SmartTranscript of Senate Transportation - 2025-02-05 - 9:00AM

[Speaker 0 ]: Let me see. Okay. You are live. [Chair Richard Westman ]: So good morning. It is Wednesday, February fifth. This is the senate transportation committee meeting. My name is Rich Westman, and I'm chair, and we are here to hear about the central garage. And if you can give us your name and title, the stage is yours. Sounds good. Good morning. [Todd Law ]: My name is Todd Law. I'm the director of fleet for the agency of transportation. Very excited to talk about Central Garage and and our update over the the past few months. So since since last session, we have purchased a parcel. It actually sits right next to the Newmont State Police Barracks in Berlin. Up the hill, away from the Stevens branch where we flooded multiple times over the past few years. The Funny thing is the Pond Brook actually that that contributed to the flooding down at Central Girard actually runs adjacent to this parcel, but it fits up high enough and haven't flooded over the past few years. So we're fairly certain we're in we're in a pretty good location here. So this is the location. Exit seven is right here, Berlin. The new parking side or the upgraded parking ride is here. The Berlin another another vital piece here, the the Berlin Fire Department, is actually at the intersection of sixty two in Payne Turnpike North. And, again, the state police barracks is right next door. So we purchased essentially two parcels. So this entire area is now owned by the state of Vermont Agency of Transportation. And as you can see, we're we're utilizing one portion of that right now. The what we call the back portion used to be a a farm field, hasn't been farmed in in in a few years. There are some wetlands that that kinda restrict this area, so we're trying to work within that and working with our partners at the Department of environmental conservation to ensure we can build what we need to for the future of fleet maintenance for the agency of transportation. The other piece of this, this this front piece, as you can see, there's not a whole lot of wetland impact here. There were three buildings up here in Remington. It's been used for staging for a few other, projects that were in the area. They've removed the buildings up here. Mhmm. But but the thought is that whether it's the agency of transportation or or another another agency within the state of Vermont, there may be some some use for this. We know there's still some some buildings that are outside the agency of transportation that are in the flood zone that we may need to relocate, we as as the state of Vermont. [Vice Chair Becca White ]: Is it okay to ask questions? [Chair Richard Westman ]: Yes. [Vice Chair Becca White ]: Okay. So so the blue, it is is that paved already? [Todd Law ]: The blue is paved area. Okay. So right now, there is that's a great question. Right now, the roadway going into this parcel has been completed. It's a permit and a corps of engineer permit that we that we would need to build on this parcel. There is one there already. We would need to expand that a little bit. The reason we have fairly sizable areas in here for for paved parking so this this fleet maintenance facility does log me up then. So all of the trucks, the plow trucks that come in come in here and wait to go to another vendor to get the plows on and the dump bodies on. We also do all the outfit for the DMD enforcement vehicles and all the the smaller trucks. All of our our small plow trucks, the the one tons that that size are all outfit in this area. So we receive a significant amount of vehicles here, which kinda leads to having additional area to park those vehicles. Okay. So this is a very conceptual plan of what the the garage was look would look like. There's gonna be a little bit of an expansion here. It was supposed to be a base. The architect looked at it and said, yeah. We'll have to expand a little bit to get the eight bays. So they put seven on the plan. But in this, we would [Speaker 4 ]: be taking what's down at Central Garage right now is [Todd Law ]: a significant amount of external buildings for storage. So our park storage is spread out between two or three different areas. We did before the flooding, that was the case. We had a huge storage building that we're actually working out of right now that was used for storage of not only central garage equipment, but also of district maintenance and other other AOT equipment. And we would actually allow Fish and Wildlife to put boats in there at times, and DMV would put their scales in there. So we would be consolidating all that to the one building right here. [Vice Chair Becca White ]: Yes. So is it big enough? Because it it seems like how like how how do you measure that or or compare that to a district [Todd Law ]: garage? So so it's