 Welcome to the Wednesday, January 11th meeting of the Burlington Board of Electric Commission. My name's Lori Lemieux, and I'm the board clerk. And due to the resignation of our commission chair, Gabrielle Stebbings, at the December meeting, our first order of business is to elect officers. At this time, I open up the floor for nominations for chair of the commission. I'll nominate Commissioner Moody for chair. Do I have a second? Second. Are there any other nominations? Hearing none, I'll move to a vote. By the show of hands, please indicate your support for Commissioner Moody. Thank you. Of the five members present, four votes were cast in support of Scott Moody. Congratulations. I'll turn the meeting over to you for the election of the vice chair. Thank you. At this time, I'll open up nominations for vice chair. Let me vice chair. Second. Second. We have one nomination for Commissioner Whitaker. Are there any other nominations? Hearing none, I'll move to a vote. By a show of hands, please indicate who says Commissioner Whitaker as vice chair. Thank you. All right. All right. That being concluded, thank you, everyone. I appreciate it. I don't know how ready I am for this, but I will certainly be looking forward to all of your input and help and guidance along the way. And then also, one of the first things I want to do is welcome all of you to the meeting. The Board of Commissioners meets every second Wednesday of the month at 530, here at 585 Pine Street. As always welcome, the public is welcome. Please come, have your voice heard. Questions, concerns, praise, whatever. Always welcome here. Moving on, the first thing I'd like to do is welcome our new Commissioner, Commissioner Bond. Welcome to the group. Again, I'll be looking forward to your expertise. I'll lift you up and you have a lot of wealth of knowledge in this arena. So we look forward to working with you. There are no dumb questions. Speak up, jump in, and welcome aboard. To that, hopefully the staff will be giving her some catching her up on some of the more latest things that we've been doing and kind of getting her up to speed on some of the topics we've been dealing with. District Energy and Allen Birkey and a few other things that hopefully should get the materials for that. All right. Next thing up is the agenda. Do we have any changes, substantive changes to the agenda? None. Hearing none, I'll entertain a motion. Other places we do. Okay. Minutes. Yeah, that's what I was looking for. As he, I'm already starting this off in the bad foot. Minutes for December. Any substantive changes to the minutes? Well, I have one question. Sure. At the top of page three, first paragraph, it says if a permit were pulled, does that mean revoked? Yeah, it's page three of the minutes. The top most paragraph. Two, three. We propose that if a permit were pulled, was pulled being revoked? No. No permit, essentially if a permit was requested, was filed for it. Okay. Well, I would suggest changing that to requested. Right. Okay. I will change that, Bob. Any other changes to the minutes of December 14th? Hearing none, I will entertain a motion. I'll make the motion to accept the minutes for December 14th. Check it. Here, motion and a second. Discussion of the motion? Hearing none, I'll, everyone, God. All in favor of the minutes of December 14th? Signify by saying aye. Okay. All right. Public forum, are there any members of the public here? I'm so used to doing that with other boards. No one, anybody online? I know. No. No, just in place. No one here for public forum. Again, public is always welcome to hear your concerns and thoughts and stuff on the department, how we're doing. Five, eight, five, five. Second one, two. Commissioner's corner. Do commissioners have anything to bring up? I'm curious about the streetlight thing. Who is going to, is a subgroup of folks that we're going to talk? I don't know. Yeah, I'm going to ask about that in just a second because that's kind of a, yeah. Are you asking now? I guess. I just want to make sure there's no other, other commissioner comments or anything. Oh, sorry. Thanks to James for sending me a memo. About the connection between diesel prices and wood prices. I, I believed you when you told me last time, but you made it look very convincing in which you sent me. So thank you. That's it. And then I've got one, just one small thing that the, the department was changing out lights on my street and got to the one in front of my house. And I've got to tell you that the difference in, um, you know, what that lays is, it's like night and day. They put a new light in there and the, um, not only does it light the street, the street very well, the sidewalk very well. It spills into my, but it's the color temperature is so soft in my bedroom. It's much more, much more, um, tolerable than those orange, orange ones. So, um, I'm loving it. Thanks. That's good to hear that. We've done some work. We had gotten a front porch forum post, I think relative to de Forest as well that, that kind of talked about the orange color lights. And those are the older lights. And, um, Muneer and his team worked very quickly to replace those with the newer LED, which have, I think, more of a soft color temperature and do a better job of lighting. So probably same, same kind of setup. And this was an instance where somebody had been complaining that the street wasn't lit enough. And that when they rode their bike down, they couldn't see where they were going. And so we were immediately able to do that. And then we're working on incorporating that one into our street lighting plan. But, um, more broadly, I think with the street lighting issue, we did have some follow up from, uh, our former chair, uh, who remains interested in introducing us to, uh, a person locally who has some expertise. And I think Muneer has been in touch with her over email. We're trying to set up a meeting so that we can benefit from whatever expertise might be out there, uh, in terms of learning more. And, um, we do have a new director of engineering on board. Um, uh, Paul Nadeau, who Nadeau, Nadeau, Nadeau, Paul Nadeau, uh, who comes to us from Green Mountain Power, uh, doesn't have a background necessarily in street lighting, uh, issues. So for the time being, I think, uh, Muneer and NS on our team are going to be, uh, continue to be the lead on that issue. Does that include, uh, connecting with