All towns · pembroke

Energy Committee

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from the committee, who should be, at least one of them should be shown up here shortly.
First order of business, we have some guests in today from Community Power Coalition in New Hampshire
to give us kind of an update on where we stand with the performance of our community power program here in Pembroke.
So thanks for coming out and we'll hand it over to you guys.
Absolutely. I mean, if you would like just to wait a couple minutes to get into things until people arrive,
let's see your preference, but we're not in a rush.
Okay, if you're not a rush.
Jackie.
Yeah.
Hey, kids.
The distraction is showing you that the kid's heads.
Two loading members.
I'm going to smoke.
You want to sit?
What do you want to sit?
Poor dad.
Hop on in.
You got some son, it looks like.
Yeah, chasing them around outside.
Okay.
I haven't heard from JJ or Sharon.
I don't think they're coming.
Yeah.
I do.
we now have who we're expecting.
Critical mass.
Critical mass.
All right.
If we're good to go.
And snacks.
Yeah, you want some?
Thank you so much.
Okay, yeah, happy to get into things.
Thanks for the invitation to come and speak with you all
this evening. We appreciate the opportunity to engage
and Matt had sent me a note with some information
that he was looking for, and so we should be covering
hopefully all of that this evening.
And, you know, with me, first off,
I think you all know, I'm going to be in the director of the service
for CBCCNH with me as Andrew Hatch,
our community interview advisor,
and as we were talking about earlier, we were last year in August.
So you can spend some time and, you know, lots of transpires since then,
so there'll be quite a few things to go over, but certain sections
for the sake of time and in May segment,
and then if you have questions, we can spend some more questions.
some more time on those.
But just to hop into things here,
it's a quick agenda.
I wanted to talk the committee briefly through some of the website improvements
of them did recently to your page,
because that's where your customers are interacting most frequently,
and I know I had heard some feedback from specifically Matt
about the Pembert page in the past,
and we've been able to implement some improvements,
so I wanted to cover those.
Certainly go over some of the broad coalition activities,
and performance, talk about some of what's gone on
with specifically that resources rates,
although it's applicable across all of the investor in utilities
and go through some of that info,
and then discuss, you know, if PEMBORC were to consider,
changing a default supplier of what that may entail,
and then there will be plenty of time for Q&A.
So moving on to the main travel website,
nothing really shifted in a major way here, but just as a reminder,
You know, we maintain this website on behalf of Pembroke Community Power.
We've got a lot of quick access links at the top.
One recent addition is the ability for customers to click that utility
and other supplier rates option,
and that will bring them to the SEPSDOE shopping website
where then they're able to use that official website
to compare between C&H rates, rates offered by other types of suppliers in the market
place as well as the utility rates. So that was in addition. Moving on,
so the next page, you know, there are the three main ways that I think you understand
for customers to interact with us. They can do that through the self-slect portal,
which has gone through some improvements. We've been working with our broader customer service team
on making that more user-friendly to self-serve. So I wanted to bring
that up and then of course they can email or call. If you ever find that someone in town is having a problem and, you know, you want to reach out to us.
Andrew and I ultimately serve as the top customer escalation people.
So we're happy to engage directly with customers when there are issues and make sure anything gets resolved to answer their questions.
You go through information on their account.
So I just wanted to offer us up as a resource in that way if needed.
And then on the mailing list side, we had, I believe, just started rolling some of this out last time we talked to you,
but we have made some updates and improvements here.
We now have an SMS phone number feature.
So if people sign up, for example, specifically array information,
they can get that now via text message.
That's a little bit more user-friendly than what we have through the email feature for.
And then you'll note that we have another checkbox.
Another checkbox in the subscription area, which is for these peak shave alerts, which is kind of a cool program that we're just rolling out this summer.
It's informational only at this point in time, but we're trying to build a subscriber list to then educate customers on when there are peak demand days on the Iso and England system.
Typically when, you know, temperatures are high, there's a lot of cooling demand and therefore, you know, ISO triggers an event where we see
see a certain demand threshold met where we sent an alert and said, hey, it would be helpful for, you know,
reducing overall costs if you reduce your electricity consumption, say between 3 p.m.
and 8 p.m. this evening.
It's completely voluntary.
Again, mostly not to be educational now, but you could imagine that someday we could
transition that to potentially more of a paper performance model.
So this is like a pilot to what we could do.
So where would the person, like how would they get the
SMS alerts?
Do you do that through the community power web?
Yep.
So under the Join CBCNH's mailing list, if you look at that slide, you can type in your phone number.
You've got to use the international format.
We give an example.
And then you can hit subscribe to any of those types of communications.
Got it.
Okay, cool.
Thanks.
Yep.
No problem.
And that's live and we have several hundred people already signed up for that.
Do you have a similar thing for a long period?
Good question.
Is there anything negative?
No.
So we don't, yeah, we're really focused on deep demand days.
That's where the money seems to be hidden, yeah, at this point.
Moving on to the next.
Pembroke had provided some feedback regarding, you know, rate information available through its page.
And so customers, along with accessing that DOE step shopping site, can also quickly use two
use two drop-downs to look at what the Eversource of the unit-till supply rates are,
and then quickly toggle between, you know, if they're an Eversource customer, which almost all
customers are, they can see the rate information in power there, or they can toggle the
unit-till.
Our communications manager has made some really big improvements in terms of, you know, page-loading times,
and before you would have to sort of do this double-select for you know,
you get on the page and then you would select again and it would pull from the database to display the rate info.
That's been totally subverted and now it's much more streamlined and is, I think, a better performance for anyone who goes on it.
Nice.
And is that ever source rate, the accurate one that's what they proposed?
The 14.6.
So this is, you're looking at the current community power rates that are available through Pembroke's website.
Okay.
As you can see, it says through, if you like this, you know, it's.
both.
Oh, right.
Yes.
We'll talk about, you know, the proposed utility rates coming up.
Okay, okay.
So those are the CPC and age rate.
Correct.
Okay.
So this is a screenshot from just the other day, so it's live with what you see today.
Okay.
What was the other source rate?
Is that on here?
Yeah, so the ever source rate was 11303, and we're going to talk about the context
the context of how they lost a lot of money on that rate.
Is that on this?
Well, as you can see at the bottom there, there's two little tabs,
every source supply rate and unit source supply rate at the bottom.
Oh, I see. Okay.
And what a user would have to just click on that and it would load.
And you know what I really glad it's on.
That's okay.
All right.
So moving on from there, that's really what I wanted to cover
unless there's more questions on what we've done.
The web page.
So as you know, Hebrough is a subscriber to the Public Plains project.
So we're really excited about the progress of, you know,
the largest community soldier in the state of New Hampshire,
looking at Warner,
and happy to mention that the project is on track,
starting for a summer power on, and that's going well.
They're achieving mechanical completion.
So the final stage is, there's one item,
with the utility poll easing agreement that I've been told is working its way through the process
and then receiving the final interconnection approval from Eversource and then, you know,
after Pembroke could, we'll expect to see, start seeing some of the benefits from that project
is in the form of a quarterly check for your subscribed kilowatt hours.
And I believe there should have been some outreach from Mark on the team regarding, you know,
how many checks and
Oh, yeah, yeah, so let me, yeah, I did, so I was on vacation the last week.
