 Good evening and welcome to the April meeting with the Board of Electric Commissioners City of Burlington. We meet at five o'clock every second Wednesday the month here at 585 Pine and as always the what the public is welcome to come on down and join us and join the discussion with your thoughts your concerns criticisms whatever bring it on down we'll be happy to talk about it. So with that I'll open the meeting and we'll start with the first item on the agenda which is the agenda do we have any changes or additions to the agenda this evening. All right good hearing none. I will move on to the minutes of the March 13th. Hang on before even before I even go any further than that I have no manners. I want to welcome our new Commissioner Andy Voda to the Commission. Welcome Andy. Thank you. So yes welcome aboard. Ask lots of questions grill these guys. Okay moving on to item number two the minutes of the March 13th 2024 meeting if there any substantive changes that anybody has we'll take those now but if there's anything just grammatical or whatever just forwarded to the clerk do we have any changes to the or anything about the minutes and I'll entertain a motion. Thank the motion to approve March 13th 2024 meeting. All right motions made to have a second. Motion made in second all in favor of the motion indicate by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Off the ice have it the motion passes minutes are approved for last month. On to item number three public forum this is a time for the public to address the board with concerns or whatever whatever is on your mind whether it is or isn't on the agenda do we have anybody in the public here we don't see any here but anyone online. No. Okay well I still extend the invitation to all of you out there who may be watching this later on or at home come on down call in Skype in and team zoom whatever it is and join the conversation always welcome here second Wednesday the month five o'clock five eighty five pine. All righty moving on to item number four commissioner's corner this is a time for commissioners to bring up anything that they've encountered or would like to talk about the that's been on their mind over the last month or whatnot. I'm all floors open nothing to me nothing and he's got nothing yet so all right so move on to the general manager update with general manager springer. Thank you very much for our new commissioner just to orient you a little bit on who's here who's online we have Rodney over here and Paul Picno over here from McNeil generating facility Mike Canerick who manages customer care communications energy services Paul Nadu who you're going to hear from a little bit director of engineering Emily Stebbins-Wiloch who you're going to hear from a lot CFO manager of strategy innovation and online we have Paul Alexander who is the manager for safety and risk management Amber Woodmayer who is our regulatory specialist does a lot of our work on legislative items in Montpelier Erica Furlan director of IT and then the rest of us are all in the room here so just who's who of who's here tonight will have different cast of characters each meeting depending on what topics are coming up. I'm gonna hold on the roadmap update until the end of my update because I want to share a few slides with the commission to get into that a little bit more depth. The Charter Change Emily testified this morning did a great job in the House of Government Affairs and Military Committee and we have a bill H881 that would authorize the change from the five million to the ten million dollar Charter for our line of credit. We have an RFP that's out now related to the line of credit which has both values in there so we're asking for you know responses based on both the five and the ten million depending on whether that Charter Change gets enacted by the end of the session and we are hopeful that it'll be able to move forward. I think it's relatively non-controversial received almost three quarters of the vote on town meeting day was unanimous here and at City Council so we're hopeful that can move forward will be supportive of our financial metrics if we're able to get that change so that's pending in addition number of other legislative items the renewable energy standard update which we've been working on in support of up for a while now has passed the House is in the Senate we don't anticipate a huge number of amendments in the Senate Committee based on what we heard earlier I think was earlier today we're hopeful they'll be able to move it forward largely in the form that it's in we think it's in pretty good form will make some changes to the state's policies in ways that will enable more renewables overall and certainly for us we make some commitments related to load growth because we're already 100% renewable as it is also s 305 is now in the House Energy Environment Committee and that includes some of the updates related to our act 44 efficiency programs we had I think we've shared with Commission we've had some differences of opinion with the Department of Public Service in that process for that three-year pilot has has efficiency Vermont the department's been proposing reductions in the budget and thinks that some of these programs are not necessary we see them as really valuable their pilot programs that help us reduce emissions they support our EV and heat pump rebates they support our geothermal well testing program multifamily rental charging and a number of other important programs so the legislation has pending would really ensure that we're able to spend the amount that was authorized in the legislation and that there's not necessarily additional opportunity to reduce that amount that passed in the Senate it's pending in the House we're hopeful that'll move forward it has some other items in it as well but that's the piece that we're most particularly focused on and we've testified in support of it in that committee already by zoom last week I was able to join the committee and Amber was down there since we last met we've launched our rebates for 2024 delayed in part because of the act 44 wrangling as we talked about but the kind of key items we have our new super user and what we're calling the gig driver program so this is additional EV rebate for drivers who put the most miles on their vehicle whether it's because of commuting or food delivery services or ride-sharing services so we're pioneers on this in the country first utility to launch this type of rebate program anywhere in the country it's getting a lot of attention because of a group called that's done some really interesting reporting on how many states how many super users are in each state and a super user somebody who uses you know two or three x the amount of gasoline to drive that a typical driver does and their theory of the case is you'll get much more bang for your buck in terms of emissions reductions if you focus the incentives on those drivers e-bikes was $200 rebate now $300 we have instant rebates at the local bike shops and they often advertise it which is great so that got boosted which is wonderful we have a switch and save program to help income qualified Burlington residents with water heater changeouts program that we worked on with the legislature a couple years ago we're hoping to work with Champlain Housing Trust and Burlington Housing Authority to really use the bulk of the resource that we've been allocated we have 400,000 right now and we could get potentially more up to 500,000 potentially if we're able to spend it down at a more rapid rate so that should help between 75 and 125 Burlingtonians we're income qualified switch from a either a less efficient electric water heater or a fossil fuel water heater to a more efficient heat pump water heater which we're excited about and then the heat pump bill credit program we're going to talk about tonight it's an agenda item that was another thing that we announced that we're excited to bring to you tonight before it goes to the board of finance city council and the PUC for approval but that's an exciting item as well we have a link here that you can you know share or visit at any time to check out all of the different changes to our programs for 2024 two other quick items before I get to the net zero aspect tomorrow at I believe it's at noon tomorrow at noon we have a webinar on geothermal heating and cooling that we're hosting with district 2030 Vermont Green Building Network it's open to the public there's a link in here if any of the Commission is interested you can join it's free we're gonna have George Martin from Ellen consulting who's a great local geothermal expert Holly Francis from Champlain College which has one of the great original geothermal systems in the city Chris Burns Bob Bolen Jake Yana Lovage from our energy services team will be on I'll be on with Jenna from the Green Building Network and we're gonna cover opportunities for geothermal with a particular aim at commercial customers but it is open to the public so anybody's welcome to join we have over 50 registrants so far and we're looking forward to having a good event and have some Q&A as well and this really stems from our work on policy initially with the city council having worked with us on the carbon fee policy which covers new construction large existing buildings 50,000 square feet and larger there were a number of efforts at making policy for buildings in the 25,000 to 49,999 square foot cohort that haven't come to fruition and in lieu of those processes because they've all been debated but not decided upon in any way at the council we've tried to engage with those customers directly and learn you know from the institutions from the businesses the nonprofits that are occupying buildings in that space the property owners as well what types of things are you doing what types of things would you like to know more about what are the opportunities challenges from those conversations we heard you know we'd like to learn more about geothermal we'd like to learn more about heat pumps so we're hosting this webinar tomorrow and a heat pump webinar aim began at commercial buildings in that space that will be happening in May so these are just educational efforts to really support that cohort of buildings in their decarbonization also a reminder any time you would like Burlington electric comm slash pod for podcast our net zero energy podcast team Jen green Adam Raven constantly churning out new episodes with interesting people in the community who are doing work on net zero energy we have a whole library of podcast episodes and new ones coming out all the time so I wanted to remind the commission to check them out the public please share if you were doing you know posts on foreign forum social media please feel free to share the podcast invite people to listen in we think it's a great resource for the community they're they're typically 12 to 20 minute segments so they're pretty easily digestible in terms of the timing and what I'm gonna do