a little different than a district garage. [Vice Chair Becca White ]: Well, no. I'm sure it's very different, but but, like, should it be twice as much or three times as much? [Todd Law ]: It's it's about twice as much [Speaker 4 ]: Okay. [Todd Law ]: And gives a lot more parts storage [Chair Richard Westman ]: that we [Todd Law ]: normally don't have as much of in in the districts. So we have regionals, regional fleet maintenance facilities that are in four different locations with two satellites, where we do fleet maintenance. It used to all be done at Central Garage. So we've downsized, excuse me, a lot of our parts storage because now we can put them out in in the regions. And each region actually has their own parts specialist that's out there sourcing parts to fix all the equipment. But the thing that we have here is a lot of our fleet management. So all the people that are ordering the equipment that's best doing the specifications are in this area. Our overall supervisor, our superintendent, all the central garage throughout the state is here. My office is actually down here along the very city place when we need meetings there. But [Chair Richard Westman ]: Just so skip us totally out of the floodplain. [Todd Law ]: It gets us out of the floodplain. It does not this does not do anything for for the training center. They're temporarily relocated up at the Dill building. They're working out of there. There's there's meeting space up there. So they're up at the Dill building and the other the other entity that was displaced down here is district six. We took over their garage that they had the drill crew and everybody. They've actually moved up to Dill also so we can stay down here and do our work. The new one that will all be consolidated, district six would still not have a place here and neither would the training center from from the three zero two complex, the entire complex that went down on the group three zero two in Berlin. [Chair Richard Westman ]: So and the long term vision for all of this, we would need to yeah. Just so I can get into it. The long term vision is what? The long term vision is to ensure that [Todd Law ]: we have adequate space to maintain all of our equipment in one building along with the regionals and have adequate expansion where we could start doing additional work here, including work on electric vehicles that need to have their own clean, separate space from all of the other fossil fuel burning equipment. That's one of the things that would be in these this expansion. So we're trying to set ourselves up for the next seventy five years. The one that's down on three zero two right now is is about that old. So seventy five to [Chair Richard Westman ]: a hundred years is what we're looking for. So this would cover a first stage. Have you got screens in this to say, here's what the next steps down the road might be when we can afford to do it? [Todd Law ]: This this pretty much is all in one step. So no future. There's not a whole lot of area we could expand without significant permitting. You know, we're trying to get what you know, we we had a a grandiose plan that would include CDL testing area for DMV. Right now, they're using the city of Barrie allows them to use the the Barrie Auditorium for CDL testing. They were gonna put that up there. We started to pair things down. So we are good with just fleet maintenance and fleet management here, and this one statue would set us up for that seventy five to a hundred years with with some expansion capabilities within these buildings and the garage space. [Andrew Perchlik ]: And there's space on the land if you want. If you decided to, you could build [Todd Law ]: that up there. On this, probably not. On the upper section, you know, we have no real plans up there. So there's another parcel Right. That's that's part of the overall. Right? [Chair Richard Westman ]: Was it on that diagram just before? [Todd Law ]: The wetlands? Yeah. So so the green room here is wetlands. Yeah. Right. There's that reds. Yeah. Then the red is what we own. This back section, even though it doesn't show it, is actually part of the BGS parcel that the state police is on. Mhmm. Also wetlands. Okay. It's called the wet meadow. The EPA and and DEC have both said, you know, wet meadows are are wetlands. So So is that stretch up by the road on on it that in the air? That and that's developable. That's developable. Yeah. There were three three buildings up here before, one doctor's office and two residences, including the the farmhouse that was that was adjacent. There's actually a little roadway that goes down to this this main access road to the back, and that's how they access the back for for haying, etcetera. So, yeah, there there is potential for expansion up there. Again, whether it's Central Garage, whether it's AOT, or