I saw the email, but I didn't ask David, but, so I'll make a note here, but that we had X number of accounts,
and I'm sure when I asked David, he'll say one check into the general phone, but I haven't done that.
Okay, let me.
That's most commonly how these things are dealt with.
It's just if you're split between multiple budgets for some reason, occasionally it's not beneficial to sit.
I'm trying to remember what the contract looked like.
What was the Don's obligation and how does the return of customer?
So Andrew's got a copy of an awful amount.
Just an outline, right?
So, I mean, in short, please, you have five accounts,
Street, Lysing, Kleinway, Fembrook Town Hall, Transfer Station,
and the Safety Center have all been enrolled in the first.
been enrolled in the program and we have taken an estimated 90% of an estimated annual load
to enroll you in the program.
What Pembroke will receive will be 12.5% of the prevailing Eversource,
a municipal residential rate, which is the same rate in Eversource as well.
So right now, if you were enrolled, it would be 12.5% of the 11.
303.
As and when this comes online, if it comes online in the next rate period, those rates will be different
and will be the prevailing rate that you will again get 12.5%.
So there is really no obligation of the buyer of the town?
No.
Okay.
I see where...
I think the only obligation is to sign up for another program using those accounts at the same time.
That's true.
That's true.
Okay.
Can't tell you though.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Welcome.
So moving on from that, there's a lot in this next section, and I'm not going to go into great
detail unless there's questions, but just wanted to remind the committee that we're really active
at the legislature and also at the Public Utilities Commission through the regulatory process.
In terms of bills, we recently had a legislative session recap.
That's available on our office hours, if anyone wants all the details.
But in terms of 15 bills we supported, you can sort of see the breakdown with eight headed to the governor for signature.
Two got referred to interim study, and then five were considered ITL or basically dead.
And then in terms of bills that the coalition opposed, two have been signed in the law, one head of the governor, one non-concurred, and two died.
So a pretty good overall outcome in terms of what was supported versus what be opposed and sort of what's moving forward.
The details are on the subsequent pages, but there could be some of these that are of interest to the committee, especially sent in 18, which enables battery storage with metering, something that wasn't previously allowed and will open doors for more potential for battery storage projects in New Hampshire.
Also, SB 590, and that was signed by the governor last week.
It was, that is true, thanks.
SB 590, which authorized revolving funds for use of like basically money for energy efficiency projects and other types of energy projects within the town.
So if Hembrook decided at some point in time it wanted to create a specific revolving fund to do local projects, you now have the ability to do that through SB 590 once that's signed.
So that's sort of exciting for our membership overall.
Another thing to note, especially because it retains the Poverty Plains,
project is SB 538, which extended the eligibility term for municipal host group net metering out to the full 20-year lifetime.
So that was a minor risk that we were up against with that project, but is no longer 13 to be an issue because we have a full 20-year extension through the power purchase agreement.
Okay. So just, just, let's tell you know, we, the 10-1 select board did agree.
sign a letter which we modified a little bit but we did sign a letter support and that's
notable because the select board ordinarily doesn't like single out legislation to
support and it comes across the partisan because that directly affected something for
Pimbra that they did. Yeah, thank you. And that did get approved with the 20 years?
Because at some point it wasn't it 15? Didn't that? Yeah, for
for the municipal host it was funny.
This and another bill and things were taken from one bill and put onto the other other and at some point
definitely there was an attempt to reduce this to 15, you're quite right.
But it's our understanding that 538, that I'm not so where it sits in terms of the governors.
That's not clear.
This was from just last week, wasn't it?
This list, you know, in the election, because it was upbages a week ago.
I do have a question.
kind of going back to net metering and I know it's not directly on here but one of the
things that CPC and H and I guess any of these community applications had in the beginning
was that the utilities didn't know how track or account for net metering if the customer
went if they had net metering and they went onto community power. Has that ever been solved?
Yeah, well we're making some real progress there specifically with Unitsil.
at this point in time. So they reached a settlement agreement where they have agreed to
roll out advanced metering infrastructure or AMI within their territory.
And they've also made a proposal to us where we are going to partner with them on Green Button Connect,
which is a data sharing platform and serve as a testing partner to stress test how we can
basically serve them customers as one example or implement time of use rates in their territory.
So, you know, we think that this is a major step forward in terms of proof of concept within New Hampshire and could lead the pathway to this type of capability being deployed in other utility.
So if it works with Unitill, you'll be able to go to say Embersource or just like this.
Yeah, there's no reason then.
They have less of a strong argument for why it's not possible.
Okay.
Yeah.
So yeah, we are making headway and we're pretty excited and we've got, we post like a ridiculous amount of information on our use page.
on our news page, but we've got a full write-up on this as well.
Okay, great. All right.
All right. So moving on, I think I'm going to sort of skip some of these other things,
but we are paying attention to in terms of the other bill section.
You know, there is some push within New Hampshire right now to allow utilities to get back into the
generation and storage side of the business, which is really reverse.
the whole intent of deregulation.
So it's something we're actively monitoring and engaging in and trying to get people understand why
more about a free market approach is better for consumers in the long run.
All right, going on from there.
I'm sure if you had questions on the specifics of any of these,
just flag it up and we'd be happy to talk to them, but the momentum going.
These are here just for your reference.
Right.
There's just a lot more information on the website.
Yeah, great.
Okay, thanks.
Keeping things going on to, I guess we're on 12 now.
You know, at our annual meeting for our members,
had the Energy Authority who was contracted with to do an independent evaluation.
I know Matt was present at that meeting, and, you know, that was important because
we had had some issues with our risk management controls in the past.
And they evaluated everything that occurred with that situation and developed a set of seven recommendations moving forward.
And the key highlight coming out of this is that, you know, six of those seven were implemented in 2025.
So the staff team took a very quick action and working with our vendors to prioritize implementation of these items.
And I think you'll see later on in our finance performance that, you know,
This is proving out in real time.
So, you know, we're working on addressing number 7 million cord as well,
but I felt that that was important to mention the group.
Moving on to the next page.
This is, there's a little more going on here, so I'll have to take a minute to kind of orient folks.
But this is showing the probabilistic reserve forecast for the overall organization.
So CPCMH as a whole.
On the left, you're looking at millions of dollars, on the left or the y-axis, I should say.
On the x-axis, you're looking at time horizon, and then on the sort of right-right y-axis, you're looking at the number of reserve days.
So we're looking at ending this current rate period in a positive position with $2.3 million accrued in joint reserves.
The current reserve adder, in terms of the proposed rates that are going to the board on cardings being reduced from the level of 2 cents down to closer to 0.7 cents for kilowatt hour.
And that would put CBCMH in a position with a P50, which is the blue trace, to end the rate period with $6.8 million in total reserves.
But you can see the range of outcomes.
obviously P95 is in green, which is the 95th best out of 100 cases, and P5 being the fifth worst out of 100.
And this is all putting the organization on track to meet its minimum 60-day reserve target, really by the end of 2028.
Okay, so let me just make sure I'm understanding something.
So before the upcoming rate period was the reserve adder, two cents for that hour.
Current rate period that's ending at the end of July.
Yes, two cents.
Okay.
And then it's going to the next one, it's being proposed that it's around 0.7%.
Correct.
Okay.