Gabe Arnold? That's the local expert who I think Gabrielle had to hope to connect us with. Okay. Is it through her or is it through somebody here? Through, through her. Okay. Yep. I have an email from her. Okay, uh, I've also, well, one last thing on that. I mentioned there was some work in a small town in Massachusetts, Pepperyl. And, um, there's a fellow there that's still making measurements that probably will be of use to us. Okay. And I just, I, you know, mentioned that I think we have capital work that's planned for the spring, correct, Muneer? So we're, we're interested to get additional feedback. We, we pause that obviously during the winter time and waiting to kind of resolve some of this, uh, uh, with the discussion. But so over the next couple of months, hopefully we can get some feedback, learn if there's additional flexibility within the, uh, IES standards and then, uh, find a way to proceed, uh, with the capital plan, uh, or, or some version of it. Um, so that's kind of where things are, at least on our end. That's helpful. Yeah, let me just make sure, yeah. The new light is brighter, it does shine in your bedroom, but it's got such a nice warm color temperature that it's moving. It's, uh, yeah, it's a much more softer color temperature than that harsh orange. Okay. And is that still 3000? But I mean, I also see it as, it also has a much more even, um, blanket over the street and the sidewalk as well. Um, and even what spills into my driveway, it's, it's deceiving. It's, it's, it lights up my driveway, but it sort of looks dark. I don't know how to describe that. It's both light and dark at the same time. It's, yeah. I like, I'm, I'm, I'm happy with this. It's an improvement. Better cool the light. Yeah. Yeah, I'm very pleased with it. So do we put those lights in on what's that street? Scarf? We did. They had that to begin with, that the one that caused the uproar, because it was the, the number. It's the number of fixtures as opposed to the light, I think. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I think it was like seven to 29 or something. It was a, yeah. It was a pretty dramatic expansion. So perhaps we can. Are we good as I was going to say? Yeah, no, I just would, because I thought there was a meeting in December and then I thought it got moved. I just was curious if there was any. Yeah, well, I should. Yeah, right. I mean, we can, uh, potentially, I don't know if the date lines up with the next commission meeting, but if we've had that conversation with, the gentleman, Gabe Arnold, by that point, we can report back on what we've learned at the February meeting. If that's helpful. Yeah. I mean, I was just going to leave it with whatever the timeframe is that with, with Gabrielle and him and the new engineer, whatever that works out to be, just let us let us know. And then we'll figure out who wants to be at that meeting. And if we have to warn it, if there's more than three, as we warned, so. I think the intent, if I understood correctly, was that the conversation was more to share expertise than to have a public meeting about the topic separate from the commission. Oh, understood, understood. But I just, I think it still applies that if more than three of us are there. If more than three commissioners were there, it would become a public meeting. Um, I gathered that wasn't the. It's a public meeting that we don't really want to be a public meeting. Well, no, it was more that, my understanding, and correct me if I got it wrong, was, um, I think Gabrielle was hoping to just have Gabe be able to meet with our engineers, essentially, directly. Okay. There could be additional, you know, we could either discuss it at the public meeting for the commission, or have an additional meeting about it. But my understanding from her was that that was the idea, was to connect Gabe with Manir and the team, so that they could. Not involve any of us. Is that right? I don't want to speak on that. That's cool. I defer. I'm fine with that. Yeah. And I think, I don't know if we have a date. Do we have, I don't know if we Manir sent some dates out, so we can certainly let you know when it's scheduled, and I defer to the commissioners and the former chair on how to line it up, if at all. Bob was one of them, and I can't can't remember who was the second one. But Gene Sullivan, yes. So, yes. So really the whole, the whole purpose of it is not to have a public meeting. Right. And the subcommittee would work and come up with whatever, and then we brought it back to the whole commission for review and their approval and discussions, obviously. Okay. But having said that, I'm very interested in being there. I think you should be there. Okay. So. Because I'll be a connection then between, yeah. Yeah, I think you should be there. Okay. Maybe just Bob. I'll defer to. Okay. Whenever I have the meeting, I can send that. Can I invite Bob to? Perfect. Sounds good. All right. So that should dovetail nicely into the GM update. All right. Before I get into the items, I think covered in the report, I mentioned that we have a new director of engineering. We also have a new energy equity analyst. Edameno comes to us from the Department of Permitting and Inspections, started this month as well as working with Jen Green and our sustainability team. And so a couple of important hires for us. We continue to have a number of positions that are still unfilled. And in some cases, we're having challenges still filling those positions, but some success for a couple that were important to us. So I wanted the commission to be aware of that. I'll just go in order here. Concept papers, we have no fewer than seven Department of Energy infrastructure bill concept papers that we're working on either individually at BED or as part of a group, either statewide in at least one case or with another submitter in another case. Most of these are out. We have one that we're finishing up essentially tomorrow that we're going to submit as well. Our hope is one or more of them will be selected to have a full application. These are essentially, you know, shorter form and less upfront work so that we can get a sense from the department, which of them, if any, fit the priorities. But great opportunity there. Most, not all, but most of the papers are really around complementing the work from the net zero energy revenue bond, adding additional capacity to the grid. If the