state law, that's where net metering originated in New Hampshire is typically the case. For those of you who are interested, there are the legal sites. The practical effect was that about 10 to 12 years ago, New Hampshire passed a net metering law. It introduced a 50 megawatt cap in capacity of those, of the installable units. New Hampshire Electric's share of that was 3.16 megawatts. So that was our cap. And net metering payments at the co-op rates vary a lot in New England, as you know, for systems less than 100 kilowatts and most residential systems are five, six, seven kilowatts, to give you a frame of reference. Full retail is about 13 cents a kilowatt hour. Larger than that, we only pay for avoided energy under the terms of the law, which is about seven cents. But the problem is, and you can take this to its extreme and it illustrates the example, if everybody, all the co-ops power was net metered, then all of the revenue would come in and then all of it would be paid out at full retail, leaving none to answer the phones or maintain the poles and wires. So Houston, there's a problem ultimately here. We were cruising along under that law, pretty successfully enjoying good growth. And in 2012, we were about halfway there. We figured another four or five years, we'd have to think about what we were gonna do when we got to our statutory cap. And then, boom, 2013 hit. And we were very, it was accelerating, and then in 2014, we were virtually at our cap. So just seven or eight months ago, this was sneaking up on management. Board was kind of saying, what have you done to us? Why didn't you let us know about this? Well, you can see it snuck up on them too. And so what we did, I'll cover it. Houston, we have a problem. The clean energy advocates in the state were aware of the situation too. This is all public information, of course. So they knew that the New Hampshire Electric Cooperative was nearing its net metering cap. They were initiating legislative efforts to boost the cap, which of course solves the cap problem, but doesn't solve the revenue issue I described. And so we viewed that as kind of an unimaginative wrong answer. That said, there's very strong support in New Hampshire Electric Cooperative members for net metering and for renewable energy generally. So we couldn't just say, you know, pound sand when we reached the cap. And we had very little guidance. The state law says what you gotta do up to the cap, and then it says nothing. So what do we do at that point was the question. Well, happily, the New Hampshire Electric Cooperative Board and Management said this isn't a problem, this is an opportunity. And without statutory direction from the law and without regulation from the PUC, we were essentially free to do what we wanted, which is to say we were free to do what's in our members' best interest. Then the question is, what do our members want? Well, to explore that, the Board and Management with Legal Counsel bought a little time because as you saw from that 2014 graph, we were right at our peak at the cap level. So we bought a little time by voluntarily raising the cap about 10%. And then we considered multiple approaches and you know they're all out there, the various ones that make sense or don't, depending on what side you're on. Fixed charges, feed-in tariffs, time of use rates, and so forth. And we met several times with the members that were interested in this issue. The focus of those discussions was essentially how can we have our cake and eat it too? How can we both encourage the development of renewable energy on the system and at the same time have enough money to maintain the distribution system? What we ended up with, and I hasten to add that all these numbers are sort of rounded for illustration because they vary so much seasonally, is historically what we had paid for in terms of full retail was energy and capacity. We would otherwise buy that kilowatt hour from the grid. Now we're buying it from a net meter, that's okay. So they should get paid for that. We're not paying for transmission, otherwise we would have to pay to deliver it. So they should get compensated for that too. And then full retail also pays this whole thing. So it pays them back for distribution, but wait, they are using the distribution system and not paying for it. So that was the issue that we had to address. Now what the board did was a policy statement at the end of the day that in part said, in addition to the New Hampshire Electric quantifiable avoided cost, there are social and environmental benefits to member-cited renewables. Some of them, and they should be recognized in our net metering program. So what's that mean practically? Solar benefits are real but hard to quantify them. Let's split the difference. And that's what we did with that four cents. We said, there are benefits here and we owe you for them. You provided them. And we do need some money to maintain the poles and wires. So let's split that difference. That's with the small systems. So instead of 13 cents, they get 11 cents. Now on the larger systems, that you recall, we only had, we're obligated only to have to repay them for the energy, avoided energy. We said, well, wait a minute. They're also delivering benefit to our system, those