So a significant reduction to that reserve batter.
And the two-cent reserve batter was effective in doing what I needed to do, which was supercharged the organization reserves
and lead us towards a place where we're able to be more competitive sooner.
Speaking of competitive numbers,
we had shared some information on the next page about in the past stuff, you know,
strategies to increase competitiveness and sort of wanted to provide an update on that.
I just spoke to this, but, you know, building deserves allows our future rate relief.
So, you know, that two cents has allowed the organization to be in a more comfortable position
to significantly lower that reserve value for the current proposed rates,
which is helping us to, kind of avoid, you know, avoid lower end.
any interest expenses for borrowing, usually needed seasonally for cash flow management.
You know, we've enhanced our portfolio management.
I spoke to the six of those seven recommendations getting implemented.
We're also expanding our internal staff capacity, which is helpful, relying less on external contractors.
So we had recently hired a finance director, Rashida and Rudo.
She worked at Massport for
about 20 years and also has some experience of the new natural electric cooperative.
And so she's doing a great asset to the team.
So she is joined or she has joined? So she's on.
Do you, Andrew? Yes, I think she's thinking from the fire hose.
We too. Or are you making an impact? Absolutely. And we have gone through a hiring process
and I believe we're very close to, we have a preferred candidate when they put it that way for the director of power
operations and waiting to hear if they've accepted that offer or not very shortly.
So that's moving along.
And then there's, you know, some medium term targets here, which, or you could imagine the organization
developing to become a direct market participant by Southern England, which would allow
us to reduce some of our transaction costs.
Of course, there's tradeoffs to owning that versus outsourcing it.
How was that done before?
So right now, right now, I don't know.
We use Calpine as our load serving entities.
So they're the one that's registered with ISO New England and effectively are our purchasing agent in some respects.
So our transactions for daily negotiating.
Yes.
They've got that 24-7 trading desk.
When we work with our independent firm to send analytics to go out for supply bids and place hedges, we use Calpine.
we use Calvine for the help of that trade.
Do you have the capacity now to do all of that because that's...
No, not at this point.
Somebody's going to stay awake all night to do the...
Yeah, we don't, we don't, we do not have the capacity to be a 24-7 training house at this point.
Will we involve into that?
I'm probably not in the near job.
We're not.
There's cash on hand.
You know, that 60 days has nothing to do for coming a direct market participant.
That's just required for our liquidity and security.
and to, as Jackson said, avoid having to borrow money during the winter months
and we can actually just manage it with our own equity.
But when we get to twice that, 120 days, that's when this becomes an option.
And so we are looking at a five-year horizon.
Okay, yeah, yeah.
The market structure is a thing, mess with, so it would be, I think, quite expensive if you would
doing a lot of trading.
My guess is that you're not going to be doing a lot of, you know, rapid trading.
You might.
One of our members was the only municipality in New Hampshire
to actually be a market, direct market participants.
They brought some experience to the table and, you know,
I think that if you qualify for it,
there are some ways where you can be an official market
participants that still outsource some of the activities required to facilitate that.
So there's a sort of middle way, perhaps.
But it's a long way off.
So it's all the future and the future with the intent of just
removing counter parties or middle parties to take a profit
so that we can pass on savings in terms of lowering rates for our members.
Solvency first.
That's correct.
Right.
Exactly.
If you can go back to bullet two, I've missed what that would represent and I don't quite understand
the way to written.
Reserved lower and point interest.
Yes.
Yes.
So to the extent we have sufficient reserves and have fully paid any borrowing obligations
to Calpine, then we're no longer on the hook for interest associated with that borrowing.
Okay, okay.
So this is, so it's really just, I mean, if I just crossed it out,
the reserves large.
Just avoid interest expense.
Yeah.
The more rough ones.
Yeah.
Okay.
I think when we get to the 60 days, we'll have sufficient assets
to weather our winter months,
when we're always losing money,
and if we're going to borrow
to subsidize that, we would use our own assets.
Yeah.
And obviously just is a reminder that our assets,
meaning our assets.
So Pembroke is part of the ownership.
the ownership of that asset.
Yes.
Yes.
Yeah, let's go to the next page.
We can talk about what's going on with utility rates
because I feel like that's important for the upcoming context.
So, you know, we discussed this last time,
and this is a practice that has been continued
by the direction of the Public Utilities Commission.
So, you know, the utility rates are proxy rates, which means they're
You're taking a guess using methodology that's more likely to underprice things than not at what their costs are going to be.
And then at the end of the period, they see whether or not they've done better,
they've over-collected from customers, or they've done worse, and they've under-collected,
meaning that they didn't charge enough.
And so that's the basis for this.
And they do that by estimating.
And they do that by estimating.
It's part-pocket costs, and we know that this has created.
Financial losses that are going to talk about the implications of that.
So they have now for their small customers, their resource is the main one we'll focus on here.
The units of these will all have 50% market exposure.
So they're subject to all the volatility that occurred during the past two winters in particular,
which caused some major issues for under collections.
Whereas, you know, we're very transparent about what we're very transparent about what we're
goes into our buildup. We're very focused on hedging our transactions to mitigate against
risks associated with volatility and ensuring, you know, going forward that our rates fully cover our costs.
So there's some differences there. Related to this is House Bill 1733 that was recently signed into law.
This really sets forth the fact that the legislature has taken this issue
seriously and has now put into the statute, which is in bold and italics,
that no reconciliation of actual and estimated wholesale power costs incurred by utility,
or by default service, shall we recovered, there are not by passable charge,
except in extraordinary circumstances as found as existed by the commission.
The jury did it proceed in.
So, you know, we're going to have to monitor that closely regarding the extraordinary circumstances,
portion of things, but they've recognized our petition to ensure that
community power customers are not unduly burdened with basically the mistakes that are made
with utility rates.
Maybe a better way to say that, Andrew.
Well, no, I would endorse that.
This was a compromise bill, the House bill, as originally written,
had much stronger language, and it got out of the House with unanimous support.
unanimous support. It surprised us with that and it was adopted by the House by unanimous consent.
So it was a surprise to all parties concerned that when it arrived at the Senate,
it was significantly changed due to petitioning by the Department of Energy and the Public Utilities Commission
who were obviously commenting upon some of the issues that Jackson's just had.
that Jackson's just touched upon and the repercussions of those, which will go on to in a moment in terms of how it's all playing out.
But this was very much reduced in terms of its scope.
But the important thing for a community power communities to bear in mind is if losses are recovered through non-bipassable charge,
that means it's an opportunity to recover those losses from all rate payers, irrespective of whether they're on
on equal power or whether there was a third party supply or community power.
Therefore, shifting those costs as being an unfair way of the recovery.
So that's the nuts and bolts.
You thought that had already been done.
Well, we had fought against that at the Public Utilities Commission and did get a ruling from them,
which was somewhat precedent setting, but it was not in statute.
So this was an attempt to...
the statute that says,
I don't know.
Yeah, where do you recover?
I guess is the question that I see here.
So where they should recover is through their supply rates.
I'm not to talk about.
And that's the, like, the
the plan one cent rate.
You're saying you're not happy with this.
Well, I don't think that that's the correct care position.
It was not quite as strong as maybe we had hoped
would be, but it's a step in the right correction of the legislation.
But is that just because it has this loophole that says it is extraordinary circumstances.