commission recalls the net zero roadmap had identified essentially a series of pathways. Our 2020 integrated resource plan had analysis from Muneer's team working with James's team that suggested that in 2019 dollars we needed 19 to 24 million of grid upgrades to get to 102.8 megawatts. We've done some additional analysis as part of this to look at getting to 120 and 140 megawatts and some of that's being submitted as part of the paper with the idea that it could be complemented by current net zero energy revenue bond funding and if we do another trunch in 2025, 2026, another bond as well. So we'll keep the commission updated on that. Can I just ask a question about that? So for that DOE money, is there like a local match and that's what you would use the- Correct. Okay. It varies in one case. I think it's as low as a third, if I'm remembering correctly, up to more like 50% for most of them, but- And then there's one where being a small utility, which we definitely qualify for by their standard, gets you kind of a different set of criteria. There's like a third of the money nationally is reserved for small utilities. So there's different levels of match, but we essentially have match available primarily through the revenue. Yeah. And I wonder if that's- Like I think that's one of those things that's hard to communicate, but it's really important to what the bond gives you the flexibility and the ability to do. But people don't really- I mean, it's hard to understand that, but- Yeah. But being able to show local funds and not having to apply for the grant then go out and get the money Exactly. You know, it's a great point. It makes a huge difference. Yeah. It's a great point. And we've certainly stressed it in the applications to the department, but to the extent we go back and ask voters again in several years for something having this kind of flexibility with the money already kind of in process, but funding a portion of the need, not the entire need, it gives us this opportunity with the federal government taking the active role that it's taking now, which is helpful. And then today, actually, just a few hours ago in the truck bay, and we had our chair, our new chair, and congratulations, Scott, was there with us. We had a set of announcements around our 2023 incentives, so we've done what we do every year where we look at the programs, we boost some incentives, we add some new programs, and then this year we also tried to highlight the federal Inflation Reduction Act programs that are going to complement our local incentives. And we had Mora Collins and the Vermont Housing Finance Agency with us. We have this new program, tariff has been filed, it's pending at the PUC, but it's been approved for other utilities, so we're expecting that it'll hopefully be approved for us as well, that allows us to do an on-bill finance repayment for heat pumps and weatherization. It's an income-qualified program aimed at low and moderate-income customers, and the neat thing here, other than very reasonable interest rates, the partnership with VHFA, is that it can break through the split incentive issue that we have where the tenant is paying the energy bill and the property owner has to pay for the improvements because the improvements can be paid for through this program. The property owner doesn't have to make the investment and the improvements and the savings stay with the meter. So the unit gets the improvement, the person paying the bill in the unit gets the savings. It's structured, so it's cash flow positive, more savings than cost for the person paying the bill, and it's going to unlock hopefully a new opportunity for us to help. It's available for renters and homeowners, but it could be uniquely helpful for renters in Burlington. So set of announcements there. I won't go through all the details. We do have a press release out from the mayor, but at least in the heat pump and EV space, I would say there are some significant tax credits coupled with our incentives that can really make it quite more affordable than it's been to purchase a new vehicle. We've got some charging incentives, both home workplace that are going up or starting new. Like for the first time this year, we have level three fast charger incentives for workplaces. We have one customer who's looking at that right now. And I'll mention because I think it's in here as well. We also have revenue bond investments for ourselves in fast chargers, 62.5kw. We're going to be replacing the one out here on 585 pine and one down at the marketplace garage that were older 25kw Chattano protocols which only work with the Nissan Leaf and some of the Mitsubishi's with 62.5kw. So significantly faster and those are going to be CCS protocols that work with the vast majority of EVs. So those should be the first two new fast chargers and then hopefully we'll see some more. We had an RFP go out. We have an electrician I think who's been part of that process or multiple electricians who have been part of that process and we're hopeful to get these installed in the next couple months. So look for those soon. Next item on here. This happened earlier this week at City Council. We had unanimous approval from the Council for BED and the Department of Permitting and Inspections recommendations regarding thermal policy and carbon fee. So Town Meeting Day ballot will now have a question on it. I don't know which question number it'll be yet related to giving the city the authority to charge up to $150 per ton carbon fee for new construction and large existing buildings above 50,000 square feet if they are in new construction pulling requiring asking for a permit and then in the case of large existing building if they're requesting a permit for a new heating system or water heating system. If voters approve this it gives the Council the authority under our charter change to make the fee a part of the proposal. We'd still have to go back and have an ordinance drafted post Town Meeting Day to implement this. But this would be a fairly significant step forward on the policy front and build on the rental weatherization standards and the renewable heating ordinance that we've done and we've confirmed because this was part of the conversation in Montpelier there's a housing bill that had language that might have preempted some of our work on this and we've confirmed through outreach through the city and now