any other state agency that's in need. [Andrew Perchlik ]: Do you have parking in the Blueair and not you don't have to be parking up there in Correct. Correct. [Todd Law ]: Not right now at least. You know, and and seeing the the size of our fleet, we don't expect that to change a whole lot. But this gives us a lot of storage area for repairs of equipment. Of course, it has to be on a on an impervious surface, and then when we're doing the outfit. So, you know, this this gives us some space where we can we can sack everything. More than likely, we're not going to be able to do the auctions that we always have down there. So BGS has a surplus auction, which includes AOT equipment. More than likely, there's not gonna be adequate space because there's not a an open area enough to to house everything because everything comes down to the three zero two complex right now and it's staged along the fence line and [Vice Chair Becca White ]: Right. [Todd Law ]: Where where there used to be buildings, you know, seventy seventy years ago, now there's nothing, and that's where we've been staging all the the auction equipment. So So will you continue to do that down? The plan right now is to remove everything down on three zero two and turn it back over to the river and do floodplain restoration. And and, of course, you know, our our partners at the natural resources are definitely on board with that as are our neighbors with Montpelier in Berlin. All all three of those entities are extremely excited about turning this that that parcel back into floodplain. Including the one building that's that the newest building that was raised that was built above the floodplain. You're gonna tear that within That one, yeah, to to optimize the floodplain there, more than likely, we'll we'll tear it down and reuse it somewhere, whether it's us or sell it. So, you know, there's it's still pliable. It was put in in two thousand six, two thousand seven. So, you know, it's got a a fairly low, like, the life expectancy. But [Chair Richard Westman ]: You're gonna have a lot of sad people as the auction then. [Todd Law ]: I don't think it will. Talking with our our friends in New Hampshire, they they do theirs at at other locations. And, of course, you know, there's other places. You know, the flea market has their places. And and a lot of things are actually going online now. [Andrew Perchlik ]: Right. Right. [Todd Law ]: Airport. We yep. We've done some of the airport. You know, we'll we'll I'm sure BGS will find a place. And like I said, a lot of it it may be multiple places. You know? That may be the the future of the auction, but, you know, we do our own, you know, through BGS, but in the fall. The big one is usually in May where everybody likes to come in and and kinda kick the tires and and see what we have. But online auctions seem to be very, very popular, especially as of late the last, you know, ten years. [Vice Chair Becca White ]: Yes. Yeah. This I know it's kinda random, but do you do those truck rodeos? [Todd Law ]: We we drive in the past. We we bring in operator. We used to do regional [Andrea Cohen ]: Yeah. [Todd Law ]: Competitions and then bring to a statewide. And and, actually, there is a national snowplow rodeo most of the time out in Loveland, Colorado. [Vice Chair Becca White ]: I mean, those are really good. They're really fun, and people like them. And they [Andrea Cohen ]: used to make [Chair Richard Westman ]: went to snow plow rotary rodeo. [Todd Law ]: So so they set up a course, and the the plow drivers get in there. They're usually a driver and a wing person, and they go through this slalom courses. They do an alley dock. There's there's all kinds of they have to try to knock over all these little cones or or tennis balls. So it it's really to show the skill of these operators, but it becomes kind of a. So [Chair Richard Westman ]: think we got somebody that wants to drive. Oh, I [Vice Chair Becca White ]: know. I know. I know. [Todd Law ]: And it's funny because I have videos with with Sue Mentor was the the secretary. Yeah. Her driving with actually, Ernie Patnaud. I think, yeah, it's Ernie and and Sue, and Bruce Nichols was with Chris Cole when he was the Yeah. Cool. Deputy secretary. So yeah. No. We we did get others involved in that. He realized Could [Vice Chair Becca White ]: you still do it if if you wanted to? [Chair Richard Westman ]: Oh, yeah. Yes, sir. We we do [Todd Law ]: the the statewide was usually up in. It was the fort was is is a big Oh. Fairly big yard. We do have a DMV testing area there. [Chair Richard Westman ]: You're gonna go to that? No. [Andrew Perchlik ]: I've done it. I I Oh. In Blackmore. Did they [Chair Richard Westman ]: let you drive? [Speaker 4 ]: Yeah. I'd go. [Chair Richard Westman ]: I don't have that. [Todd Law ]: I do not have that radio. On