And so people will stretch what extraordinary circumstances.
And it would require, you know, potentially, you know,
legal argument, one back and forth on, they'll qualify this extraordinary circumstances.
So we have a really, I think, a pretty good article that explains what's occurred over the past year and a half.
These proxy utility supplies.
the utility supply rates and if you you have a copy of your back. You do. Yeah, we can't do.
And we won't go through all of that now, but in brief, you know, utility supply rates have fallen 50 million short in actual costs.
And in every source this case, we now got enough data figures.
It's actually closer to 39 than 38 million through May.
And you had until about 3 million, the two that are pertinent here.
But you know, you know,
These balances have accumulated because, say, plainly, they have set rates that are too low
and they have not recovered the cost of power.
So we've been up against really a false comparison to say the least.
And if you go to the next page, it's really shown how this has played out for EverSource.
And, you know, for three of the last four rate periods, and mind you these, there are these
340 periods is when ever sources high rates lower than CPCNH.
You know, they collectively, including the one where they did better with the plus 5 million,
have lost, you know, $38 now.
We know it's $39 million in total.
So that's significant.
And this is having an impact to some degree on their upcoming rates.
We know that they are, and we'll get to that in a moment of
the next slide off. There's questions here. Maybe I'll take a pause, because I'll move to do this kind of quickly.
Do you have any questions on this figure? Any idea if they had not under-collected what that would have done to their rates, would that brought them
obviously closer to yours, but would that have brought them above yours?
Yeah. So from February through July 2025, we know that they would have been above community power rates.
For the other two periods, they would have been.
much closer. We would have been basically on par during August to the
August 25 to January 2026 and a bit above still February 26th to April 26th,
but not the Delta that, you know, has been. The next page gets into the proposed
ever source small customer proxy rates. So they, this includes the residential and their small
and their small commercial customers.
And so they're proposing a rate of 14.09 cents.
This is based off of the PUC order methodology, and we'll talk about why that matters.
But this includes a reconciliation adjustment that's a little under a cent.
However, that's recovering only a portion of their losses and advertised over 12 months.
So that's for about, my understanding, is 22 months.
million of the total balance and only recovering half of that. So about 11 million.
So we could expect at least another approximately cent rate impact.
The next time we go to proposed rates,
source through their own testimony, which just occurred and is hot off the press,
said, hey, you know, PC, we actually wouldn't, we wouldn't be doing it this way at all.
And if we use the methodology that we think is more likely,
to not under price, we would basically take the lowest supplier bid that we get, and we would use that
to estimate the 50% that's going to be exposed. So, like, rely on the suppliers to tell us what the market's going to do,
and use that to build in this rate component, rather than this, like, basically systematically flawed version,
which is the PSU is telling them to apply. So had they, you know, had they followed the
their own suggested approach, their proposed rate would be about 15 cents.
And the Eversource rate determination by the TUC will not be made until tomorrow.
So tomorrow we will have firm information, but CBC is very active at this hearing and
we're aligned with Eversource and saying, hey, the way that you've done this clearly has not worked,
and you need to rely on a better methodology.
and we think basically we support whatever source is proposing in terms of a method that's more likely to reflect the actual costs.
So we'll see.
There is some small potential that this goes from 14 to 15 cents.
And we'll be obviously alerted members as to what we find out.
My guess is that won't happen?
Probably not.
Yeah, exactly.
And they would be seen.
They will eat that.
But, yeah.
Is the 12 cents that they're proposing as a base rate going to under-recover as it stands or have the potential for under-recover?
Yes.
Yeah.
And they've admitted that themselves.
Yes.
Yes.
Yeah.
And this is the really interesting thing to part.
We didn't talk about Liberty.
The Liberty came in and said, we're in such a whole comparative to our customer base and you've kicked
the can so many times that we want to charge 21 cents on.
our supply side. And they came back and said, no, we're going to kick it down the road again.
You're going to charge 15.8 cents. And that's what was approved.
So knocking, seven cents out of the proposal. I mean, and this is...
They're just getting it in the long term, the price keeps going up.
Right.
The next time I come around, it's going to be hired.
And so those extraordinary circumstances occur.
That's...
That's...
Yeah, I can see what you're saying.
Okay, yeah.
Well, we're going to go broke.
Well, the office of the consumer advocate went on the record a few years ago and strongly suggested that Liberty might want to sell its assets to a real utility like Unitill.
And they're not doing so well on the gas side either from what I think.
That's right.
Do you get...
We've built half the gas pipe, but now...
Yeah, we do get Liberty Gas in town here, so you're seeing their gas rates, which have been equally affected in height.
And times where they can't expand and the gas because they have built the pipe and built the other half.
It's an unfortunate situation.
I think one of the things that has been a remarkable development, credibility that I believe CPCNH is built in the eyes of the regulators,
that we are, we've gone from being a sort of on the outside looking in to being invited to provide expertise.
testimony. And, you know, Henry Herndon, our new executive director, and Clifton Velo, you know, are very, very knowledgeable about this and have gotten right into the two or three hundred pages of testimony. And are, and it's not adversarial with the utility. It's quite collegial from the report I was getting. You know, they have found some common ground in terms of the utilities are genuinely burdened by this. This isn't
a good thing that they have to kind of these losses.
They don't want to charge $39 million.
No, they go to losses to their shareholders.
And the other part of it is that I think the utilities are beginning to recognize that the prices are so damn high.
People are beginning to look for plug-in solar and other ways to try to reduce the cost.
And the thing we have to remember is any time anybody improves efficiency,
reduces the amount they use, the rate score.
Yeah.
But it's interesting that, you know, we are in a less adversarial feeling.
Well, this is very positive.
I think that's very important.
I think she was commenting today about what it feels like to be in the hearing room.
And it was interesting to hear him reflect on the fact that back in the day,
there were no third parties.
It was the utility and the regulators all having a very cozy chit-chat.
But nobody was saying,
One moment, please.
Could we point to a few salient facts here?
But now we have a third point of view.
It is becoming a far more fluid and productive conversation about how it's like that.
I think we're at a point where we need to figure out how to save the utility industry.
It's going to take that kind of action to do that.
Otherwise, we're going to lose it.
Close with a spare phone service.
Well, as long as we have a plan B.
and race in time.
That's the most reasonable thing.
So two quick questions on me.
So it sounds like the PUC is preventing the utilities
from making more financially responsible decisions?
Yes.
And then Eversource using their internal methodology
that would have resulted in 15 cent rate.
Was that the base rate changing by a cent,
or were they trying to recover more of the under-collection?
No, that's the base rate.
And then if they were to fully rest,
cover the portion of the balance that we know is, like I said, the 22 million.
Then it would go from reconciliation adjustment of 0.914 to double that.
So about 1.8.
So then you're looking at more like 16 cents.
Wow.
So that 14 cent rate that might get approved tomorrow, that's all but guaranteeing they're going to undercollect this rate period.
Yeah, we know that the, you know, and we've proven this out through our own analysis.
that yes, it's much more likely to under collect than not.
Of course, if they get sort of really lucky with market conditions, it may perform.
There's always that chance as well.
Okay. Thanks.
We are in the midst, on the next slide, we are in the midst of our own rate setting process.
And so our board is set to vote on community power rates this Friday on the 26th.