now is see if I can share my screen here for a moment pull up a PowerPoint bear with me just for a second while I get this going okay see if I can get that can you all see that reasonably well yeah okay I know it's not appearing quite as large on the screen there we go perfect okay so a few slides I like to share in advance of a presentation we're gonna give at the city council on next Monday at the meeting on April 15th so as you know we update every year with the prior year's data with Synapse energy economics from Cambridge Massachusetts which worked on the original net zero energy roadmap with us roadmap was issued in 2019 in most cases we have 2018 as the baseline year for data there's one or two cases where we have data that's starting more in 2019 and what we tried to do here was give a little bit of comparison in terms of what's happening at the state and federal levels versus what's happening in Burlington because the net zero energy roadmap is an incredibly ambitious one of the most ambitious in the country local climate goals and we're thrilled to be working towards it but it's important to know that we're actually making a lot more progress here in Burlington than we're seeing at the state and national level so some of the things we're doing are working at least to keep our pace ahead of those levels so on the left here we have from the EIA the energy information administration at the federal level US motor gasoline and diesel co2 emissions between 2018 and 2022 they don't have the 23 information out as of yet but these are the two transportation fuels that we track as well in Burlington and they had a co2 reduction of 4.3 percent between 2018 and 2022 of course inclusive of a dip that you can see in the middle of the chart at the pandemic and then a bit of a rebound effect coming out of it but still a reduction at the federal level for us in Burlington we have a 13 percent reduction between 2018 and 2023 in consumption of those two fuels now you can see we had a pronounced dip obviously in the pandemic that was our that was our lowest point of usage we've seen a very mild rebound effect and essentially year over year we are flat in terms of our transportation fuel use between 2022 and 2023 so we've we've come to meet the line on the roadmap essentially with that pace that we're at so far so clearly ahead of the national picture still lots of work to do and really what we're benefiting from here is a continued reduced vehicle miles traveled post pandemic than what we saw pre-pandemic obviously we have more EVs on the road that's an important thing as well we have more transit buses that are in the pipeline to be deployed even this year that's going to help kind of bend that curve on the diesel side with our partnership with green mountain transit but what we're benefiting from here is in part the fact that we have hybrid remote work options people are driving less than they did pre pandemic and that's helped us buy some time to get more electric vehicles more plug-in hybrids on the road so turning to the thermal sector and if you'll recall last year the thermal sector was our point of concern we saw actually a rebound there in 2022 that we were concerned about I'll start on the left neither of these charts or weather normalized so they are apples to apples in both cases the Vermont chart is from the energy action network from a forthcoming report that they have and they sent out an email about this and what they have is for the entire state of Vermont which really we're talking about natural gas we're talking about the northwest corner of the state that has natural gas service we saw a 9% reduction in consumption of natural gas between 2018 and 2023 in the state of Vermont not whether normalized for Burlington we have a 19% reduction over that same time frame again not whether normalized and you can see while we had a bit of a dip a really pronounced dip between 22 and 23 we have been concerned about the rebound that had happened post pandemic last year that chart was trending in the wrong direction and we've seen it come down and in fact 2023 was the second largest year-over-year reduction that we saw for our overall transportation and thermal greenhouse gas emissions second only to the pandemic and happily here natural gas use is at lowest point since we began the tracking in 2018 so obviously still work to do to get on that roadmap pace which is a very ambitious line but trending very much in the right direction and seeing really double the progress that we're seeing statewide so that's a kind of an interesting and useful comparison and then lastly for this evening a kind of a total picture and here again we're looking at the United States not the state on the left 2018 to 2022 because we don't have the 23 data just yet from the EIA and this is taking residential and commercial direct use so that's going to include thermal use from natural gas from heating fuels you know fuel oil propane as well as motor gasoline and diesel so it's the most analogous to what we track in Burlington for the net zero roadmap we're looking at thermal and ground transportation so the u.s. emissions from those sources is down 3.3 percent between 2018 and 2022 there is a bigger emissions reduction for the country as a whole with energy related emissions but that includes the power sector the country has seen the biggest benefit in the power sector particularly as we switched from coal to natural gas and renewables which have a lower overall footprint according to the way they track but we did this does not involve the power sector at all this is just thermal and ground transportation 3.3 percent reduction in the u.s. 18.2 percent in Burlington again we have one extra year there we go 2018 to 2023 so 18.2 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in those sectors we're tracking since we launched the roadmap again not quite on the roadmap pace but a really significant accomplishment that I think outpaces what we're seeing at the state and federal level and something that I think a number of cities would be very pleased with as a result so we're conscious of the things we have to do to continue this progress to accelerate this progress you know but I wanted to present a few of these slides just so you as the Commission had a sense of it and to preview some of the information that we're going to share with council next week so I'll stop there I'll leave it up in case you have any questions on it so we can flip back and forth for a minute but that's everything I had for the general manager's update any questions okay all righty we'll move on to item number six in our agenda which is the February financials with Emily so here are our February 2024 results February we had a net loss of 622,000 compared to a budget in that income of one point almost 1.2 million as you will recall from January or you will recall from your March meeting when we went over the January results most of that negative variance is due to the timing of receiving the wreck revenues that we had budgeted to get in February but actually came in January so you'll remember that January looked extra good and no surprise February looks extra bad as a result so that's one of the big big factors or part of the story for this month sales to customers again cooking along pretty much on budget only a $10,000 positive variance which is peanuts on a you know a budgeted amount of 4.4 million for the month the variance for the fiscal year as a whole as you can see is only under $250,000 on a 36.3 million dollar revenue line so it's a it's a pretty tight forecast which is great other revenues small positive variance of 86,000 most of that EU returns as you know and then I just covered the wreck revenue variance of 1.7 million dollars to the bad but that's because we've received it in January so now moving down to the expense section net power supply expense was $480,000 worse than budget this is going to be a similar story to the story I told in your last meeting and the meeting before that and I think the meeting before that and probably the meeting before that too energy prices were low McNeil production was less than budgeted which means we spent less on fuel and McNeil production was less so we had less excess energy to sell and also coincidentally we had lower than budgeted wind and Hydro Quebec production so the combination of all of that means that we had fuel favorable by $281,000 transmission was favorable by $101,000 but on the negative side we brought in $963,000 less revenue than we budgeted from the sale of that excess winter energy so that where you get the net effect of the $480,000 negative variance year to date the purchase power portion of the power supply budget has a negative variance of about 1.7 million net power supply when you kind of add in the sale of excess and everything is just about on budget at this point in the year there's you can see there's a variance over to the right of just $5,000 on a $22.3 million budget line other operating expense is continues to track favorably was favorable to budget this month by just $42,000 it's half a million dollars up for the year taxes we continue to see a small positive variance versus what we budgeted so year to date we have an actual net income of 2.3 million we had budgeted to be at about 1.7 million at this point so we're $605,000 ahead of budget so far last month we were 1.4 million dollars ahead of budget so this this month's the negative results obviously have eaten away at that year to date positive variance I can as we look ahead to kind of where we expect to end the year as we do every month we revise our forecast we see what the actuals are we update our projection we're now projecting a decent net income currently it's projected around 1.3 million that would put their adjusted debt service coverage ratio around 1.13 we're still watching cash carefully that's pegged now at 88 days but we have some we have some levers that we are ready to pull if we need to and we'll continue to refine that projection to make sure we end June 30 with at least 90 and hopefully we can better that like we did last year any questions on the income statement before I move on to capital and cash I think you said this already but just asking maybe a different way but the we've been talking about these numbers and how they're gonna come in but does anything not it's not more than you anticipated it's right about where you were thinking the loss of the yeah yeah we're through the yeah I mean we're through the worst of the energy the potential right we're through the December January February period now and when our policy and planning team started to see energy forward to decline you know in December and kind of the weather outlook and we're like okay yeah it's probably gonna be a mild winter like we started building those losses so to speak into that year-end projection so yeah we've we kind of knew this was coming and the actual results are close to kind of what we had projected yeah to the next