their works. [Speaker 4 ]: I didn't do so well, but, I mean, I Yeah. [Chair Richard Westman ]: I'm not gonna let my stuff dry again. Next to you. [Andrew Perchlik ]: It's done. What? [Chair Richard Westman ]: I'm not gonna let you drive with a big wing truck on next to my stuff that I wanna keep. That's a wise one. Thank you. [Vice Chair Becca White ]: Thank you. [Todd Law ]: So so the last thing I had so this is our swan garage, but this is kind of a concept of what we're gonna be looking for. You know, there's gonna be a lot of lot of open open doors with the central garage. There's gonna be a big office complex in the middle of of the two eight bay garages, but kind of the same look from the outside, something kinda natural that that blends a little better. Do you have a loading dock like that? We we are not planning on having a loading dock down in on three zero two, we actually have an outside loading dock that we utilize. We actually have a fairly good sized forklift down there that we unload a lot of the trucks. So it it hasn't been as necessary there. [Vice Chair Becca White ]: So just when do you want any coverage space? You're talking about parking all those vehicles? [Todd Law ]: We we leave them out. [Vice Chair Becca White ]: You're fine. They open [Chair Richard Westman ]: Yes. Okay. [Todd Law ]: And it may give us something in the future for putting in, you know, canopies that Solar. Canopies and yeah. That's not in the the first phase, obviously. Yeah. [Chair Richard Westman ]: It doesn't need It could be. Yeah. [Todd Law ]: We could expand. [Vice Chair Becca White ]: You might wanna put conduit out there so that you're ready. [Todd Law ]: Yeah. We will have conduit because we will have charging stations here. But yeah. That's exactly what we did in this one. We'll just put in the conduit as part of phase one and and for phase two, we're gonna follow right right behind on the office. But the office is gonna have quite a few, charging from that area. So we put the conduit in [Chair Richard Westman ]: as phase one and And when is this service [Todd Law ]: be done? Depending on who's scheduled. So we do have some time consuming permitting to do. We have a corps of engineer permit. We have a wetland permit to expand the the footprint from what's what's permitted now. We'd like to hope by next year we're we're starting construction if everything comes in line like we're we're hoping. So I would say within a couple of years, hopefully, we'll have a facility that we can move into and then start [Chair Richard Westman ]: decently dropping. There's no floods instead of there. [Todd Law ]: That would be one big one. You know, the staff that's working down at at the central garage and other three zero two is working outside of the original building. So they're you know, there's a little bit of struggle there. It's not as efficient as it was, but morale's pretty good, and and and they're they're doing some amazing work even in those temporary including you know, where we used to have cheap rock walls that were painted, that was plywood, unpainted, and [Chair Richard Westman ]: and the crew's still doing an amazing job. So, you know, it talks to the resilience of our people too. So So we should see this the preliminary stuff in the budget. [Todd Law ]: Yes. And and we are looking so for the funding piece, we are working with Guidehouse, who is the state's consultant who's working with us on the FEMA declaration. So instead of a little different funding source, we're looking at the alternatives program. So instead of fixing up what's down there now, we're we're providing them with estimates, and, hopefully, they give us funding like they did for the Waterbury complex so we can rebuild at at another location and not just fix up what we have. And that that alternatives program has been around for a while, and and Guidehouse predecessor was actually influential in getting us the funding we needed for for the Waterbury complex. So so, hopefully, a lot of that's covered through through that that funding source of four twenty eight through FEMA. [Chair Richard Westman ]: Well, I think we'll be looking for updates. [Todd Law ]: That sounds like a wonderful thing. Hopefully, I have great news for you. [Chair Richard Westman ]: Any other questions? Thank you. Thank you. [24 seconds of silence] [Andrea Cohen ]: I don't know. It was a fun thing. Yeah. [Speaker 7 ]: I'll take it. Care of the top of [Andrew Perchlik ]: the file. [Speaker 7 ]: Okay. Well, address presenting this. [Vice Chair Becca White ]: Good morning. Hi, Andrea. [Andrea Cohen ]: Okay. It looks like I can share when we're ready. Yeah. Thanks. Morning. Morning. Morning. Food record. I'm Andrea Conway from Mon Electric Cooperative, and with me today is Cyrille Bruna, who is our innovation leader. Thank you for having us in