So, you know, there will be materials that will be available from that, of course,
and then we'll be submitting rate announcements shorter thereafter.
What I can say, I talked about the reserve matters being lowered.
We've done a really, I think, responsible and good job with purchasing this period.
And, you know, at a 14.009 cent mark,
we'll be within a cent of that based on the proposal about 14.
If they raised 15, then there's going to be a rate advantage.
Certainly if it's higher, there'll be a larger rate advantage based on what has been proposed.
Of course, for those numbers to be final, they have to be approved by the board, but that's sort of where things are looking right now.
So there was a, you know, we acknowledge there was a pretty significant gap this last period,
sort of an unfair comparative landscape.
But nonetheless, that was the case.
The gap is closed, despite there's still still.
being issues and how utility rates are being set, and we'll be sharing more information about all the other levers we're going to be looking to pull to have as competitive as the price we can going forward.
And then with that, the other sort of piece of material that Matt has we talked about is, you know, if Tembrook were to decide that it wanted to change direction, again, you know, our joint reserve outlook is looking quite positive.
positive. We're closing the gap on rates. I think there's a lot of strong improvements being made and other values being divided.
But nonetheless, if Pembroke decided it wanted to go in the other direction, the sort of overarching steps required to do that is that, you know, the select board does have the power to vote to exit the contract, which is the caution agreement tied to the member services contract.
That is a 36-month roll.
evergreen contract. So, you know, basically the trigger on the time horizon begins
upon a vote of that select board and notification of the team at CPCNH through the executive director.
And that were to occur, you know, we work with our legal team on providing a response.
If Pembroke said, you know, hey, we want to make a change prior to 36 months, there is a provision.
within the member services contract, Article 7, and the language is on this slide regarding early termination after commencement of service.
So the key sort of section of this, I bolded at the end here, which is that the waiting period is set to the minimum duration such there will be no cost, transferred remaining members that have elected services.
So along sort of short, you know, we would work on analysis to determine that time horizon.
within the 36-month window being close to communication with the town about that.
And, you know, I'd then agree on a date certain in which the customers would be transitioned either to the utility or potentially to another supplier within the marketplace.
So I just want to talk through it to make sure, like, you know, so on one thing, I'm not saying the same thing.
And I'm not speaking for Pembroke, but I believe that, you know, if they were to do that,
Penbrook was one to get to a situation where it had a positive financial reserve balance.
And it didn't have obligations and, you know, hedges on its behalf.
Right. And that would be some time in the future.
And it might be less than 36 months. And so what you're saying is that CPCNH would do an
exercise to figure out kind of what that financial pivot point is of zero, zero cost to the members that remain.
And if Timbrook desired, zero cost to end, and then CBC and H would say, okay, the target waiting period is X.
And it might be off a little bit because of some uncertainties and changes that happen.
But it could be as long as 36 months or it could be somewhat short of basically.
that whatever if you want to see an example of that on the next slide I put some of the
information here they have a couple to show you this is real luck on the good state of
the other way you find us of you know using it sort of an indicative forecast of joint
reserves so that's that is Pembroke's that's trip reserve correct okay we're looking at
Pembroke so you know if we assume a 0.668 cent per kilowatt hour which I think is really on the
low end, but that's what's being proposed this period starting August 1st and the D50
probabilistic forecast, you know, these core assumptions get Embrick to, you know, a 10 reserve
day buffer in November 2027. And we look at that 10 days of reserve buffer is being
what's sufficient to account for any future resettlements we could get from Iceland or
continuing obligations that could arise. So we would hold that basically in escrow for a year until that gets
netted out and any positive remaining balance would then be returned to the town.
Okay.
So that's how that would work and this is, you know,
indicatively the type of time horizon that Emmerich could be looking at.
Yeah, okay.
Any questions?
Yes.
No, if, uh, if, uh, if the balance between what ever sort of says is irrelevant in this case, it's a question of what kinds of
contracts you have.
When the air resources rates have no bearing on this other than where customers might come or go.
Yeah, I mean, it's really a decision of the town and how it used and wants to evolve its own program or not going forward.
I mean, at this point in time, your customers, as we talked about at the beginning, have the ability to freely have a choice and have the ability to freely move between the utility and, you know, any product we offer or any other supply
at any point.
You know, by removing a program, you're practically removing an option.
And I think the medium term implications of that could be that, okay, now utilities that never source
fully reconciles all its losses and customers who then, you know, stuck with that.
So if that's something to consider.
So if we did go forward with changing default suppliers, is there any impact on the poverty planes?
agreement, that's a completely separate thing.
Yeah, that agreement is not impacted by having a supply agreement with C to C&H.
Certainly preferentially, we would like to have that with our membership.
Yeah, active.
Right.
So the shortest you could leave is when you get to zero balance.
Is it a zero balance or a 10-day?
10-day, right.
Okay.
So the 10-day buffer, so that, as soon as that's,
satisfied and there's no other edges that we're responsible for that you can't
reallocate to some other demand, that's the soonest we could leave.
At latest, it's 36 months.
There's no guarantee that when you get to that 10-month or that 10-day threshold,
and at that point, the town's responsible for whatever remaining.
The town is under the contract, the town has your obligation is after 36.
month time horizon. It is the possibility of the coalition to ensure at that 36-month time
horizon that, yeah, we are not unduly shifting costs on the remaining members and programs.
Okay. And the forecast is very helpful. It's good to see that in the near future we're
expecting to at least cross zero. Were we from day one forecasted to get this low?
Like, how did we get we get?
this negative. Yeah. Was that planned? Was that a result of things and we think all
those things are now fixed and we can trust kind of with more fidelity what the trend is
now showing? Yes. I mean, it was a result of a couple of events. There was, as I
mentioned before, some issues with our prior risk management controls and procedures. We had
a leadership, transition following that occurrence and a bit of a restructuring
and, you know, close examination and independent evaluation is exactly what happened. And that
was part of those six to seven recommendations that were implemented. And, you know, that was sort
of, yeah, the major event that I would point to, which not didn't occur this past winter,
but the winter prior. Right. This past winter, daisy costs were, uh, I was a
about a billion dollars more expensive market-wide than what Ison-England said they would be.
You're familiar with the acronym? It's the dead, yeah, insulate services initiative. And so,
you know, some of the joint reserve buffer that was built from CPCNH was used to insulate against
those daisy costs. So that, that slowed some of the recovery down. It didn't put us in a bad
position necessarily overall, but it did slow the recovery process.
But in this upcoming rate-setting period, you know, Daisy is being accounted for more
conservatively than it has been in the past. And that's despite, we know there's a super
Elenio, and we know that there are market reforms that are happening in Iso, New England
that should lessen the cost of Daisy. So we think we have a very, you know, strong conservative
assumption built in there. Okay. So kind of initial lessons learned, growing pains,
we're learning from them implementing corrective actions and that we think we're in a better
part, better spot to forecast the future.
I think the assessment from the energy authority that we referenced earlier is testament to
the fact that those actions have been taken. And then when you look at the problematic
forecasting, which didn't exist at the time when these issues amounted, broad, you know, started
to mount up. That probabilistic forecasting is showing that we are actually definitely
improving. I heard a statistic that perhaps, you know, the P50 may even be lower than where
we're achieving right now. So it's very comforting to know that this is, you know, we're very
much at a granular level and right on track in terms of monitoring this.