seeing a new draft that that bill no longer would affect our rental weatherization our renewable heating or our charter change work. So we're hopeful it'll remain that way but we've been proactive in trying to make sure that Burlington continues to have the authority we need to advance policy. In addition on the legislative front myself, Paul Pikna Betsy Lesnikowski will be down in Montpelier tomorrow morning to host a coffee and meet with legislators talk about the McNeil plant and the sustainability of our forestry operations answer questions. We know that's of interest. We know that hopefully later this month or towards the end of the month really next that we'll have discussions around Extending Act 151 which allows us as an efficiency utility and efficiency Vermont to use a portion of our funding for emissions reduction projects and not just electric efficiency. And we also think that there will be discussions around renewable energy standard which are not as exciting for us given the direction that some of it's being discussed but we'll be engaged in those as well. So we're going to be down in the House Energy and Environment Committee which is a new committee next Tuesday doing an introduction expect will be active during the session on a variety of topics. And lastly for me believe it's last yes. I just wanted to highlight in here and I sent a few article links the December storms we had a storm initially where our crews were helping GMP and then we had the storm right around Christmas Eve which was not particularly intense in Burlington thankfully we had a couple of outages one of which went I think a little longer than an hour and had you know number of customers hundreds of customers who were out but we got them back on within a couple of hours we were able to send two crews to Washington Electric I think it was like 5 a.m. on the following day on Saturday they were there through the holiday and into the next week helping restore power Washington Electric was incredibly appreciative they have the toughest service territory in the state they are rural they have homes that are spaced out quite a bit they don't have like a geographically compact area like we do and difficult conditions and you know getting a number of customers who had outages back on so we really appreciated our crews work there I know Washington Electric did as well and they were highlighted in a couple of stories on CAX and Vermont Digger so I'll stop there and if there are any questions happy to answer wouldn't you help another utility like that is that just pro bono oh no no you charge them for that no it's we have a program called Mutually and it's sort of a pre-arranged set of terms that we can sign on to collectively and so when we send a crew their time and the expense of whatever you know equipment we're sending can be build back to that utility and then hopefully in this case this will be a FEMA reimbursement for the state as a whole hopefully so something like 75 percent of the cost can usually be reimbursed by FEMA in this circumstance so Washington Electrical pay us for the cruise time and our truck and whatever else and then hopefully they'll be reimbursed up to 75 percent from FEMA so yeah I that makes sense so because obviously you can't use Burlington taxpayer resources somewhere else yeah you'd end up in a situation where we were subsidizing other utility systems so this is a good long-standing tradition and every utility who needs mutual aids happy to have the help and then to pay for it afterwards because it means their customers are getting back on more quickly it does yeah typically we work through NEPA the New England public power for for outage response sometimes the American public power association we've had crews during just my six years here we've had crews go even outside of the continental United States when there have been storms in the Caribbean we've had crews that have been asked to go to Arizona to different different states but typically our response is going to be either in Vermont or New England region you know but circumstances can pull you elsewhere yep I know this is all subject to flux but your memo last time said $128 per ton per carbon you mentioned up to 150 today I'm not asking for a specific number but you might have even told us this what's in there about how that could be modified over time so the 128 I think was a number that the state had been looking at for a social cost the language in the ballot question is going to say up to 150 per ton and adjusted annually with inflation which we would use the northeast CPI but no more than 5% annually so after this would hopefully pass and obviously there's still a lot of work to do before you know that happens but if it was to pass the council could come back and via ordinance set a number up to 150 a ton they may choose a number lower they could choose 100 or 125 or something and then it would be able to automatically adjust with the cost of inflation but no more than 5% annually from there you remember also mentioned that New York and Boston had fees that are about twice that correct they're more in the 200 to $260 range they are the highest that I think we've seen and there are certainly numbers that are lower one thing that I heard during the discussion was and this is interesting so we did our renewable heating ordinance prior to this charter change in 2021 and we essentially adopted an exemption process there for new construction to not have to put in a renewable heating ordinance if they could show that there was no renewable option that was cost effective even using $100 a ton carbon price and even looking at all of our incentives South Burlington subsequently adopted more or less verbatim with some additions our renewable heating ordinance and now had that $100 a ton figure and so when we've been talking here about the 150 I have heard from some on the council that there might be interest in doing the $100 instead of the 150 because South Burlington has that and there's a desire to have symmetry of between our policies so we've certainly advocated for using the 150 because we think that that's closer in line to the social cost identified with the state which has been somewhere in the 128 to 140 something range and obviously using the higher number gives even more of a strong playing field to the renewable alternatives but I would say even if it ends up