today. We have so much to talk about. I think we'll get through it all, but we you know, happy to come back if we [Chair Richard Westman ]: Well, we've done some time in. We're [Andrea Cohen ]: Okay. Great. Well, this is fun for us to share some information. What I'm hoping to use the time for is to just give you a brief introduction about EVC, very brief. Give you some information about EV uptake in our service territory. Also, talk about some information and trends. We do an annual member survey, and there's some really interesting information that we can share with you about EVs and what's going on. And then Sorrell is here to talk a lot about our system, our electrical system, our innovation activities around load management and keeping good energy flowing, and he's he's the guy for that stuff. So between both of us, hopefully, we can share a lot and answer your questions. So I will attempt to share the screen. [Chair Richard Westman ]: So I think it would be important a little bit, because I did spend a little bit of time on the board there. The member survey and give the history of it because it's been around a long time ago. Exactly. [Andrea Cohen ]: I it's it's great, actually, because there's a lot of information, and and it's rigorous and good survey. [Chair Richard Westman ]: Alright, can [Andrea Cohen ]: you see the slides, Zizurek? [Speaker 4 ]: Start from the beginning. [Andrea Cohen ]: Alright. Vermont Electric Cooperative. We are the second largest utility in the state of Vermont. I'll go there first. Our service territory is the gray. That's, the northern part of the state. We go from the islands, to the border all the way over to the east side over to New Hampshire. We have seventy eight, seventy five towns, in eight counties, actually, which people are surprised. We actually go down a little bit into Addison County. We have about thirty three thousand members and forty thousand meters because some folks have more than one meter. They're doing net metering or they have a barn or the separate meter or something like that. We have almost just under three thousand miles of line, and our service territory is about just over two thousand square miles. So we're rural. We're spread out. That poses its unique challenges and opportunities, especially when it comes to things like electric transportation. The picture I love the picture on the upper right. That was the day, the first line was energized in nineteen thirty eight. We've been around for a while, and we're not going anywhere. It's some of the early line crew in that other photo. We have reams of old, photos that are if we have more time, it would be [Chair Richard Westman ]: really fun to go through. Picture of my grandmother with her washing machine. They were coming in they knew they were coming at thirty seven. My grandmother bought washed a ringer washer ten months before they energized the farm. So she it was an all in green, father said, but we've got black and white pictures. And my grandmother was waiting for the power, actually. That is great. [Andrea Cohen ]: And we're a cooperative utility because the farmers and other folks who were not getting served by other utilities. So they formed a cooperative to make sure that rural Vermont could get power. So there's some great history and great stories about, you know, where we've come to and where we are today. We're very proud to be part of, you know, cooperative, democratically controlled utility in the state of Vermont. Some interesting things about our membership, very rural and also relatively low income. And that really drives a lot of some of our some of our policy positions, you'll see. So we do this annual member survey. Statistically significant. We learn a lot about our members. You could see we're a relatively very older population. My controls are in the way of my chart. So you could see our our sixty five and older demographic is not only there, but it's it's increasing over the last few years. I'm having a hard time navigating. Let's see. I'll get I'll get there. Alright. So so I think it gives you a little sense of our members and and my damn camera was not working. This here we go. Here we go. In terms of more about demographics, relatively lower income as well. So I'm not sure if you're aware of the energy burden report that Efficiency Vermont pulls together. It's an amazing resource. I urge you to take a look at that when you have a chance. Basically, income and the amount of money you spend on energy, and you come up with an energy burden number. Those red towns are the highest energy burden are in our service territory. So, again, an older demographic and a relatively lower income demographic in in our service territory. So all this plays into our mission and our goals. And there's three things we're always thinking about when it comes