Yeah, the current period, and it's in the great materials that are available publicly for the board,
but our current period, joint reserve growth, is actually trending more towards P60.
So it's outperforming what we set as B-50 at the time of the 30 setting, which is a good sign.
How do you currently deal with the forward capacity market?
Is that assumed that's done by your suppliers or?
Yeah, I mean, we price in capacity as part of the rate buildups that we have.
You know, part of what we assigned in terms of our cost of service to our customer-based accounts.
And that's just an adder to the price.
It's included within the energy portion of the rate.
Yeah.
One of the areas I've been looking at is that to reduce costs in the system,
including the distribution and transmission systems,
we're ultimately going to need to get better use of them.
And I see the way of doing that is ultimately going to real-time pricing.
with hedging added to it.
We know, in most of the markets that are residential customers that have seen real-time pricing,
the hedging instruments haven't been really developed yet.
So I see that expanding not from the generation part that most of those have been
to a real-time pricing of transmission and distribution service over time.
and that would give me as a customer a pricing signal that says this heater is overloaded right now
because cloud passed over and the solar reduced and it's still hot and the air conditions running.
I need to have my automated system respond to it.
My sense is that probably that's something we should be looking at as an opt-in type of rate once the utilities get their metering act together.
Yeah, so I know there's, it's not quite going as far as real time, but, you know, one of the objectives is to be able to offer in the future a three part-time of use rate, which at least splits pricing into the bucket.
It's somewhat advanced from the two-tier price that we had in 1952 in Braintree, Massachusetts guy, was going on.
It's a little bit advanced.
Yeah, I mean, it's not perfect, it would be a step.
The problem, of course, is that as we get more renewables, the variation is going to be much, the volatility will be greater.
But now we have the ability to respond.
Yeah, I mean, if you pair renewables with storage, that's when you can really have a...
That's where the pricing is nice.
Yeah, that's the chicken and egg that we've got, you know, to contend within New Hampshire,
because, you know, the incentive to invest in storage is...
breaking your excuse.
We don't have real-time pricing, so around and around we go.
But as Jackson said, you know, there's been more than a glimmer of interest from Unitil,
and they are the thought leaders here.
So, you know, it's exciting that some of our nascent projects and programs that we have...
And even other utilities in the area are looking at...
We'll turn it on and off, and you can keep it for when the lights go up.
You know, that kind of the thing.
And we'll see to it that there's enough in there where the storm's coming that you can weather a little while with your battery.
The issue, of course, is what path do we take, the big rather path,
where centrally try to control my toaster, so to speak, or do we allow the customer to do that directly?
Yeah, I mean, we're much for the free market, allow the customer to react to the price signal.
approach you know, in a planned way so we don't get a Texas result.
They had five southern England paying close attention to having all the, all the switches, right?
So you did, maybe get us a little bit back on track.
Yeah, I'm sorry.
No, no worries.
It's an interesting sidebar, but if, uh, just as a courtesy to alert and Brooke to the, what's of the
2,200 rules, you know, if you were to go the route of saying, you know, if you were to go the route of saying, have a program
down anymore, which of course we hope you wouldn't take that action, but if you did,
there are some requirements in terms of noticing at least 90 days in advance of termination of a program,
and then there is a stay-out period for a year, so you couldn't restart a program within a year's time,
and this is all the particular about a few CEOs.
So let me just make sure I'm understanding this point, because, like, if, I understand that to be a Pembroke wanted to cease its electric,
aggregation program altogether, you know, care of the documents and all that.
Right.
If Pimbroke wants to keep the CPA, but use a different supplier, that is different from this page.
Yes.
Okay.
Yeah, I just want to make sure they're not mixed up.
Okay, thanks.
I guess I'm confused.
So there are two things that could happen.
Yeah.
Two things that, um,
There's a lot of things happen, but I mean, what I just wanted to consider are two different distinct different things.
One is, let's say that Pembrook has electricity supply from CPCNH, and a new company or a new supplier becomes available.
Because we'll give you a 10-cent phone.
Yeah, we'll give you something different.
Yeah, that is really appealing.
Pimbroke could keep its community power application and switch suppliers, and to do that, and to do that is for individual.
loads? Nope. For everybody.
And this is the process to do that. Oh, okay. But you don't notify CPCNA and A say, hey, we're going to make a wholesale change.
But that's a 36-month process. Or, or less. It's a, it's a process that's up to 36 months.
Oh, okay. So basically, so I can see a couple of ways. One who says, we're sick and tired of this. Here's my 90-day notice. We're out.
But that's the other. That's the other thing, which is the
say, we just want to end the CPA.
We don't want to have, everybody's going back to default utility, and it'll just, it'll be like before we ever had a CPA and they can do whatever.
And that starts a three-year process.
Nope.
Nope.
That is, well, it's within the contract.
Yes, yes, sorry, you're right.
I said it wrong.
That is, yes, we follow the process, but you would have no CPA.
the end of it.
You'd be shutting down operations and we're just making the point that during the trajectory
that we've discussed, it would be anticipated that the community that wanted to end its contract
with community power would probably request that information for early termination at the
earliest opportunity within the 36 months.
So the other choice might be retired of this, sort of what are we all, how many months do we need
stay on to come to zero and then everybody's going to go back to you to the city.
Yeah, so that would be the forward view over possibly a three-year period or something like that.
Okay.
So you just have to bear in mind that as you got closer to that date of termination, you know,
the practical nature is that CPCNH would not be serving your community with power and they would have to receive it from
somewhere else and if you had not taken the steps to replace it with another third party's
provider, you have to have mandatory time noticing to return the utility people.
The customer can make the change.
No, you would make change on behalf of all the customers and basically do the exact opposite
to what you did when you created Pembroke Community Power and, you know, somewhere early...
Oh, it would not imagine they go over to Eversourced in this case, or...
They would go back to whoever their...
their distribution utility was in the main Ebersource.
Yeah.
That was actually way more confusing than I thought, but I just wanted to make sure that we understand that at the end of a 30, up to a 36-month period,
you're either winding down your CPA and closing it out or you're perpetuating it just with a different supplier.
maybe that's a different way of saying the thing.
That's clear, right?
Yeah.
We can switch providers by not violating our agreement with CPC and H
and go to a different provider, or we can totally terminate community power.
We can honor that and the PUC, whatever.
But in both cases, we have a notification process of CPC and we have a notification process of CPC and
have they will figure out a timeline to have no financial impact on remaining members.
Pembroke would probably elect to have no financial impact on itself.
Yeah.
So that sets the timeline up to 36 months.
And what's the mechanism if we decided that the time should work with Direct for this kind of a process?