being a hundred it'll still have largely the similar effect of making somebody who's making an investment take a look at not just the baseline system but baseline plus carbon fee compared to the alternatives and we did some analysis on the upfront capital comparisons and there are a lot of renewable slash electric options that pencil out quite well from a capital standpoint against a baseline system plus carbon fee and on the operating side this is new and relatively good news for us on the operating side at least for residential customers potentially some commercial operating a heat pump for example with our our current rates compared to gas rates is becoming more favorable you can actually save money heating with a heat pump now whereas a few years back you would have definitely been maybe break even or maybe losing some money by running on a heat pump so rates change commodity costs change we're in a more favorable position now on the operating side same topic just quickly are you still thinking about the multi it's not an exemption but we do have well it's a delay essentially for the water heating component so the language in the ballot question will say for multi-family buildings four units are larger the water heating component wouldn't come into effect for new construction until 2026 and of course one of the things we want to stress and I hope if you all get asked you can stress is this would not affect any existing residential building of any kind apartment affordable housing condo single family none of it affects those buildings none of it affects any existing small business none of it even affects a commercial or industrial building under 50,000 square feet so we're talking about probably about 80 buildings in the city that are above 50,000 square feet many of which are the university the hospital Champlain the school district in the city and then new construction buildings of all types that would happen starting in 2024 so it's important for us to continue to stress what's in and what's out so the new high school then yeah although I think they are looking at doing geothermal oh okay as an option so we're hopeful that that'll be they would have to do a renewable primary heating system either way because of the existing ordinance and I know our team's been doing work on the option of looking at geothermal with them which would be wonderful I just had a quick question sort of out of the blue that I've been thinking about for a minute last time I did one of these was years ago IRP where are we at are we do for one of those yes September right September so our team's working on it we're going through we'll do all the normal analysis that you would do for the IRP and then we'll have probably some additional work like we did last time we had some focus areas we'll have some additional focus areas as well but September is the due date presuming we don't ask for any kind of extension so we'll have to see and if there's interest obviously we can brief the commission as we get closer to having a work product to share ahead of submitting it of course as you remember in the past we would have people on the commission as well as sometimes a person in the public help us kind of go through that whole process and yep last time that kind of commission committee kind of fizzled and the IRP happened anyway the IRP is definitely on the PUC schedule so we have that due date but yeah I don't know if James or Emily have thoughts if there's interest among the commission and being or a commissioner and being more involved or whether there just be value and us briefing the commission on some of our findings ahead of time so that we can take your feedback before we submit different ways to get you know input what's the time scale I mean I know when you're going to start working on it or you're going to deliver in September deliver in September he's been working on it okay but yeah I mean I don't know if you have a preferred structure if you'd like us to set a time maybe in the later spring where we could come in and present before we you know finalize everything happy to put that on the agenda and we can make a note that sounds like right okay I think we're making a note I think yes we are as we're on that with the timeframe for our next filing with the PC for rates we're still pending the current one all right so we're waiting for that to be ultimately approved we wouldn't file anything for a new rate until June 15th which would let it take effect August 1st and we are still we just kicked off our budget process for fiscal 24 so we don't have a number yet to really kind of pin down what our need is we're facing some challenges I know Emily's going to do the financials but we're facing some challenges with the energy markets right now not being as high as we anticipated with the forwards when we built the last budget the weather as everyone notes has been incredibly moderate there's been very high unseasonably high temperatures so outside of a few days weeks in December where things spiked a bit prices have been much closer to shoulder season levels then even traditional winter much less the winner that was expected so that's having impact on us right now we'll wait to see kind of over the next few months how that plays out and whether trends reverse and then that'll have an effect on how we look at our next budget and what type of cash on hand we're going into it with and all of that but we'll be briefing you April and May on draft and hopefully final budget and rate as part of that and then we'll be bringing it to the Board of Finance City Council May June and if timing holds with consistent with our prior last couple of years we'd be looking at June 15th or thereabouts for a filing the next one mm-hmm all right let's want to make sure we capture Alan Bierke's concerns and have discussions about that as well is that any other little things that need to be tweaked yeah and that that we've talked about relative to his concerns that's really the operating guidelines so it could go in with a rate filing if we wanted to or it could go in as a separate project I think James and Andy Higby and Mike and others have been following up on some of the concerns that he had raised over email I don't have anything new or more at the moment but I am certainly familiar really trying to scope out whether there is whether the amount of time that goes into the