page so capital spending only about $300,000 more than last month we've spent four million dollars of a five point four million dollar budget for this point in the year it's about 37% of the full year budget I know crews are really busy with spring work and the in the better weather and McNeill is about to start their outage so we'll see some significant changes here in the capital spending between now and the end of the year and then operating cash for the month ending in February was 9.3 million dollars that compares to we had budget to be at 9.8 so about half a million off from budget and you can see the these are the key financial credit rating factors that that Moody's uses in our scorecard it's our scorecard contains other factors as well but these are the three big ones I should say two big ones at the bottom that Moody's uses the first the first rate factor they're the ratio the debt service coverage ratio that is a metric that's required by our general bond resolution which gives us the authority to issue revenue bonds that requires that we maintain a 1.25 debt coverage ratio debt service coverage ratio so we're currently at four point four nine compared to that target the adjustments that service coverage ratio is the one that Moody's uses that's now at one point four and cash is days cash on hand that one Moody's uses as well we're at one nineteen as of February Emily quick question you talked about eighty eight days cash on hand and then one nineteen what's the difference between those two numbers yeah so the current number there is I say this so Moody's when they do when they rate us they rate us as of June 30 and they rate us using a three-year average so if you were at you know a hundred and a hundred and a hundred for each of the three fiscal years your average would be a hundred but I believe all of these are kind of like on a 12 months look back basis and then the other the biggest explanation for your question really is that this reflects kind of how many days we have with cash in the bank as of the end of February but we're projecting that cash flow out for the future months of March April and May and June and kind of where that ending cash balance is going to be so we're projecting that essentially we'll use more cash than we're taking in over the next four months just as a historical just a number a number of years ago the city had issues with their credit rating and so ever since that that all happened we started tracking it you're gonna make sure the cities they all kind of work off each other um is that it any questions for anybody okay move on to the next item number seven the fiscal year 2025 draft budget also Emily okay so commissioner voted for your benefit we typically bring the BED budget to the commission to recommend for approval to the board of finance and city council typically at your May meeting we'll ask for that approval what we do in April is kind of give you a preview of where we are how things are looking the numbers here most likely will change before you know we bring you a final budget in May but they are indicatively close I think and then also as a chance to discuss with you kind of different pressures we're seeing the problems we're trying to solve within the budget the information we have the information we don't have the assumptions we're making that sort of thing so with that some of the big assumptions in the budget we're projecting sales so sales is really really important to to kind of a healthy bottom line I two meetings ago kind of walked you through that historical look back right over kilowatt hour sales compared to revenue from sales and we're still not quite back to kind of where we were pre-pandemic so there's not a lot of underlying sales growth budgeted or forecast I should say for this for this budget about only about one and a half percent in revenue and a small amount in kilowatt hours we have built into this budget at the moment a projected rate increase of five and a half percent that would be effective on bills rendered September 1st and we'll we have more slides that kind of talk about the effect of the rate increase at that level it sounds I I'm sure there's lots and lots that you baked into this that percent roll up like things like the oh my gosh I'm blanking the big project that's been stalled out downtown that is city place city place yeah things like that growth in sales like that plus the other all the potentiality that might come online that's all baked into that potential yeah it is we we contract with the company called itron to do our our sales forecast and they do a lot of the modeling for Velco and the other utilities in the state as you may know so we work closely with them and giving them our data and kind of the trends and the assumptions and kind of discuss that with them we there is I think in their model some variables related to sort of residential growth or you know based on trends it's hard to model those like large commercial projects because the timing of them is so uncertain and also as the development plans change the energy modeling then changes so we don't have a lot in there for to say you know city place will come online this many kilowatt and this many kilowatt hours on this date so like that's just too chancy yeah so in a way that gives us a buffer so that when those projects do come online I mean we know eventually we'll get billed there will be a new high school you know there's a lot of there's increased development activity which is helpful but we haven't modeled out exactly everything you know just keep in mind even if something like that is coming online in the third or fourth quarter of the fiscal year it's not going to have as much of an impact on the overall as it would you know in fiscal 26 I think probably a safe assumption that in 26 and 27 you're going to start to see some of the impact of those projects more so certainly than we've seen to date and then even in the 25 thank you would that also be true I mean there was the new neighborhood code code that just came out which is I'm guessing good it's a lot more a lot of infill it could you know I think that the south end has some housing development proposed that could be you know that I think is part of that and you know overall effort and could make use of places that are currently you know parking lots and turn those into housing so from an energy standpoint we would see productivity from those spaces and obviously electrification too it's just that's a lot of the electrification is happening at a level that's you know linear or even strong growth but from such a small base that it's not impacting these numbers just yet and keep in mind too we're 25% residential 75 commercial so a project that's happening in the commercial space is going to have a bigger impact overall generally speaking then you know a larger residential would in terms of overall mix but yeah it's good it's a great question and a good a rich discussion item there's a lot a lot to consider okay so the next big assumption is rec revenues we are budgeting at this point just over eight million dollars it's two hundred and nineteen thousand dollars or about 2.65 percent less than what we budgeted last year as I've been talking about lower wind production lower McNeil production that translates into lower volumes available for sale in future periods aka part of FY 25 wood fuel this is another main driver big a big expense driver that's currently budgeted at thirty one seventy a ton that's about a dollar eighty less per ton than our FY 24 budget number oops let me just flip sides there energy prices here's another big one and I'm sorry Commissioner Whitaker isn't here because she always asks about this was an important question so sort of the full year average around the clock energy price assumed for the FY 25 budget is fifty two dollars and sixteen cents and then you can see I've over there for December and February it's kind of seventy two ninety three eighty four so you can kind of see how those winter months are higher but by comparison in the current FY 24 budget all year round average is seventy three sixty and December January February we're one nineteen one fifty five one forty four so these and Emily oh James you're here hi I am sorry I was gonna add one last thing and those numbers for FY 24 are themselves down from FY 23 so if you'd looked at FY 23 you'd have seen numbers in the 200 plus dollars for the middle value you know and and high hundreds on either side of it so again you know we've seen this trend down now for the third consecutive year will open up you know if we do see higher prices again right it creates upside and it also kind of protects us against the downside risk of prices not materializing when we had budgeted for them to be higher and the last thing I'll mention about that too of course is that we are starting to be in and you're likely hear from us later this year about energy contract replacement and those falling prices are a very good thing for buying energy for future periods if we had bought energy two years ago it would have been very very very expensive to replace our expiring contracts now it's back to something much more like a normal level can you add about a one point you know a hundred and twenty five percent of our tier three compliance requirement we have a pretty strong capital budget I'll show in a minute this is the this is the third year of the three-year what do they call that the three-year temporary period I think is what it's called sort of to use the construction fund where you don't need to worry about arbitrage in terms of what you're investing on for the construction fund has as it compared to the bond yield so we hope to be able to use the rest of the construction fund this year we've also budgeted for potentially issuing a new revenue bond next spring still playing with the timing of that because it sort of will depend on when will we run out the current construction fund and that sort of depends on the capital project forecasts and when materials arrive and when work can be scheduled so finance and engineering are working closely on and with purchasing as well to try to forecast that as tightly as we can we've also included in this budget five hundred and seventy seven thousand dollar investment in Velco equity this is a catch-up purchase from its fifty percent of a purchase that we deferred three years ago so we've complete we've bought fifty percent and now we need to purchase the other fifty percent by December and it also assumes our usual annual three million dollar general obligation bond so here kind of the some of the things that are changing the most here are some of the the larger variances or categories in which we're seeing the most movement from FY 24 to FY 25 rec revenues I just talked about decrease of two hundred nineteen thousand grants and capital contributions is huge this is made up of a number of things most significantly last July's flooding damage to the rubber dam on when you ski one such