E. MONTPELIER – At their October 30 meeting, directors of Washington Electric Coop agreed to sell the hydro power plant below the Wrightsville Dam in a 7-2 vote.
The board “authorized General Manager Louis Porter to enter into a purchase and sales agreement for the Wrightsville Hydro Project and its associated substation for not less than one million dollars, provided other contingencies are met,” minutes of the meeting note. “Director Farnham opposed selling for philosophical reasons.” No record was made of the second director to vote against authorizing the sale and the minutes do not make note of the other contingencies noted in the motion.
Porter said he has been working with a potential buyer of the power plant on December16. They are likely to take advantage of Vermont’s net metering opportunities for renewable energy generation systems, he said. One of the terms will be that the new owner applies to Green Mountain Power for net-metering, otherwise there would be no benefit in the coop selling it, he added.
The October-November issue of the WEC newsletter “Co-op Currents,” had a lengthy discussion of the factors involved in deciding whether to sell the plant, announcing “Co-op Considers Selling Wrightsville Hydro Plant.”
Porter’s remarks ask, “Is it worth it to our members to pay more for our own power than market cost, and some years substantially more?”
“The dam to which the hydro project is attached is operated by the State of Vermont, but the hydroelectric renewable power generating station and the penstock and turbines are owned by the co-op,” said Porter. “Wrightsville produces between 1-3% of the Co-op’s power portfolio. The reason we’re contemplating selling it is because it’s expensive power. Even though we own the plant, it costs between 9 to 30 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh) to produce power from it because of the restrictions on when it can run.
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“Hydro permits are moving from what they call ponding facilities, where water builds up and is then drawn down, to run-of-river facilities. . . Run-of-river basically means the water runs at the same rate of flow as the water coming in at the head of the pond. That’s better ecologically, for both the pond upstream and the river downstream, but it’s less advantageous in the economics of power production than a ponding facility.
“In our Wrightsville case, the permit is as close to run-of-river as the technology allows. That means the power is less financially beneficial for the co-op, while the costs to run it have stayed the same. It’s 900 kW, so just under a megawatt, but it rarely runs anywhere close to that.
Co-op Board Chair Stephen Knowlton said, “Many board members are of two minds about this decision, including myself. . . it’s a renewable power resource that WEC owns. We need to consider closely if we’re willing to give up a source of renewable energy at this time when loads in our rural territory may be increasing.
“The board is going to reach its decision with a lot of thought and with an eye to what the plant is worth.”
Porter said members would benefit from the income if the plant is sold. A longer-term benefit would be replacing the higher cost hydro power with cheaper renewable power bought on-market.
Both Porter and Knowlton mentioned a potential benefit of keeping the facility as being the unpredictable nature of utility pricing and regulation in the future, where having control over a renewable energy source might be beneficial. On the other hand, the intangible costs of having an employee trained and available to manage the hydro plant means they aren’t available for other tasks, they noted.
Knowlton said, “It’s fair to say Wrightsville at present is a bit of a drain for a small organization.”
Porter said, “The hydro plant is on the WEC books with a value of $1.2 million. Roughly $100,000 in new operating software will be needed to keep the 40-year old facility running and it will have maintenance costs.” He noted a sense of some urgency in the sale, with group net metering projects required to file for a Certificate of Public Good by the end of the year.
On December 16, he said he’s currently negotiating an agreement to sell the plant.
Washington Electric Cooperative (WEC) serves towns from Glover in the north to Tunbridge in the south and Fayston in the west to towns along the Connecticut River from Barnet to Bradford. WEC territory includes parts of Cabot, Calais, Plainfield, Stannard, Walden and small parts of Craftsbury, Greensboro Hardwick, Marshfield and Woodbury in the local area.
ed. note: Quotes from the draft meeting minutes regarding the motion to authorize the power plant’s sale were amended at the November meeting, held December 4, and revised here when they became available December 18..
Paul Fixx is editor of The Hardwick Gazette and lives in Hardwick.