request that are being made is is a justified amount or something that we would look at changing yeah I'll set I'll set all right Emily you're up next with financials this is the front part share my screen just try something yeah we see it over here on the laptop I just I just don't like that join see if you can accept beautiful yep so it says you would be joined oh I'm going to cancel this one this is so bizarre is this it says that you're still in this meeting because the the device is in that meeting but I'm not in that meeting that that screen is in that meeting so I'm trying to get the screen into the meeting that I'm in I am sharing now I can try calling that device yeah I can try calling that device again okay I'll do that oh yeah I think we might just want to I'm going to hit continue on this one this might be what we want aha kill your mic feedback town meeting tv okay with having access to the screen output you're okay okay wonderful to my notes get all that sorted I will let me zoom that in a bit for you hopefully that's a bit better okay so for commissioner bonds benefit so I there you have a full set of financial information for the month of November and your packets myself or the controller the controller positions vacant right now so it's me generally walks the commission through the financials for the most recently closed month so that would be November of 2022 and I kind of go through the net income at a high level and usually the capital spending in the cash position and then sort of where our moody's credit rating metrics are on a 12 month ended basis but there's lots more detail in your packet about sales and power supply and capital project spending and all of that and happy to give a little more detail on any of those things if you have questions as we go so for November you will see that we had a net income trying to get my cursor over there it's not going to work here we go we had a net income of $28,000 compared to a budgeted net income of $13,000 so we did $15,000 better than budget we do budget pretty carefully like on a monthly basis so that some months we have a budgeted net loss some months months we have a budgeted net income so it's not kind of a consistent just take an annual amount and spread it out over 12 we try to account for the timing of various revenues and expenses so there will be you'll see quite a bit of variation in the budgeted result for a given month so how how that positive variance came to be sales were down this month both commercial and residential contributing to a negative variance of $150,000 other revenues which are primarily reimbursements to the operating front fund from our energy efficiency fund in the form of when we pay out rebates we we BED operating are then reimbursed from the collections from the energy efficiency fund so those revenues to BED so to speak are offset in expense generally those were higher than budgeted by $297,000 power supply revenues represent renewable energy credit revenues we retire some renewable energy credits from our generation but we also sell higher value wrecks from our generating resources to higher value markets in new england and then we replace those with lower cost wrecks to comply with Vermont's renewable energy standard as you can see that's a significant part of our revenue budget at $8.4 million in FY 23 we are experiencing and forecasting to continue to experience a negative variance compared to budget for wrecks or power supply revenues due to past periods of lower than budget production lower than budget generation particularly from our wind and when you ski one generation then moving to the expense side power supply expenses were favorable to budget by $417,000 in November the power supply expense is that one line contains a number of other you know a number of unique items sort of all related to power supply so it's the fuel expense for McNeil capacity charges transmission charges the purchase power expense for our energy contracts and then the sort of net settlement of the resources we provided versus the load we paid for from ISO New England so the the exchange so all those things together summed up to a positive variance of $417,000 we had increased fuel expense for the month of November offset by favorable purchased power and transmission expense we're continuing to see over budget capacity charges in large part due to the mystic plant R&R next line is the $177,000 negative variance to budget in operating expense this is labor supplies kind of the everything else line in this presentation a lot of that is timing variances purchases compared to budget depreciation and amortization is the expense we take on our capital assets taxes includes the payment to the city in lieu of taxes as well as sales and use taxes on our on our sales of electricity that has a fair favorable variance this year because the city's pilot came in lower than we had budgeted so we had a positive sorry we had a negative operating income it was better than budget but it was negative we'd budgeted an operating loss we did have an operating loss and then moving down to non operating items other income and deductions is sort of a mix of both revenue and expense items that are non operating that was $42,000 better than budget we had more interest income than we budgeted because rates have risen which is a good thing and then there was offset in part by less customer contributions to capital projects so we had yeah what am I trying to say oh so yeah year to date that's the columns to the right you can see we had so far through November an actual net loss of $143,000 compared to a budgeted net income of $278,000 so we're running $421,000 below budget we are actively forecasting every month kind of where we think we're gonna end the year based on how the year has gone so far and kind of what people know about how things may be going for the spring as best we can our current forecast is showing essentially a break even net income sort of a net income of zero which is $1.1 million lower than budget that forecast however does not assume a lot of potential upset in the energy markets so on the other hand we have been experiencing a mild winter so far which is creating actual results that are well below budget so there's still remains you know the message is still there's a lot of volatility and it's quite weather dependent at this point we did see you know a very