that it needs to be replaced and we anticipate that FEMA will contribute seventy five percent to their replacement of that dam which is very significant expense so that's contributing a lot to that grant capital contribution line also as we just talked about a lot of development happening in the city so we have budgeted customer contributions for Champlain Parkway work Great Street Main Street work the Winooski bridge replacement is starting we'll have some work to do associated with that as well as street lighting for city place so that's why that that number fluctuates from year to year and it's expected anyway to be a high number this year in expense fuel has dropped about half a million as I said the price per ton has driven has been dropped purchase power so because those energy prices right are lower than that means a higher net expense to us right because we're not anticipating that will sell excess power at such high prices so it's a million and a half change from FY 24 to FY 25 about 10 percent and that's a that's really a lot of the losses we saw this year in other words that's not an increase in cost that's a reduction in projected revenues those reductions in projected revenues we already saw this year so it's it's it's a little deceptive because it's budget to budget not budget to actual yep transmission continues its inexorable rise projected to be seven hundred eighty three thousand dollars higher next year it's an eight point one percent increase labor and overhead is budgeted to be up four hundred forty thousand or three point one percent I'll note here that labor itself is only a hundred thousand of that number most of that is pension and benefits and further we still don't have final pension and benefits numbers from the city right now so we're kind of working with our best guess so that could be a number that changes before we come back to you in May maintenance contracts are up typically this is things like soft well software maintenance or a lot of these with the new ADMS advanced distribution management system a lot of new server hardware a lot of new network architecture and firewalls and then licensing to support those those servers tier three compliance I mentioned is about ten percent always we our compliance obligation goes up each year under the renewable energy standard the pilot and the taxes were forecasting to be up seven point four percent and then I mentioned potentially issuing a revenue bond so we've included issuance costs for the revenue bond in this budget the cash for those issuance costs will be will come from the bond proceeds but we still need to record an expense in FY 25 yeah so any questions that I think I covered what I wanted to now moving to the capital budget right now the capital budget stands at just under twelve million dollars almost nine million of that is pegged to be funded by the revenue bond leaving about two point eight million to be funded by the Geo bond or cash reserves so it's a healthy capital budget I think it's I remember what we budgeted for FY 24 it's in the range so personally I want to do a little bit more analysis on kind of like capital budgets compared to inflation because our capital budgets are so high but yet expenses of everything is more expensive so it's it's kind of hard to get context for the capital spending number and to know whether that's sort of right-sized or is it kind of too small or is it too ambitious right and one challenge I would say is that just back to this for a minute the Geo bond limit is kind of stuck at three million dollars right until there's a charter change to increase it right so that's fine as long as your capital budget stays kind of constant as well and we're in a period where that's that's not the case so that's why we're looking at revenue bond funding as a way to finance that that capital need okay so here's kind of the bottom line as it stands right now projecting a net operating loss of 1.7 million not not unusual and actually better than our FY 24 budget net income is sitting at about a half one and a half million dollars right now and ending cash this would be June 30 2025 is projected at 9.2 million 9.3 million I guess about a million sorry no 9.3 about half a million dollars higher than our FY 24 budget projection so in terms of those credit rating metrics those results would yield these rating metrics 89 days cash on hand obviously we need to do some work between now and May but when we bring you a final budget to improve that debt service coverage ratio of four and a half which is decently healthy and adjusted debt service coverage ratio of 1.10 100th 100th lower than the FY 24 budget that's another area we have some work to do between now and May to get that number higher that's everything on kind of the state of affairs with the budget before I shift to talk about the rate the projected rate increase and the impacts there any questions quick one I think that this is a separate reflection like I think this is obviously interconnected with the previous slide and so you just answered it that you're gonna start to work with it but the previous slide if you don't mind going back one right so your your loss is greater than your income and so trying to work on that differential or is there something you want to say around that yes yes yeah so the top line is the operating income or operating loss which is kind of operating revenues minus operating expense before you add in the things like grants and customer contributions and interest income and interest expense so it's you know kind of your profit and loss on your core business so to speak so that's not atypical obviously the stronger that is that translates directly into your ADSCR so it's possible to have a really fat net income the true bottom line but then to have a weak adjusted debt service coverage ratio which is why Moody's kind of does that adjustment because they they take away those non operating things they're like no you can't count grants because you can't count on them right they don't recur every year reliably the one piece on that income that's really relevant to is the Velco equity dividend because our transmission expenses are reflected in the operating income but the dividends which come from our investment in the transmission system are reflected in the net income so there's a little bit of a disconnect in that item but and that is a recurring revenue source thank you you bet shall I move on so these are updates of slides that you've seen the past few years the first one kind of shows all of our rate changes since 1980 interesting to see you know we had a rate decrease here in 96 or 7 and we've had increases as high as 32 and almost 23 percent this is our 12-year run of no rate increases between 2009 and 2021 and here's our our post-pandemic seven and a half our 2022 of 3.95 and last year's of five and a half and then showing our projected 24 requests of five and a half as well this is a new slide that I did because I thought it would be informative so the blue bars are the rate increase that we asked for and and ultimately was approved for the past three years so the seven and a half the 3.95 and the five and a half the red bars are looking at our cost of service what rate increase would be necessary to give us a net income that's twice what we pay in interest and that's that's sort of the rule of thumb the Department of Service has advised us if we sought to seek full rate recovery that's gives you in a sense of kind of what we could have justified to to the PUC or what we could have asked for but didn't more bluntly so you know five and a half is perhaps feeling a little high compared to where inflation is right now it's a little higher than that you know that last this just yesterday came out at 3.8 or something right but it's we've also been sort of under requesting to try to keep rate increases manageable for customers for the past three years I don't know yet what our cost of service will be this June we're working on that number is that potentially to our detriment that we keep not quite I mean I don't think anyone wants to see a 10% rate increase but at the same time if we're are we chasing our tail here I'm not sure what the rate metaphor is but you know kind of yeah it's a balance whereas at the time you know that 12 years seem like we're doing the right thing but honestly we you know in retrospect even though it wasn't the way it really we should have been going 1% 2% that whole time but is this not catching up not catching up you know going to eventually catch up to us you know in a larger sense down the road yeah no I think we've shared you know we probably would have asked for a rate increase sooner than we did if not for the pandemic right and it you it's really comes down to those financial metrics and sort of that's your you know your blood pressure in your pulse right like kind of measuring your financial health we've been able to maintain quite decent you know a rating level metrics kind of with these requests and so sure ideally if we you know had no regard for the impact on customers we'd seek full rate recovery and our balance sheet would be better and our Moody's metrics would be better and we'd have more cash reserves of course from a financial perspective things would be better but that doesn't necessarily mean it was the wrong choice to make right from a community perspective from a customer impact perspective we might not have been able to justify a rate increase in the middle of the last decade because rec revenues were right no no I think I think we actually we'd gone for what we might not have gone for what we wanted to like ideally you're right you would do a 1% a year during that period yeah I mean that that's just you know but 20-29 site but yeah I mean what I see here is that you know what this chart shows is how hard you guys are working at it yeah that's what I see here you know and I think the public would see the same thing considering that we could have went for larger rate increases we didn't we still maintain the best we could so to me this really shows that really hard worked out the departments put into it so does it does it track to the your your eventual goal which is being able to just to to get down to that one to two percent a year yeah and in legislation there is in the renewable energy standard legislation that automatic 2% that you could file for that and go full litigated case is actually proposed to be raised to 3% reflecting that inflation is well above 3% but but in a way yes so we originally were looking at a range here of five and a half to six and a half and that's what we were kind of looking at earlier in the year now we're down to five and a half as the projected that could move around as Emily said I mean there are factors at play but we're hopeful to bring it in at five and a half but if you think about it this five and a half as Emily mentioned earlier assumes a much less generous energy market so the assumptions here are much more conservative than