Or perhaps what's the other company?
who's your competitors or some other
I mean that's something that Pembert would be looking at
right suppliers and trying to
you know work with them but then
all of our payments would be going there
how do we pay our obligations
to the coalition
we can't leave until our obligations
are settled but we outlast
three years but how do you pay it's
and we pay with this
adder
so part of our rate that we're paying them
so if we get a different supplier that goes into a bank with a price of 10 cents if we need to add a penny to that
for the people that are saved with a new supplier that penny then goes to the
coalition no no we got to settle up our balance before we leave the coalition yes you settle
everything oh okay it has to be done so you don't switch until you're zero okay right and in the
in the end of that period there would be choices if you've made you know the choice to
continue the CPA it would be a timing thing with a new supplier and if it were that you were
going to end operations it would be a timing thing with the distribution utility so a couple
quick questions the adder how much control does the town have over that for our
program like if we it was two cents it's now six six six eight
if we want to be something different could we as a town control that or that's
something that is across the board set the base products that are offered that is
set by the board of directors which represents the membership you had some
direct representation as part of the board in the past so yeah that is not something
for the standard like our grant basic you know an opt-up products that can be
adjusted for an individual town okay and there is options you know that
sometimes have taken up to create their own local product that has a small
additional amount that they include to fund energy projects for example
and they can make that their default products so there is some yeah there's
some letters that can be pulled on that side but on the base that are so that could be a
way then of getting rid of an obligation early by
just adding something to the bill if that's why I ask and it's just to
kind of test my understanding so I'm wearing two different hats one is a resident
town who cares about the lowest costs every month for their electricity the
other is somebody who works for the town who doesn't love seeing a $200,000
reserve negative from the town's perspective
if we could add two cents on top of this adder that gets us out of the whole faster
that reduces our financial liability from the town's perspective obviously the town
doesn't want the residents paying more than they have to for electricity but the town's not
paying that bill so is there kind of a disconnect there like no there isn't I guess it you know
the point six sixty eight is one way we'll get it is the floor
if the town decided through a select board vote that it wanted its default products to
accumulate what we would call discretionary reserves right and then apply that balance
towards its joint reserve obligation I think that is an allowable mechanism just testing
my understanding right like it wasn't envisaged in the context of discretionary
reserves but that the CPC and H doesn't have any control over that
In fact, you know, the reality is that the decision of the select board to set that fund up and then what to do with it is the purview of the municipality.
We have no say in that.
We maintain discretionary reserves on behalf of several of our members in escrow, but we keep it separate.
And then, you know, we then disperse those funds to those members on request.
that's that's the mechanism that's fairly straightforward.
So it could be the foot solar on the roof or bait on the reserve?
I suppose so.
It's a world that is not something we've spent any time discussing or contemplating,
but I don't see any reason under the definitions of the two different.
You know, community reserves, which is the .67 adder,
is, you know, mutually applied across.
all of our standard rates and it is, you know, part of our rate that is offered through all of our members.
And we are using it for the purposes that we explained earlier in terms of building the
the biodiversity of the organization.
And the knee that we see in this projection, that is because we're going from the two cents to the 0.668.
Well, let's be clear, you know, I mean, we had gone through this, this, you know,
These are new waters that we navigated in the last year.
Pembroke launched and any community launches, one of the minimum requirements, base requirements,
is that the prevailing rate is lower than that of the utility.
We've explained to you today that we're doing all we can to, in an adverse climate,
return to that rate advantage.
It is not the appetite of any of our members to continue to put a
discretionary reserve adder on when that adder makes those rates go higher than the utility.
So we're not in the world we were in in 20, in 2023, when there was a couple of cents ceiling there between our rate and ever sources rate.
But we may return there at some point.
Yeah.
And that, in that environment, those are the, those are the conversations that might take place.
but again, these are two sorts of trajectories that we've never honestly sat down and discussed in parallel.
And it seems to be, you know, the appetite to leave and the appetite to accrue discretionary reserves for the purpose of what we all collectively believe in.
There's two different things.
So this is kind of on the side a little bit for, more for the committee, but when we presented a little memo to update the select board,
we said basically the things that we want to watch for are, is the rate gap shrinking
or the financial reserves starting to go?
And, I should say differently, we're going to pay attention to the rate gap,
we're going to pay attention to the trajectory of financial reserves.
If the rate gap continues to stay big or if the financial reserves continue to climb,
then that starts to lead us towards, you know, making a recommendation about something's, you know,
going wrong, and vice versa, if things start to, you know, trend in the right directions and all that,
then that's, you know, more positive.
So we have a little bit more data today.
You know, it looks good for now, and we keep monitoring all that stuff.
A bit more comfort.
Yeah, I agree.
I think we have the data, we have more confidence in the data because we have better fidelity,
we learn a lot of lessons, a lot of things are implemented to get better control of that.
of that. I think the story to the select board is pretty clear at this point, which is good.
Yeah, so probably the next select board update, it can be like in August or something,
but you'll see when the utility rates are set and approved, implemented.
Same thing with CPC and H, we see that their rates get approved by the board and implemented,
and you know, see how the financial reserves keep going and stuff like that.
Cool.
Any other questions?
I'd like that at some point, this is not the price for our cost and more about the idea of the pricing structure.
The real-time pricing and that sort of thing as a service that you might provide.
Clearly, it's the risks involved.
The costs of doing it are not necessarily as high as you seem to think they are.
And they don't necessarily require that the utility have the metering board.
I mean, I think Cliff is still using a metering system and will record five-minute pricing.
It's necessary in his house.
Let me just ask for you.
Do you guys have any questions for the Security Committee?
Directly no. Obviously, we continue our commitment to be responsive to your request to come and update you.
you. So would you have a time horizon when you would perhaps have us think about returning?
Next meeting.
I mean, I think maybe a twice a year type kind of recurrence would be good.
Well, we want to be respectful of your time too, though, because we know you've got a lot of members.
Right.
You're obviously very proactive talking about how you're going to talk to select board, which is exactly the relationship.
exactly the relationship we advocate for. And I think, you know, why don't we think
about this as a sort of placeholder that we'll get together in six months when we're back to rate
setting again. One thing I would just like to say last thing is that, you know, as a concept,
CPCNH is not wedded to being in lockstep with utility rate setting. It's a big conversation.
I'm not going to open up the can of worms right now.
But it's just that there is a future where that may not be in lockstep for a variety of reasons.
But the utilities, unless something happens in statute, we'll continue to procure every six months.
So we'll be comparing ourselves every six months.
So maybe we'll come and see you when, you know, it's in December time.
Sounds good.
I really appreciate all that you.
Thank you very much.
Yeah, yeah.
We've got additional copies.
We weren't sure how many people are going to show up.
They are a bit of Pembroke.
Yeah.
If they're members specific, we'll take them, we'll put them up front.
I know David will be happy to have one.
Sure.
Okay, I'm going to go.
Yeah, sounds good.
I'll see you.
See you against that.
Bye, guys.
Thanks too much for coming.
Yeah, absolutely.
Are you in Concord?
No.
Oh, geez.
Sorry.
That's okay.
Yeah, no.
I work in Concord, so.
Great.
You guys.
Yeah.
Yeah, absolutely.
We're on the street.
I'm running out.
Not just the coffee shop.
Yeah.
I would like to do that.
Have you ever been out there?
I haven't.
My wife is a very snowboarder.
Nice.
You know, she's very helpful.
I don't know where Rebel Sto sits on the boarding.
So she's got great aspirations to get out.
She should go.
I'm aboard her. I was there for a week and it was awesome.
Very little riding on the actual resort.
But we did some back.
We did some backcountry every day.
It was great.
We took the lift up and then just went out on the ridge line.
It was great air.
Surfing the air.
Yeah, surf in the air.