same hard to quantify benefits. So we said, give them a cent for transmission and a cent for the solar values that they're delivering. We're not saving as much money because we don't have to pay them, but we still have a pretty healthy allotment for maintaining the poles and wires. And then you notice that our small systems were less than 20 kilowatts and the big ones under the statute were greater than 100. What about the gap? We created a third category, which is kind of in between the two. Yes, for a larger system like a commercial system, we'll pay you for the energy that we didn't have to buy from the grid and the transmission, some for the solar value that's provided and we still have enough to maintain the poles and wires. So that's where we ended up in terms of the scheme. Now, you might say, okay, that's good. New Hampshire Electric Cooperative got some money out of this deal so it can maintain the poles and wires. What did the advocates, what did the members, what did the PV and net meters get? Well, the board policy statement also included this sentence that a net metering program that fairly balances our goals of maintaining of encouraging member-sighted renewable generation with our goal of minimizing cost shifting. That'll be sustainable in the long run if it's periodically adjusted as necessary. And if that's sustainable for all parties to keep the poles and wires up, then what's the need for a cap? New Hampshire Electric Cooperative eliminated a net metering cap. There is no cap on PV in New Hampshire in our service territory. That's pretty groundbreaking, we thought. Well, okay, what's happened since? Well, there's our former cap. And you can see we met it readily early in 2015. And since that time, what we did was say, so we didn't catch the market off guard, we said we'd treat everybody as if there were grandfathered full retail under the cap sites if they got their applications completing and into us before May 1st. We received 3,000 kilowatts, three megawatts of capacity in one month in terms of those applications. Almost the full cap required in one year, actually in one quarter, because of that latent interest out there, spurred to get in under the wire. And then you would say, okay, well, that's good. They weren't trying to get in under the wire so they could get paid full retail. And after that, it gets croaked, right? Well, no, we've had nearly another megawatt hour submitted since then. So, New Hampshire Electric Cooperative, which at the beginning of this year was under three megawatt hours, under its cap, is now nearly, it's over double its cap with nearly seven megawatts of capacity. A pretty nice story to tell. And that, of course, is only so far. We're only halfway into 2015, right? There were also some really surprising, at least to us, serendipities that occurred. One is in looking at the data to try to do the analysis to find out where we stood and where we should go, we found to our surprise that those who installed photovoltaics actually increased their electricity usage by nearly half. So, some of the money that we were fearful was going out the door. It was actually, some of it was coming back in, especially going forward with new net meters. We're not sure why this is the case. Our best suspicion is that folks in New Hampshire use a lot of home heating oil, heat pumps, mini splits, the new Fujitsu and Mitsubishi devices that you're all familiar with, that both heat and air condition, air condition not being too normal in New Hampshire yet, but increasing, are being switched in and old furnaces retired. So we think that the HVAC, heating ventilation and air conditioning, is what's driving this increase. The folks want to install solar and mini splits and heat pumps. That's our best guess. For those of you interested, what are the actual dollars that we're talking about here? It turns out that they're not all that huge, even with six or 7,000 kilowatts of capacity and even at four cents, the full retail rate. We're only talking about half a million dollars in New Hampshire Electric from that first slide. It was about $150 million company. So that's only about less than a half a percent of our revenue, and that's not counting the 52% that comes back through increased usage. So it ends up being only about two tenths of a percent of revenue. So nothing we have to worry too much about, but the kind of thing you want to nip in the bud before it becomes a problem, which is what we think we've done with this story. Very interestingly, I learned at a board meeting earlier in the week that other New Hampshire utilities, all IOUs, are getting close to or in one case have now met their cap too, three or four months behind New Hampshire Electric Cooperative. And so the regulators and the advocacy community and so forth, the utilities themselves are kind of looking to us and saying, so what did you guys do anyway there? How'd that work out for you? So it may be the case that New Hampshire Electric Cooperative's policy ends up being echoed in state policy, which reinforces Peter Drucker's proverbial comment about the best way to deal with the future is to help create it. The keys to this leadership opportunity were of course were fundamentally New Hampshire Electric Cooperative's