in prior budgets so you know there's a lot of factors at play sales as you were mentioning if sales can kind of move in a way over the next few years if the energy assumptions are conservative and they happen to turn out a little better you know depending on what as James was talking about what our power you know supply contracts look like we are trending in a relatively good direction or at least a relatively stable direction I think what we've seen in other utilities around the region is really dramatic spikes followed by relatively dramatic fall-offs when the price of natural gas has gone up and down and so we've maintained at a minimum some stability for our customers and a little bit of predictability in terms of having great changes that are in a kind of low to medium single digit range for the most part but that's our ultimate goal be to have those non-litigated rate cases I know our team would enjoy not having to go through the process so that is where we'd like to head to. Can you talk about the what's the different rates that make up the increases it's shared across I don't know how many tariffs we have but I imagine there are many across different commercial and residential is that that's sort of a blended average of some sort. All of these would be across the board five and a half percent on everybody's rate now so some you know a commercial customer would have a higher sense right and then the lower the residential rate is lower on a kilowatt-hour basis but both rates would go up the same five and a half percent. I see thank you. Yeah all of all of the increases shown in these graphs were treated that way you can't do anything else without doing what's called a rate design or a class cost of service study or something like that so municipal utilities raise all charges and credits for electric service across the board by a like amount when they do a rate increase. Thank you. Right this this chart's a bit busy so we'll try to explain the colors but this is showing the blue line at the bottom is sort of the cost of BED electricity kind of stepping up since 2021 there the green line at the top is the price of housing and the purple line is education or tuition I think red line is inflation and then the lighter blue line is medical expenses so you know we yes we've been raising rates but definitely keeping them more modest than a lot of the cost increases in other sectors. This shows where our residential rates are compared to the rest of New England which is the top blue line where we don't have data yet for 23 or a projection of 24 and the red line is the rest of Vermont utilities using GMP kind of as a proxy for the rest of Vermont recognizing that there are other utilities besides GMP and their rates may vary and then the green is BED including the additional five and a half percent projected and then this is the purple would be the rates for our energy assistance program customers who receive a 12 and a half percent discount where income qualified and this shows you where we are on commercial and industrial rates same same colors New England here at the top and blue we crisscrossed with the rest of the state in 2022 it looks like so we're slightly higher commercial and industrial rates than the rest of Vermont but not a joint not a drastic difference and then here's sort of the total cost to serve so that's all rates blended essentially again New England at the top rest of Vermont and red and then BED including the projected five and a half at the bottom so your average customer bill how much will it increase if we were to increase rates by five and a half percent so the average monthly bill this is making some assumptions about the usage of the of the customers average usage around 410 kilowatt hours per month at current rates that bill is about $82 projected with the five and a half it would increase by four dollars and fifty one cents small general which is our small commercial rate it'd be about a five dollar and seventy one cent increase sorry there we go sorry about that so obviously the amount that you use right is going to affect the impact on your bill and then looking at the energy assistance program and the effect on low to moderate income residential customers that bill impact is estimated to be about five dollars and thirty three five dollars and thirty three cents a month on average that's because the usage of folks enrolled in this program is slightly higher than the overall residential average but they will be receiving on average a twelve dollar and about eighty cent credit with the projected increase so that's what we had to share I'm happy to discuss or answer other questions myself just really quick you remind me why their usage is higher typically is there like a specific type of heating is it a measure mix I'm not sure I can answer that it's a very relatively small sample size we have currently the two hundred and thirty four customers so okay hard to say so looking at that how to if you're basing your numbers on that many more residential customers on this how are we reaching out to them to let them know that they are a little jibble are we is there a way to do that or without we're waiting for approval at the PUC right now for the changes to the program when we went from pilot to permanent we as soon as that is approved we have a feature in there that would auto enroll customers that we know are eligible and that should increase it from 234 up to you know probably above 800 just off the bat and then we are definitely doing outreach variety of mechanisms and channels ita and our energy equity program are doing great work reaching out right languages creating content to reach out to folks so we'll do proactive outreach as well but the biggest change will be auto enrollment so that we can actually just put people on and they don't have to go through the process because we happen to know they're eligible from another channel questions thank you that was very informative thank you already we got to item number eight on the agenda the FY 25 streetlight plan our favorite subject so I'm gonna throw up just a map to as a guidance here so our scope is relatively small this year you know a few things that factor into where we go in in a fiscal year for the street laying plan we really try to leverage spots where we're already doing some electrical work so that we don't have to go and rip stuff in rip stuff out of the ground after the fact or you know really just leveraging crew time another thing that'll go in as you'll see as I run through the streets customer complaints of unsafe streets factor in and then also there's some general like if we have a bunch of fixtures that break do we have a few broken fixtures so with that being said I'll just touch on the first the first and the biggest projects that we have is related to the Champlain Parkway so the part of Lakeside Ave out in front of DPW we'll have to be done with some new street lighting there and then the entirety of Pine Street from Lakeside Ave up to Main Street we'll have some new fixtures in related to lighting the street appropriately but the majority of the street is related to lighting the shared use path that's going to be built as part of Champlain Parkway yeah we have a potential customer-driven project down on North Ave which will go from Covenant Square to just beyond Cambrian Rise that is being driven by Cambrian Rise and then we have also the this is one of those projects where we have a bunch of fixtures on main so the jug handle we're planning to replace that's the section right here at the intersection of Main Street and East Ave that is going to be replaced with our standard with our LED fixtures so that we can go and actually replace some ones that have failed on Main Street so we don't have to go and replace you know we can extend the life of what's on Main Street right now with some fixtures that we pulled out and then finally DeForest Road and this ties to we actually got a customer request due to an unsafe street for walking to work in the morning and we saw it as an opportunity to go and enhance the lighting on that road this is part one of the job which just requires putting new fixtures in place of what's there and then we'll go and reevaluate for actually bringing it up to IES so this is really just a safety thing try and get in the street a little bit brighter for the fiscal year yeah so very small plan but it is a lot of dollars for that is for what we have here mainly in the in the Champlain Parkway so that's what we have for this year any questions so the Parkway and in Pine Street are we changing the poles in fixtures or just changing fixtures only so on lakeside have that went underground due to the Parkway so there will be new fixtures there it'll be those standard fiberglass poles with the Cobra Cobra street light LEDs okay Pine Street will just have new fixtures mounted where it's appropriate for the shared use path so are we going to add more fixtures on Pine Street being on that a pass side in the roadside are we going to keep kind of the lights will all be on the roadside but they'll be the but the back the back side yeah the back of the light will will appropriately light the shared use path okay good yeah okay so you mentioned that customer report of streets is one of the drivers I'm just curious is there also any connection with the police department and you know because if that's the reporting of streets I would have to defer to Paul Alexander on that if there's any requests coming through for that generally if it's a customer request it does get to the engineering department I haven't seen anything from the police department project like Champlain Parkway does that as BD on the hook to pay for all of that or is that get funded by the development of the parkway so there's a profit sharing equation for that there's a cost sharing part of it but that being said the actual street lighting BD is on the hook for for this one section a hundred percent but a majority of the street line that's being done on the entirety of the Champlain Parkway the actual new part of the road was all shared and we pay a pretty small portion all things considered so yeah one more quick question Paul on the replacement on a fixture that's failing on us we redo with LED are we going to already go back with high-pressure sodium or something like that are we still stocking those things or we have we're not stocking them so the sort of again to extend the life of Main Street yeah we're pulling a bunch of the eight PS HPS the high pressure sodium ones on the jug handle so that we can use them to replace broken fixtures on Main Street and then we will plan for doing a much larger job on Main Street going forward okay good yeah well yeah this the part of a great streets is a couple years down the road but that's actually will be just that will be down in the main downtown area that won't be up in this area this will be moved mainly by the school mainly by UVM that area that's got those fixtures yeah a few