high priced event over the during the winter storm for example but the mild weather is definitely not helping so we'll continue to keep the commission updated and we're watching that year on forecast carefully especially the cash position which is sort of a little more critical than the net income result any questions on any of that I just wanted to get a sense for how McNeil fits into this McNeil had a 96% capacity factor that month it sounds pretty good and the strategy has been to dispatch McNeil when prices are high it looks like it got dispatched but I guess the point is the prices weren't high exactly right yep okay then I'll move to the capital spending so here you can see that we had at this point in the year budgeted to spend about five million of our 9.1 total capital budget for the fiscal year we have actually spent about 4.1% we are experiencing quite a few supply chain challenges materials are taking a lot longer we are managing that as best we can by placing orders very early so that we can keep on schedule and you know generally I think we are managing that as well as can be given the conditions and then I'll move down here we as you can see our cash position at the end of April was around 5.6 million dollars that's below the budgeted cash position that we had at this point in time of 9.1 so it's quite a bit down and that's being driven by some of the things we've discussed the softer energy prices the lower rec revenues and then some unbudgeted rec purchases that we made early in the fiscal year that will save us money in the long run but used cash and then you can see at the bottom there the credit rating factors for November our debt service coverage ratio is set by our revenue bond resolution that was passed back in 1981 or four and that requires us to maintain a 1.25 revenue bond coverage ratio or sorry debt service coverage ratio we're well above that and usually are at 3.14 the adjusted debt service coverage ratio is the one that Moody's cares about that one is below where they'd like it to be around 1.2 1.25 generally they really want it at 1.5 but we're happy if it's at 1.2 that neighborhood that's at 0.89 for the 12 months ended in November and then we have 81 days cash on hand we like to maintain 90 on average happy to take any questions so what the sales to customers is down do you have any insights into that I'm guessing it's well there just wonder what but let me see if my looking at this page we'll confirm that if not I'll have to get back to you so there we had so there were more budgeted cooling degree days oh the average temperature was higher so yeah so it's primarily weather driven which brings me to a question of and I've noticed over the years and we're talking about this last night it's coming to the elsewhere winter doesn't really begin in Vermont till January at January so why are we still thinking that we're going to get snow and all this stuff in December why are we still planning for winters that are we're still thinking in terms of winters that we haven't had for the last 10-15 years it's a Christmas marketing I mean I mean I think it's true and you had a rundex too I can't speak to what you know people plan for in terms of snow and you know recreation but I think for our budgeting purposes temperature right is what really matters and we did see some cold weather in December and we we saw higher prices even even it wasn't really that all that cold in Vermont terms right it was cold enough of course this was November this is November yeah exactly I've actually watched these numbers November this one says it was five degrees above expectation that's reasonable and December was three degrees expectation January has been the January has been way above what it should be so far to date how do you budget or plan yeah just the key thing is is that with this budget we really built it with the idea that the forwards that were in effect at the time that we built the budget we're going to be the prices that we would see we we mentioned at the time and we're seeing some of this play out that there was some risk element to that because they we could end up with a more moderate set of temperatures and so far on balance that's been the case wouldn't take much of a cold streak for us to kind of get back on track in terms of what the prices would be closer to to budget but if we see the current trend continue through the winter we'll have we'll have a significant challenge financially so yeah there's there's the warming trend there's there's variability and then you know and then there's the energy markets which you know it could be if we had significant amount of additional redundant natural gas supply in New England or if we built out a bunch more renewables the price pressure might not be the same regardless of the temperature but so there's some interesting longer term terms that would make budgeting easier it would make us less revenue in all likelihood from our resources but you might have a little more certainty around some of it that the more of all volatility right higher overall price yeah I mean that the challenge for New England is we don't have enough natural gas to run the plants and we don't have enough renewables coming online to deal with the challenge but that only really comes into effect when the weather gets colder right now and otherwise you know if demand's low enough you have enough but I think in December what was a third of the generation was coming from oil because it was colder and the in New England yeah during during the cold snap yeah about a third of the generation was coming from oil which is just something that's hard to kind of play but we've seen January's where the prices exact we're actually $20 or $30 and I wonder this isn't this isn't low prices it's just not as high as they were protected very different animals it's an absence of extremely high prices but still prices stronger than they've been for years but we're talking about sales to customers not the prices right because you're saying sales to customers are also down well they they have some links the weather affects the energy yeah no I get it affects sales right but also we're electrifying more things so there's two trends that we don't know how they collide or track necessarily but if we have the same amount of customers but we're electrifying more parts of our energy that could best-case scenario that keeps