willingness to take initiative, to not just wait and see what happens or for somebody to do something to us. And more importantly, the freedom that we had to take initiative that was provided by the Cooperative Business Model. That as long as we are operating in our members' interests and not off the ranch, we could do what serves them best. And that freedom allowed this initiative and here we are today. I have a contact here of the woman that oversees this side of the house if you have any interest in talking to real management rather than just 30,000 foot board. So thanks very much. Yet another great story. So we are now going to turn to Brian Kaby who is the Vice President for Legislative Affairs with NRECA, the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. And Brian brings a lot of experience in terms of dealing with government relations from a number of different aspects and he also had previously worked for Senator Baucus up here in the Senate. So he brings a lot of expertise and interest in terms of looking at how policy does indeed matter, Brian. Thank you Carol and thank you all for being here. It's my opportunity and my pleasure indeed to kind of summarize a little bit about what our three members have talked about this morning and to give you a couple of additional thoughts about what electric co-ops are up to. The Senator provided what I would term an outstanding commercial for the electric cooperatives in Minnesota. Nationwide electric co-ops, the NRECA is an association representing about 900 electric cooperatives in 47 states providing power to about 42 million consumer members. It's about 12% of the electric sales nationwide but we cover about 75% of the land mass. So the point that our Senator Klobuchar mentioned about the flexibility and the need to look at co-ops and provide as much flexibility as critical because a cooperative in New Hampshire and a cooperative in North Carolina and a cooperative in Minnesota and a cooperative in Hawaii have very different realities, very different needs and very different concerns. We are actively engaged and I would argue we are in front of the curve on things like renewables. That group that I talked of has about 16 gigawatts of renewables either owned or under contract and another two gigawatts under development. If you look at the energy efficiency work that electric co-ops are engaged in, 96% of our members offer some, are engaged in some sort of energy efficiency program at their electric cooperative. 70% of them are offering incentives much like what Curtis mentioned in terms of the incentives to try to get participation to increase that participation to break down those barriers that prevent our consumer members from actually engaging in this. The water heater that Gary mentioned is a guess that water heater looked like R2D2 but in reality the water heaters that many of our members deploy 600, 700, 800,000 of them around the country in about 235 co-ops. They're a relatively low tech tool to accomplish a significant benefit in terms of renewable integration and in terms of meeting demand response, delaying or in some cases eliminating the need to build additional generation. They are an important tool and we are ever so grateful for the passage of S535. I would thank Chairman Murkowski, Senators Klobuchar, Hoven, Portman, Shaheen and IOT for their tenacity and their leadership in getting this accomplished. That has made a world of difference in our ability to continue to develop these programs, to grow these programs, just to replace the water heaters that become obsolete just through the ravages of time and exposure to the water. So I want to encourage you to continue the good work that your bosses are doing. We appreciate the fact that you have an energy bill markup going on as we're standing here speaking and so we appreciate that you took time to come and hear success stories from a number of our co-ops. But I'm confident that there are folks here whose senators represent other states and we probably have very successful activities going on in those states as well would welcome the opportunity to have those conversations to provide an opportunity for a first-hand look at those programs that they have underway and try to grow these programs. So with that, Carol, I will sit down. Thank you all again for the chance to be here this morning. Thanks, Brian. And as he indicated, I think there are lots of stories from across the country and it's important to really look at different kinds of things that are underway because there are so many changes that are under foot and we all need to and can learn from each other. Those are huge opportunities. So let's open it up for your questions or discussion. If you could just please identify yourself. Do we have anybody who wants to start off? Well, it all starts started. Yes, the question, and I'm sorry, your name again. Cindy asked was, how do you get the program to follow the location versus the member and not assign it to that make that obligation a part of the members obligation? In North Carolina, as I mentioned in the presentation, we have the renewable portfolio standards law that we have been following for the last four or five years. And in that, we were able to through as Ken, I think Ken or Gary