months ago when we all agreed we do proactive community engagement to try and decrease you know surprised by residents yep that part of the plan and then to yes we've already started those discussions yeah Mike is actually we just had a meeting today about that to discuss on de Forest Road is really the only residential primarily residential area but we're going to let everybody know what the plan is for the whole city thank you very much yes thank you guys too thanks that was the sixth thing I was gonna say any questions okay excellent cool thanks Paul all right moving on item number nine heat pump bill credit discussion and vote with mr. Gibbons well God willing I'll be able to share my screen and do a presentation but if not I I'm hoping that Emily can fall back and cover for me so I've epically failed on this recently in front of DPW so I'm hoping that doesn't happen again let me know if you see a PowerPoint and then I'll try to switch it to being a presentation of the whole screen your good shit so far there's still time about now I mean we can see the pages on the side but it's big enough to that's what I was afraid of it's not sharing the right screen okay let me try one other quick thing and that didn't work Darren do you want me for time to just go through oh wait this may work I've got it I've got one other option here if you just hit begin slideshow maybe yeah I did that yeah I did that how about now oh dear so it's showing the next slide and everything like that yes much smaller I'm gonna have to be going through some remedial training here at some point to figure out why I can't do this when all of the other people who can so I'm gonna go to the other presentation that we had that you could see and read and work from there hopefully this is exactly what happened before though maybe it's I'll blame my computer that's pretty good okay does that at least work for visual and ability okay so let me just quickly go through these sides quickly reasonably quickly so why are we doing a heat pump bill credit program well you know obviously the net zero energy goal you know requires us requires us has a goal of converting the heating and transportation sectors away from fossil fuel and in Burlington 95% of the heating is fueled by natural gas the problem we have with doing this with converting is that right now natural gas is actually cheaper operationally than heat pumps are and you know that's gives you a real struggle for somebody particularly who's challenged by their electric bill to accept you know a decarbonization you know heat pump and increase their electric bill and increase their overall fuel costs that's a that's a real lift people are doing it but they're doing it more for convenience and what we're looking to try to do is go after the root of that problem which is the cost differential between natural gas heating and electric heating with heat pumps we have done a pilot flexible load management program talk a little bit more about that but there were devices installed in nine to ten homes I'm actually one of them even though I'm not a Burlington customer I let Freddie monkey with my thermostat and my heat pump all he wanted to so that was my attempt to support the goal but Darren was one the mayor was one you know so we we we definitely had people who who got back to us with information on how it worked and ultimately we're going to try to use that information and the load control to mitigate peak costs particularly transmission and capacity to a lesser extent perhaps mitigate some energy costs and then using those cost savings over the base cost of providing electricity creating a credit to customers to help offset the cost of electrical space space heating with heat pumps so that's the goal of this it's to go after the delta prior efforts as I mentioned we did have a grant I thought it was ten this says nine I'm not going to argue in my own PowerPoint but there was what we did is we installed Emporia views and sensible devices in homes that had electric heat pumps and the Emporia views allow us to clamp electrical circuits and monitor interval consumption so that's giving us the consumption data and then the sensible airs are allowing us to send control signals to the third to the handheld remotes that control the heat pump thermostat settings and in general it's a program that allows us to pre-position the heating and cooling before an event so we're preheating or pre-cooling the space in order to allow it to ride through an event without actually drawing electricity during the time in question the customer experience you know we we've talked to everybody we've looked at the data we've calculated the peak savings and without the value of different baselining message that's Darren can can tell you that it's been a very long week for me sorry calculating different baselining methods and really what we're looking to do is come up with a cost to serve a controlled heat pump load and then difference that from the cost to serve an uncontrolled load okay this is a comparison of the energy component of the cost and obviously cost to serve something has multiple components as energy as capacity as transmission as renewability it has distribution all of these costs go into the cost to serve and become part of rates the first thing we want to do is look at how controlled heat pump loads and the energy cost to serve them compared to equivalent average around the clock energy prices we either will use the term ATC which is around the clock or we will use baseload and we'll use those interchangeably generally it means energy delivered in a like amount every hour of the day and then what you're doing is you're looking at a delivery of something like a heat pump where there's a pronounced shape to it and comparing those two things to see is the load you're looking at more expensive to serve than baseload less expensive to serve than baseload how does it compare that way we can bring in projections of future prices modify them by that adjustment factor and create the future estimated cost to serve that load shape and what we found was that either looking at the day ahead or real-time energy markets the cost to serve a heat pump load was 26 percent higher than baseload energy why are you smiling so much I'm really nervous what can't I see going on in the room in any event which is perhaps not surprising right I mean it's winter loaded energy so winter loaded energy in the current climate of energy and natural gas prices will tend to be more expensive than annual average energy throughout the year so what we did was we looked forward and we said the forward price of energy is 53 28 that relates roughly to what Emily showed you in the budget for the coming energy prices used in the budget period adjusting that we get an energy weighted price for heat pumps of about $67 a megawatt hour because it's more winter energy than summer or shoulder month energy next we looked at the transmission cost to serve these loads and the transmission cost of course has a component of the interruption the interruption can potentially reduce the frequency with which we incur transmission costs for heat pump loads we did look and I I we cannot explain Freddy's graph in Freddy's absence so don't ask us to none of us understand that graph on the right the way he did but the gist of the matter is we have demonstrated that we can successfully identify transmission peaks and curtail heat pump loads during those peaks that would reduce the transmission cost to serve okay and you can see that the cost decreases the more successful we are at predicting and capturing those peaks so in an uncontrolled heating case you would expect $41 a megawatt hour for the transmission cost component of serving heat pumps if you sit if you have 50 percent success in predicting the peaks you drop it about $7 that's what we actually succeeded in doing with the very small test population was about a 50 percent success rate we think likely we can do nine of 12 peak events in which case you drop it almost another $10 and if you got all of the peaks you could take a really deep bite out of the transmission you could knock about two cents off of the transmission component of the cost to serve these loads capacity doesn't change a whole lot right now New England capacity is driven by summer peak loads therefore you know load control of these heat pumps doesn't do a lot in the summer they're already inherently a more efficient air conditioning source so you know do you do describe that benefit to load control you can it's really an efficiency benefit so we don't assume a lot of benefit from load control from capacity savings in the summer that leaves us with the cost to serve of anywhere from $123 a megawatt hour to down to $95 a megawatt hour mostly driven by the probability of reducing the transmission peaks and so we can reduce the cost to serve taking those savings and looking at people's average use we can turn that into a dollar per month credit so you basically calculate the savings that you can realize and you divide it by the number of customers not the number of kilowatt hours to get a per customer per month credit the reason we're doing that is it's it's not our desired end state but it is what we can handle right now from a billing and implementation with our existing systems and those are certainly systems that you've heard through it before we are working to replace but this pilot would be an 18 month pilot that would just use a flat credit per month it will be very simple to explain it will be very simple to administer and can be administered with our existing billing systems and the number we've come up with is $5 a month and if you look over to the right the credit ranges from 442 up to 746 we're certainly aiming at the lower end of that we have a very small data set 9 to 10 customers is not a big data set and it is very hard to offer a bigger discount and reduce it then it is to offer a smaller discount and increase it based on an expanding data set so if the data set yes of course so that credit value if I remember correctly is a per head credit value because we do have some customers who have multiple heads of the heat pump some who only have one so even though kind of the worst case scenario was a 442 credit value and we're proposing 5 because it's 5 per customer not 5 per head we're being more inherently conservative than even the 442 would suggest just wanted to share that if Darren honest to God if you're confident with that statement I am not in any way unconfident with it I'm just not sure I'm catching up from a couple of medical emergencies and I'm just behind the eight ball a bit on that question so if Darren's Darren's good with his answer I'm equally good with his answer excellent excellent well I will not disagree with him and have no reason to so anyway but you know again it's a lot easier to increase something the problem with a per month credit and the reason we don't love it is because it isn't volumetric and so a