up with that's the idea catch up as a new commission you mentioned the city's pilot came in lower can you just give a frame of reference for the city's pilot as you were referring to sorry I payment in the lower payment in lieu of taxes yeah such a bad acronym because it sounds like it's something good right there's a pilot programs what yeah exactly that's what I always think it's good for the city right it's good for tax pays yes and then the last one was you said less customer contributions to the capital projects yes so it seems strange but we are required by I think it's government I think it's the governmental accounting standards board not the federal energy regulatory commission but one of those bodies sets they both set accounting standards that we have to follow and one of them says that we need to record that as revenue so you know the Shelburne street roundabout or main street complete street upgrades right so the city's DPW is undertaking those improvements to you know improve the streetscape and provide all these other benefits right the same time they might want decorative nice looking streetlights for right so they what however that that project is being funded a portion of that funding will come to BED to pay for our work to do any electrical work that needs to be done as part of that project whether it's moving things out of the way relocating or putting in new infrastructure which you know we will take the opportunity to do if we have a need in that same area so that's the sort of customer contributions to construction which tend to be kind of large and lumpy and we budget for them to arrive at a certain time and they generally don't they're generally before or after we we expect them you're welcome thanks very much next last item on the agenda would be the commissioner check-in so just one last opportunity for commissioners to bring up any concerns or issues or anything well how about district energy yeah sure so where we are a couple things since the last update the burlington district energy nonprofit did receive bids and is reviewing bids for the construction pricing we also you know we had noted in December that we were prepared to file an act 250 I think what's happened is we got a little bit delayed by the holidays but there's some activity going on with that that we're hoping to have a filing late attack 250 hopefully I would say within the next week or so it may be that there is actually kind of a less on this path relative to the permitting that then we had expected so we're hoping to have a filing go in sometime in the very very near future that will confirm that path for the project and then the remaining work the very very key work is happening following on the construction bids we're trying to get updated pricing for the steam from McNeil James actually just sent me today thank you James an updated term sheet for us to review related to that that we'll have to continue to discuss with the joint owners we're looking to do some more work on what options there might be at the state level for financing at a lower rate than what the market rate is the continued hike in interest rates is not our friend when we're looking at a debt finance project but there may be opportunities at the state for certain programs to help us with either a portion or all of the funding and then we are still waiting on the federal government to get back to us related to NEPA review of Senator Leahy's appropriation and whether that can be a more limited review or whether they need to do a more thorough review which would affect just the timing of that appropriation so those are some of the key things that we're in process on and hoping to continue to make progress month by month here on district energy and get to a point in the near future where we have clarity on the financials and can make a very clear communication on that to customers and have them evaluate and make a ultimate termination if they're in or out I guess I never heard the NEPA evaluation of earmarked funds yep it's a thing what are the odds on that I think I don't want to jump ahead of myself I think the there are three levels of review essentially one would be the categorical exclusion I think that we're still reviewing whether this might fit that which would be a very very limited thing if not there might be an environmental assessment if I'm remembering my terminology for NEPA correctly which would be a more limited review or you would have the more thorough review being an environmental impact statement that's the type of thing that they did for the Keystone pipeline for example I can't necessarily anticipate that this project and the funding from the federal government would necessitate that particularly when we're talking about using primarily existing right of way for much of the piping for the project but that's the federal government's determination to make so we're we're deferring and waiting to hear more on that when you mentioned Keystone items just using an example just to say I never heard of it yeah I heard of it okay hopefully that's an apple storage as example other input from commissioners I just wanted to just reiterate welcome commissioner bond and I wanted to suggest to you what I did when I came on the board here was take the time to a lot of things we talk about like really don't really come into light until you see them and feel them and touch them I strongly suggest going over and doing a tour of McNeil and a Winooski one I'm sure Paul would be more than happy to do that go out with the Forester go up to the Swanton rail yard go out with one of the engineers and take a look at substations and think you really get a feel for it I did that and it really brought a lot of the things that we do here made more sense because I can tangibly know what that is and so I suggest perhaps taking any of the any of these guys up on you know spend it spend some time with James you know some of these folks but I think that would be very helpful and I did it and really brought it forward realistic because I know I've been there so I mean anyway welcome aboard and that's all that's all I've got I would love to go on the McNeil if you go on a McNeil tour I would love to do that so give me a positive but good job getting us done yeah basically onside and I will I will entertain a motion I move that we adjourn second all in favor aye aye we stand adjourned