to policy and implementing our work, which is we gotta keep the lights on. None of this matters. If we can't keep the lights on and the energy flowing, we could talk about EVs and electrifying, heating and cooling. But if we can't keep the lights on, that's not gonna work. Right? Also, affordability, you all hear plenty about that. You're aware that, you know, the cost of doing this really matters, and we always have our eyes laser focused on that as well. And our board is very committed to carbon reduction and a few years back passed a resolution that we would be a hundred percent carbon free by two thousand and thirty, and we're well on our way to doing that. And as you're aware, there's some state programs, regulatory requirements that have us in the carbon reduction business in terms of what is called energy transformation programs. And we've embraced that and we're working really hard on that, but we're trying to do it in the most cost effective way and in a way that doesn't compromise reliability. So energy transformation, we have a full suite of incentives and programs, including EV incentives and EV charging equipment programs. And if that's something of interest, we can really dive in dive in. We have a five hundred dollar EV incentive and a five hundred dollar adder if you income qualify. We provide, free level two chargers to folks that are in our energy transformation program. And Sorel can talk more about what we're doing with, like, transformers and system upgrades to accommodate this increased load. Sorel, put this together. Thank you. It looks much better than the one I did where it's showing EV and hybrid uptake in our service territory. So, mister Murphy shows you some statewide data. Well, we're able to look and see what's going on in our service territory. And as you could see, this is cumulative, between EVs and and plug in hybrids. We're almost, like, at a thousand vehicles in our service territory. You'll see the EV and the hybrid gap is widening. We're actually finding folks who are not as into hybrids as much. Like, they're making the jump to all electric vehicles. [Speaker 4 ]: Go ahead. Andrew, I have [Andrew Perchlik ]: a question on that. It says from the EV incentives list. Mhmm. What is that? [Andrea Cohen ]: That's our energy transformation incentive. So if you've got an incentive, you're [Andrew Perchlik ]: When a member gets an incentive, they work. [Chair Richard Westman ]: Right. Right. [Speaker 4 ]: And And, [Andrea Cohen ]: Israel, we'll talk a little bit how we're identifying people that haven't gotten incentives because there's some things we can do. [Andrew Perchlik ]: So Like registration date or something. [Andrea Cohen ]: I do love that, actually. So if there's an opportunity to access that, we could [Speaker 7 ]: it's definitely tough for us right now. Right? We use that incentives list, but there's folks who haven't had incentives. We have a lot of folks who are second homeowners. Therefore, you know, we we basically pay for analytics, to identify where electric vehicle activity is occurring because we need to know. Right? I mean, so I'll touch on this in later slides of just the the impact that these electric vehicles have to the electric system. So I would say if we had access to the data that's already out there, it would be a huge help to us in in ensuring reliability and affordability. [Andrea Cohen ]: So where are those EVs in our service territory? These boundaries are our districts, our board member districts. Senator Westman was district twelve. Twelve. Oh, you were on the west side. [Chair Richard Westman ]: Is the west. Right. You were [Andrea Cohen ]: the west side. So as you can see, the west side of the state has a lot more percentage of the EVs than the east side of the state. We were interested in digging in a little bit. We know there's this many EVs on our system. Well, where are they? Who is jumping in? Who's not? And I have some more information about this. But as you could see, Essex Orleans, you know, the uptake is not the same as Chittenden County. And from policymaking, you know, both us and you, it's it's helpful to to know this. Also, Sorelle dug in and saw that of the of all the EVs that got incentives, about twenty percent of them income qualified for that add add or self self identified as as in as income qualified. So these are our actual incentives. This is where those have gone in our service territory. So we were really interested in understanding more about this. So this is a member survey question. There's a lot here. I'll I'll hit the highlights. Every year for the past five years, we said, what's the likelihood? Because we wanted to get a sense of the future. We said, what's the likelihood you think you're gonna be driving electric in the next five years? Give us a little sense for planning. And