person who uses less energy will get the same credit and therefore a lower net electrical cost of their heating then a person uses a lot of energy it'll be adjusted by the heating heads that helps right but even then you know somebody two people with a single head ideally you would want the person who consumes more electricity for heating to see a bigger credit not a bigger credit per kilowatt hour but a bigger credit but we're not in the position to do what that is which is essentially an end use rate it is billing for heat pump use separate and distinct from the bill for the rest of the house and we're not positioned to do that yet okay so Darren I don't know what to say about that first bullet so the first bullet says flat monthly bill credit per participant regardless of how many heat pump units they have so I don't know what to do no that's consistent that's the same same point I was making which is basically even if somebody has multiple heads and we might be getting additional savings we're only giving a $5 bill credit okay I thought you were saying conservative I thought you were saying the other I'm fine with this too that's this is what I understood okay anyway we are going to get support from a DOE grip grant we were the first entity in the state to get one of these large grip grants and it supports the deployment of the sense of those and the Emporia views and also integration with customer commercial heating controls and that will happen over the next several years through again this DOE grant we've also been awarded a DOE fellow at no charge to assist us with deployment as well so we are getting a fair amount of federal support for this project we will send signals to the adjustment service center heat pumps during annual monthly peaks gold to reduce the cost and therefore the the gold reducing usage during the peak not usage overall and then again we'll give the customers who participate a kilowatt hour a customer per customer credit we still need to work on the commercial side of this a $5 a month credit will not incentivize a typical commercial like say Champlain College or somebody like that it is likely that that credit will take the form of a dollar per kilowatt of load control we have not finished developing that rate yet okay so what we're requesting for action right now is that the Commission authorizes the general manager to proceed with seeking board of finance and city council approval and filing with the PUC a pilot rate or tariff program to provide a monthly bill credit for residential customers and or a pilot rate to commercial customers installing BED approved measurement and control devices on electric heating systems that's a mouthful I apologize but it does recognize that this would be filed as an 18 month pilot like the energy assistance program was filed this program would terminate and need to be replaced by something permanent at the end of 18 months either or be converted itself to a permanent program for any reason we're comfortable with this program that is an option too which is what we chose in the energy assistance program was simply converted to permanent going forward and with that I would be happy to answer any questions how many customers are you proposing to put on that existing or new or both or I think you're going to open that up to I mean what's your target for the residential program yeah I think that you know existing will be a great target audience because we have well over a thousand heat pump customers in the residential space and I think with the DOE funding it's in very rough numbers so I'm pulling that funding as a for we think we could get maybe up to a thousand customers enrolled in this type of program now I don't know if we'll be successful in doing that but I think we would have the resources to potentially enroll a thousand customers if our cost estimates on the hardware side are correct because as James mentioned we have to get the sensible which gives the customer the ability to control the heat pump from their phone so there's a convenience factor with that but it also gives us the ability to send a signal to the heat pump to reduce usage during those peak periods and an Emporia view which goes on the electric panel and gives us the verifiable data to show how they're doing in terms of real-time energy use but potentially up to a thousand customers on the residential side and then if it is converted to a permanent program it could be available to anybody who has a heat pump and hopefully the OEM manufacturers will include this type of technology and new heat pumps in the future but for now this is very much a retrofit of the equipment yeah we were unable to find a single device that would give us both the energy consumption measurement and the load of heat pumps so unlike the charge say the charge point residential chargers where we can do both things for a single device for the EV rate we did not find anything like that part of the grant is to continue looking for that as Darren said and it may take the form of new heat pumps themselves well the the the kind of ramping up pre-event or catch up snapback after the event be a choice for a customer so that if you don't if you want to float you're okay with the temperature variance and you don't want to use more is that an option not during the pilot you could give Freddie in this case some parameters but but in this you know for the broader program we have not determined kind of whether that would be available or whether it would just be a signal during the event to say okay turn the thermostat down two or three degrees or up two to three degrees or whether it's something where we would sort of automatically help the customer preheat or pre-cool and then try to ride through but we did during the pilot you could set parameters like i'm willing to adjust two three four five degrees i want that type of thing and in my household anytime the heating or cooling is off just even a slight bit even though it's me controlling it from the phone my kids blame freddy in an essential well that's right the best of our biology never actually got any call from mayer weinberg so no no but anyway you know something to think about yes like an efficiency component i know that's complicated i get that there's not over complicating it for the customer right um but no it's a good point as someone who would opt in i would want to right not have my bill anyway you get it right no i understood understood yeah so again it's it is it is taking a nine to ten customer pilot and then using a grip grant to start deployment at scale and that's really what we're looking for and then utilizing the pilot rate authority to not have to go through a lengthy rate making process on that side and to be very candid we would seek approval of the board of finance and city council but we would not instantly file it we would file this tariff when we are ready to start deploying these devices in the field because we need the 18 months to run concurrent with as many field deployments we can and to be clear i went to the specifics of some of these pieces but i think this is i think it's great i think this is awesome that you're getting out ahead and this is really um something that's not being done a lot yet in the market and really good good leadership i i think we're maybe the first utility in vermont to do this um and we're glad we have at least one customer who has volunteered to sign up here james yeah to make mental note yeah you've entered the list this reminds me the old heatmizer well yeah we had the energy miser program for the water heaters which was um you know a similar concept in a way um this will be a little more advanced um and hopefully aggregated over many heat pumps could really derive a significant benefit as well but yeah there's similar concepts in a way to the energy well and there's there's one other thing that's kind of interesting too and i think darin you and i both at least opted for this which was to clamp the electrical circuit for our furnace and you can't measure fuel consumption but you can monitor the time that furnaces are running while this program is underway and frankly you could clamp any other load that was of interest that the customer would let you clamp because the the uh the poor reviews have typically eight to ten eight to twelve i think it is monitoring the legs and mine's only using four right now three for my heat pumps and one for my furnace but you could monitor anything else too with that same device what else would be worth monitoring well my air my hot tub but that's just me dryer uh you could uh you know you could do you'd be charging you do your boiler so you know how the heat pumps performing relative to the boiler things like that um but really we were doing that mostly to make sure the boilers didn't just instantly turn on when we scaled back you know the heat pump operation so you know that was being done in the pilot to verify that we weren't just you know substituting natural gas use and oil use so yeah we were getting ride through from both heating systems i have a couple a couple questions this is really interesting and a really cool project um uh this is sort of a new person question but is this only for winter peak or winter and summer peak it really could be for monthly peaks um as well it is for monthly peaks yeah so yeah you'd expect to get i don't know james three to six events per month roughly uh it depends it's hard it's that's a very complicated answer um that might be a good one if you're coming over for like an orientation but super quickly transmission peaks are set monthly capacity is set annually single event one peak hour annually um and the number of events you need to capture one of those peaks either the monthly or the annual is a function of the month of the year and how distinctive the event is so for example if you're sitting there in august it's going to be a hot humid day probably not a friday probably the second or third consecutive thing you've got a fair amount of visibility into what costs that when you get to april the peaks get a lot closer and they get a lot harder to differentiate you know so again you know there are 12 monthly peaks that set your transmission costs some of them are a lot easier to predict than others but you would expect as a customer to get several events potentially a month to make sure we capture whichever one ends up being the peak or that month correct or or you know again if you simply decided that that one month let's say you decided that april or may was simply so problematic to capture you know that you that you didn't need those savings or you didn't want the savings and you did not want to send an event every other day to customers you know you can make those decisions but there is a value to capturing each of the 12 monthly peaks those are the Vermont monthly peaks not the new england monthly peaks the annual peak is a new england annual peak my other question is about i would imagine with a small sample size the