mentioned it, as co-operatives we're not, in many states we're not regulated by the utilities commission. We make sound decisions based on what the members will tolerate and what's good for them. But as a part of the renewable energy portfolio standards, we were able to capture the additional costs for putting those standards in place like solar projects that cost additional dollars. We were able to set up tariffs to add that additional charge and separate it on the bill. So that sort of paved the way in my mind and our minds for doing the same thing with our energy efficiency measures that we're doing in this program to it's something we're investing in at the location and it's an additional charge. So we're saying it needs to stay with that location and by the way of a tariff and whoever's benefiting from that will have to make the repayment back to the utility. So we just, we felt like it needed to be separated, it needs to be displayed and it's something that we haven't gotten any pushback from a legal standpoint. I think that's really important in terms of thinking about how this provides a really expanded opportunity for a lot of co-op members by being tied to the meter as opposed to, and therefore that bill as opposed to an individual. Makes a big difference in terms of meeting eligibility standards, et cetera. All right. Over here first and then we'll go over here. Go ahead. My name's Gabe Ellsner from the Energy and Policy Institute and part one is, did New Hampshire Electric Co-op section study the cost? Yes, I'm sorry. The question was, did New Hampshire Electric Cooperative in reviewing this figure out where the intersection was where net metering would create a real problem for the electric cooperative versus the repayment to net meters? And forgive me, the second part of that was, we did not do that to the degree that you characterized. We were mindful as we did the research on both what has been done elsewhere and what the costs and benefits were and what the options were for solving the problem. I mentioned fixed charges, which are pretty popular as you know, and we weren't really satisfied that any of them got their arms around the benefits side particularly. As you know, many of the solar folks say that they'd often deliver at peak, that there's a lot of emissions benefits and externalities that are not counted in typical cost benefit calculations today. We were mindful of that and didn't want to ignore those at the same time they are hard to quantify. And so that's why we ended up, at least for the time being, saying split the difference. So we did not actually calculate that point. And you'll note in my quote from our policy statement that we indicate that the opportunity to revise as necessary was built into the policy. So we can take a closer look at that going forward if and when it's necessary. I mean, this was on our plate, the cap was exceeded. So we needed to do something quick and this seemed like the most prudent path. And it appears that there's been huge demand to go forward too. It doesn't seem to have quelled demand. Okay. I'm not sure. So the question is with regard to salt rivers and this is becoming an issue across the country in terms of fixed fee that is being put on with regard to solar. Yeah, what went on there? Well, I'll take a crack at it and then Brian may have a reflection as well. The question was what about certain areas of country that are assessing very high fixed fees, 50 or in one case I've even heard $85 a month? I personally, well, let me hasten to add that I don't think the Salt River Project is a cooperative. It's a public power semi-government entity rather than a cooperative. And I'm pleased to say that because I don't think $50 a month is in the member's interest and I don't think that fixed charges are a good strategic way to address this issue. Polls and wires need to be maintained but sending price messages to members or customers that basically say you can ignore your energy use because you're paying the same amount anyway is a very bad message to send. So as a quick knee jerk reaction one can understand why management or boards might wanna move in that direction but I think that it's a unthoughtful approach and that's one of the reasons New Hampshire Electric Cooperative wanted to take a different approach, right? Ken's point would be a sound one in that each location is going to have a different reality in terms of what they need to take into account and I think there are circumstances here where co-ops are developing their road maps, their plans for incorporating renewables and net metering policies in their states but they are, each one is in a different circumstance and as he mentioned, the utility you mentioned is not a cooperative but there is a continued need for them to have the flexibility to make sure that they are developing a plan to accommodate the development of new resources that are brought online and to do that in a way that their members are comfortable with. Ken mentioned something in his remarks that many of our co-ops are not regulated by the state but they are regulated by their membership which votes on an annual basis for the directors that govern that cooperative and so they do have a vote and many of these are very much