Yeah, she ever needs any intel.
Tell her the number.
We'll take you up.
See you up.
Yeah.
We'll next slide.
We were talking about pricing, too.
Well, I think you.
In fact, because my barns floor fell in,
floor fell in, I have in the back of my car, a metering system I put together.
It allowed for 500 pricing to a customer.
That also allowed for controlling equipment.
You know, price goes over at nine, the water heater shops off.
Right.
Very cool.
About 15 years ago.
And it ran on a high-end communication system called the Pager network.
There you go.
But it's in the back of my car.
in the back of my car.
Yeah.
I'm going to hold it up.
I don't know.
This has been out.
But we meet in Triller.
I don't know.
We'll find out.
Yeah.
Let's, uh, I guess, just a real quick update.
So we're meeting with the select board on the 15th of July.
I owe David and you all
about what's going to be,
I guess some substantiating evidence for our
selection for the default municipal supply contract.
Okay.
So, consolation, they came back with the best pricing,
so we're going to, we're at least recommending to go with them.
Yeah.
Stay with.
Yes, stay with them.
Good for me.
I did see...
I did see...
Okay.
I did get an email from David today.
I've not looked at it yet.
It seems like it has been reviewed by town legal.
and a Primex insurance company or something,
um, can't open it out because my computer's not cooperating.
Primax is recommending the language edition.
I'm not sure if Constellation would go for this, but it's in my opinion.
But it's in my real deal breaker.
Okay, so it sounds like we have some recommended language changes.
We'll float that by them.
So this is not a deal breaker.
David said it's, in his opinion,
not a real deal breaker. So I'll chase that down with the energy
consultants or whoever their name is.
So yeah, we're moving forward there.
We're on track for the 15th meeting.
I believe we're on the agenda.
I just gave it a little bit of right up beforehand.
And I'm going to ask them to refresh the rates.
It sounds like they're valid for like the day.
Yeah.
So I'll ever update them that day.
Hopefully nothing.
That is happening with markets.
Yeah.
Yeah, we'll see.
But I think I had mentioned you previously.
I'm just going to stop conversations with all the other brokers that we're reaching out and wanting
us to get into contracts or agreements or whatever.
So.
Yeah, the 15th I have select work meeting.
Cool.
Okay.
That was the only other quick update I wanted to sneak in.
I have been very negligent on anything CIP related and don't know where we stand.
know where we stand.
Oh, yeah.
So I've been following up with Rachel.
So Rachel of revision says that she will get me their proposal Thursday or Friday.
Of this week.
Yeah.
Okay.
And then we'll just like stick it together with the roof and then...
Oh, nice.
Okay.
And then you forward it to probably David and maybe Jerry Flurry.
Okay.
And probably VJ.
Okay.
So I know Rachel goes on vacation like that.
vacation like that Saturday, so I'm kind of checking it in.
Okay.
So the mission proposal this week.
Send over to David, E.J.
And is there anything I need to do or should anticipate doing on top of what you're going to send me?
I don't think so.
Okay.
So, and the context is this is something that we want to propose to CIP.
Is this on behalf of some other committee or this is like an important?
this is like this would be coming from ourselves and you know the group that would
probably implement it would be so it's probably like it's not three bids it's just it's
basically revisions proposal we had we had grant estate solars from last year I
could never just too busy or they got tired of waiting I don't know what happened but
you know I consider their proposal from last year good enough that we just said there would be an
inflation factor we have revisions and frankly theirs is probably going to be more
faith that theirs will capture all the costs.
Right. So it would be better to use that as the estimate that way we don't like
underestimate the cost. And then we've ended up a situation where we wouldn't save enough as a town.
Right.
It would be a problem.
So I think that one theirs plus the roof bit would be good for the CIP process.
And then, you know, we see how the CIP and budget committee and select board with how they react to the proposal.
And we just submit a proposal.
and then the rest of the process will figure out like how much and how long and like all the other things or do we need to propose like,
hey, we think five years the saving and the escalation or the inflation will take the cost of this when we ultimately actually do it and all that stuff.
I don't know.
I think what we definitely need to do is we need to present it.
And I think it would be sensible when you present it to at least give a little bit of like if you did it all in one year.
This is it.
If you did it, if you saved up over some number of years.
Okay.
And I got, like, my cut feel of it is that there is some dollar threshold where if it's above it,
it's going to have to be a multi-year saving.
If it's below it, it might just make sense to, you know, do it.
Right.
But I think that's part of, when we're in front of CIP, there will be a little bit of informal discussion
about that.
Ultimately, I think the select board would be the one that would decide what do they want,
they want to make the warrant articles, so they want to, you know, propose doing it all at once
or proposed starting to save, you know, starting to, because what the, what the word article
would look like is, does the town want to put this much money into the energy capital
reserve fund in order to do this project, you know, rooftop solar or the safety center,
which would create these benefits?
And does the CIP entertain anything that's brought to them?
I would imagine no.
Like, the CIP could be like, no, this doesn't make any sense.
We're not doing it, and it never gets to the Warren article.
Or if somebody proposes something, they have the obligation of bringing it forward.
The CIP review it, and what they end up doing is they'll say high, medium, or low priority.
So they'll consider everything.
It might get all low votes, or it might, you know, get some mixture of the things.
So like, you know, an ambulance, oh, we need an ambulance.
That'll probably get six or ten high priorities or, you know, something like that.
Yeah, we need to repave the parking lot around here.
It'll probably get 10 low priorities.
Yeah.
Because it has, like, several years in a row.
So, yeah, they'll just give it a priority.
Okay.
And the other, I guess what will happen then is at some point, as David's working on his budget,
he'll start to see what the budget looks like.
Let's say the budget looks like it's going to easily, you'll have no inflation,
and then he may say, look, we have a little more room to ask the town for some capers early.
If there's a lot of just basic budget inflation, then it's going to be like, wow.
We better be extremely careful and not ask for a bunch of things.
So it's just kind of fluid.
And we'll start to know by the end of this year, you know, November, December time frame in terms of willing to get on the award.
Okay.
Okay. So, yeah, if you get that over to me, I will pass that along on behalf of the Energy Committee meeting or the Energy Committee.
For the next meeting date, I'm thinking the Monday after the Select Board meeting in July, potentially, just because we might need to do some movement on, well, I guess, yeah, we're not voting on anything for the supply contract, so.
be Monday the 20th of July.
I would be out that week.
That week.
Yeah, okay.
How about the 27th?
Yeah, hang on my sir.
So, Petty, we're considering July 27th, 5 p.m. for the next meeting.
Sorry for stepping out.
I'm going to step in to the bathroom.
727.
Okay.
Same time, same place?
Yeah, we haven't officially said.
No, no.
Yeah, we haven't officially.
Yeah, the camera.
still on.
Yeah.
End up, like, chugging water on the way home for work.
And then for like the next two, three hours, it's like about a 30-minute ladder.
Yeah.
Anywho, so 27th, 5 p.m.?
Yeah, yeah, I just checked.
Okay, awesome.
All right.
If there's nothing else urgent, I recommend we close the meeting.
Is there a motion to close the meeting?
So move.
All in favor, aye.
Aye.
All the meeting is adjourned.
5.35 p.m. or 6.35 p.m.
I think that was a good meeting.
It was good.
A lot more.