thermal efficiency of the houses that that were in your initial mini pilot would vary greatly potentially or could is there any risk there in using that as a foundational part of the cost effectiveness of it or your the costs of it it needed we need something we need something to derive it that's what we've got an earlier slide did note that you know the thermal envelope is part of the equation no good way to assess it right now that's why we're being very conservative in setting the credit is because again i if i set an aggressive credit based on a small data set and it's invalid right and i have to reduce the credit i'm going to be sending all the wrong messages programmatically to the participants thank you i would say too like if you think about it i i know at least a number of the houses that were used in the pilot and i don't think many if any of them were like built in 2010 or built in you know 2015 and would have the most modern you know shell and so they're presumably going to use a little bit more energy which conversely means there's more peak savings potentially um you know if you were doing this in a really kind of newly built well insulated you know apartment building you'd expect a little less peak savings per unit potentially a little more units so it's a fair variable that we can track that's the great thing about the pilot though is it's not really derived just to achieve the peak savings we're going to try very hard to do that but it's very much the learning too so that if we do design a permanent program we'll have the benefit of a much larger sample size yeah very cool stuff other questions thanks thank you that was very informative well and let's let us all thank freddy and his absentia because again i i uh i don't think there's any debate about the uniqueness of this again hence the only grip award in the first round in the state of ramon when did this program so can you all read that her no we get oh you have a shorter version of it here but okay i think it'll it'll it'll says i can zoom it says the same thing um i'd modified it very slightly after no we need to use this version just this yeah can you make that a little bigger yeah excellent thank you yeah or you'll be able to read i can't from here here the old me and i's at the end of the okay i'll let you go motion if there's one to be made darren wants you to use that yeah it's the commission authorizes the general manager to proceed with seeking board of finance and city council approval for and filing with the puc a pilot rate tariff program to provide a monthly bill credit for residential customers and or a pilot rate to commercial customers installing bd approved measurement and control devices on electric heating systems i have a motion do i have a second second motion and seconded discussion on the motion hearing none i will uh all those in favor of the motion indicate by saying i i i all those opposed say nay guys have it the motion passes thank you james i may be your next agenda item you may be else yes uh yes you are uh so next agenda item is the delegation for non-disclosure agreements related to power supply so this one you mercifully do not get a power point with circles and arrows and colors like like the last one but what we're looking for is authority to enter non-disclosure agreements particularly non-disclosure agreements related to the terms commercial terms of possible power supply transactions so brolin ton electric department is right now looking to replace three expiring contracts one expires at the end of this year and then two in subsequent years and we are also evaluating right now three active storage proposals in all of those cases or most of those cases there is going to be a request if there has not already been one for a non-disclosure agreement non-disclosure agreements that are not related to power supply would have to go to the city council if they were over one year as a contract over one year uh bill ellis our council has advised that he believes that a non-disclosure agreement that is related to power supply transactions would follow the same approval process as the power supply transactions that it related to that means the electric commission has authority to enter up to five-year power supply agreements without consulting the city council or more to finance the power of the electric commission can then delegate that authority to the general manager if they so choose okay in this case we are asking that they delegate the authority non-disclosure agreement component of these power contracts to the general manager so that we can go out and get the information to evaluate power contracts and bring proposals to you or either approval if they're five years or less or for approval and advancing to the city council if they're greater than five years but really the first step is being able to convince a counterparty that you will at least treat their information confidentially and their pricing confidentially during discussions sometimes those requests stay through contract execution and we have had to have contracts for power supply executed both by or approved by the electric commission and approved by the city council in executive sessions that is a possibility but at this point it is just a request to let darin enter NDAs of up to five years most of these people seem to want more than a year which he could execute without this approval but you know we don't want to come to you guys every time there's a request for a two-year NDA to get pricing on a battery storage projects who we're going to look and see whether it's viable or not so this is this is a typical business practice or this is a shift in the market in oh no no no very typical typical business practice we're a little constrained a lot of times what we'll do is we'll sign an NDA for a year and and we'll get a vendor to agree to that but yeah it's not probably a great use of of your time or the council's time to have to approve multi-year NDAs because all they can do is lead to a potential project that we would bring to you and or the council anyhow and we've definitely run across I think several over the last you know few months where and they're not all one type of technology where having a multi-year is more standard and I I understand that from a commercial terms perspective two years is normal one year is very short and you know so and it's a very frequent for it's it's normal enough that many of the contracts the electric commissions have approved over the years have had got embedded in them the confidentiality that becomes permanent you know when the power contract itself is in is executed and it has confidentiality in it you know sometimes if it's over the phone and you're getting indicative pricing there's no confidentiality if you're going through a broker there it's not confidentiality but in all of these cases we're talking to counter parties and they would like their pricing held closely okay any questions just a quick one so current practices now when this occurs you have to come to the commission for this approval to enter into an agreement over one year but less than five years for most items that's over a year we go to city council the council delegated to the commission up to five years for power supply items so we could bring a two or three year NDA to the commission for example we've typically tried to get vendors to agree to a one year we're getting a little more pushback on that than we used to get and so this would be a delegation further from the commission to the department to do multi-year NDAs this is five-year authorization authorization this is very similar to the delegation to do five-year rec transactions this is much same thing the electric commission had authority to do five-year rec transactions and under certain conditions delegated that to the general manager they can do so and and how many times in the past year or two have you had to come to the commission for approval for a NDA longer than one year none yeah none but but we also have not been in power supply and storage negotiation mode for all the last 12 months either so that's really happening we've had three that i'm aware of requests for a multi-year NDA which is a lot more than we've had in the past two years right but that is a function of being in negotiation now for utility scale storage and replacement energy contracts where we weren't in that mode say December of last year right thank you any other questions there's a suggested motion and i didn't tinker with this one make the motion to delegate to the general manager authorization to enter in a non-disclosure agreements with term up to five years related to potential power supply transaction terms we have a motion to have a second all second motion and seconded discussion on the motion hearing none um all those in favor of the motion did give us a aye aye all those opposed gave us a nay guys have it motion passes thank you we're good to go thank you all very much yes thanks thank you for everything james appreciate it uh item number 11 is our commissioners checking at the very end here we kind of just kind of open up the floor to any other thoughts or concerns or anything that we haven't covered this evening that may have come up in your head over the last hour or two and just got a quick question i think i asked this before darin was do we have any kind of rebates for replacing heat pumps older heat pumps that are in the field older heat pumps yeah you know heat pumps i've been in the field for like 12 years i have one at my house has been there for 12 years and i've already i replaced my electronic board at once right is there any rebates to upgrade or replace you would be eligible because if you did it 12 years ago we didn't give you a heat pump i have one for my basement which was about three years ago i went through it okay but so you got one rebate in that scenario so we do have a second heat pump rebate okay that's relatively new it's not at the full value of the first rebate yeah but it is for exactly these kinds of scenarios where somebody does one they do a second one they they like the first one or in your case maybe they're replacing one yeah um so we do and i can send you the link um i'll send it to you why is it in our rebates it is if you go to the heat pump yeah we have it it's relatively new we just did it over the last year i was gonna say because i went in there a couple weeks ago and i didn't notice it but i'll don't go back if you don't find it let me know or let mike just a minute ago no and we can get you the right link but um yeah so you can do a second heat pump now and get a lesser rebate but still some value for it great yep appreciate it anything else or please check in going once going twice i'll take a motion motion to adjourn motion to have a second motion seconded uh we'll skip the discussion um all those in favor of uh adjourning indicate by saying aye aye aye's have it we are adjourned thank you everybody all right thank you have a great evening