contested elections and it's to determine the policy over how the cooperative is governed and what direction the leadership of the cooperative goes. Other questions or comments? I could speak to that and Gary can probably just follow up on it. One of the great things and unique things about electric cooperatives is the cooperation among cooperatives is one of our seven principles. Primarily in the cooperative world we have two information technology, two major information technology providers that provide all the systems that we need to run our business and most of us are members of those two information technology companies and we all know as a co-op which is an aggregated way to develop the technology to get the research and development that's coming up through the ideas and needed solutions of all of these separate cooperatives and quite frankly we have our information technology development has exceeded most of our counterparts, greatly exceeded in terms of flexibility, the nimbleness and the capabilities of what we can do such as net metering, not net metering but such as on-bill financing, prepaid metering, smart metering, a lot of things we've been doing for decades that I know personally that some of the investor-owned companies that we're right next to have really not gotten to yet. So we're fortunate to have this type of flexibility and people in place within cooperative nation that can help us develop the systems we need and we're well advanced in our technology. This is Gary and I'll take a technical tack to that and by the way there's a blonde-haired guy playing with his phone right now that is an expert on control technology, raise your hand Keith, talk to him but in either case how do we control water heaters? Well the way we control it up to now is simply with an on-off switch and we control those on-off switches with a radio frequency. So we broadcast a signal that goes out to our entire service territory and the receiver on the side of the house picks that signal up and shuts the water heater off or turns it on, pretty simple technology but going forward the idea is is that we're gonna have far more advanced technology. For example, Honeywell has a thermostat and we're interested in thermostat technology to control an air conditioner which by the way is probably the largest load in a home nowadays and so with Honeywell or any other thermostat manufacturer you can through a wifi control the air conditioner, raise the thermostat level or lower it. In that same smart thermostat there's the ability to control a water heater. The water heater of the future is gonna have hate to do this to you guys an electronic thermostat in it and so we're gonna be able to put a little device on the water heater that's listening for a wifi signal in the home and when it picks up that signal it does what we ask of it. We could send that signal to that water heater multiple times in an hour and so it gives us that ability to control that water heater. That means beware of your appliances taking charge of your lives, right? But it's all very, very exciting in terms of all of these new approaches that are being taken. We have time for one more question. Go ahead. The question was about electric cooperatives not being regulated and what determines whether they are or not. The determination is a matter of state law and so it differs from state to state. In some states they are regulated just as if they were an investor owned utility in others they're regulated in more isolated ways and it is fully a function of what the state has implemented in terms of its laws but as I mentioned all cooperatives are governed by a board of directors elected by the membership and so part of the reason that co-ops in many places are not regulated is because that rate control which is what most public service commissions or public utility commissions are concerned about that rate is in the hands of an elected body elected by the cooperative to govern in the best interest of their members. If I could just add the fact that you're regulated or not does initially determine what you can do or not just a question of who does it and how long it takes. An example of that is next door to New Hampshire Electric Cooperative is a Vermont cooperative called Washington Electric Cooperative. Vermont's cooperatives are regulated by their equivalent of a public utilities commission and that cooperative did something fairly similar on net metering but they had to do a much more exhaustive analysis to your question earlier and make some additional assumptions and submitted for approvals and I think it took them a year or so but came out in a fairly similar place so it can be done. Our example shows however that here we are seven months, eight months after the problem arose with a solution that's been implemented for two months. So because we are not regulated and operating in the best interest of members we were able to be more flexible and creative. Too perfect. Well I wanna thank our speakers very, very much for coming into town for being here with us. This is really, really helpful and please feel free to follow up with any of them or with the EESI and thank you all very, very much for being here. Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you.