the options were, I'm already driving electric. I plan on driving electric for no way. I have no no interest at all. If you look at the chart on the left side, what's really interesting, the trend is the number the percentage of folks that are like, I'm not driving electric has been increasing the last two years. Of course, the bottom line, the folks that are driving electric is slightly increasing. And the folks that are saying I'm likely to are either converting to the no way or I already have one. Right? So if you look over to the littler chart on on on the right side there, you could see that over the past two years, the percent of folks that are driving electric or likely to in the next five years is decreasing. We found this really interesting. And so we asked the follow-up question to that. If you don't think you're gonna be driving electric, why not? Right? We'd like to understand more. The greatest obstacles to driving electric for the people that said no way is, no surprise, cost of vehicle and battery range. What is interesting about both of those things, and we dive in I'll dive in a little even deeper to this, is if you look from last year to this year, cost is less of an obstacle relatively. The agency was fifty one percent. Now it's forty three. So the people that are not gonna drive electric, this cost is less of a factor, which we found interesting. I know shopping for EVs, there's a lot more options, lower cost ones this year than there was last year. So the manufacturers are, you know, doing a lot in that space. Incentives, what role are they playing? How much do they have to be or not? Like, is it kind of a but for thing? Like, well, I was gonna buy it anyway, and that's nice that VC gave me a thousand dollars, or is it that really made a difference? Like, those are interesting questions to find out. But so the we dug a little deeper because we could see in our member survey that the a little bit of the demo oh, these are my notes, not on the slide. The cost of the vehicle, what was interesting, what we found out was, it didn't matter your income level. Everybody cares about the cost of the vehicle. Doesn't matter if you're at the high end of the income or low end. We had different buckets of income. And everybody cares about the cost, higher, lower. That was interesting. The battery range concern, what was interesting, the stuff that was just, significant difference was the the people with the, greatest income, hundred thousand dollars or more, were the ones that really cared about battery range. It was not everybody. They were the ones that really cared about that. We look at this and we say, okay. Well, manufacturers can do a lot in both of these spaces. Right? The cost of the vehicle, the battery range, you know, there's a lot that could be done there. And, you know, what is appropriate, you know, for VEC, we're still discussing the like, what else we do maybe. In the just don't want one category, people that were like, no way. We just don't want a vehicle. The east side of the territory, again, the folks that aren't doing it are still not planning to do it. They're just a little dug in on this. And, folks that rent versus own homes are way less likely to wanna drive. You know, say they're gonna be driving electric in the next five years. [Chair Richard Westman ]: So yeah. So renters are less likely. [Andrea Cohen ]: Yes. And in terms of that slide right before, another thing that I just didn't mention did I mention? Yeah. The renters are are the highest, like, in terms of the category of least likely. It's against certain districts are much less likely than others, and renters are much less likely. And lower income, it totally tracks directly with income. The lower income, the more unlikely. The higher income, the more likely. Totally trends together. [Todd Law ]: Supportability. Mhmm. [Andrea Cohen ]: Well You a lot of it. [Andrew Perchlik ]: Yeah. Perception. [Andrea Cohen ]: Yeah. Perception and because it's very political too. We don't. Unfortunately. Right. [Vice Chair Becca White ]: But there's also many used electric vehicles now. So the price so that price is obviously lower. [Chair Richard Westman ]: Well, there's more than there has been. We're Yeah. We're just getting to the place where there's second generation. [Andrea Cohen ]: Yeah. It's hard to find them. I am shopping right now for a car because [Chair Richard Westman ]: because you blew the or that blue one out? [Andrea Cohen ]: My husband destroyed a car. So we're shopping, and and it's really the market's tight. Like, I'm waiting a month and a half maybe or more per car that I'd like. You know? For a new one? Yeah. [Chair Richard Westman ]: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. [Vice Chair Becca White ]: Right. Well, I mean, the new one we always in parking. [Andrea Cohen ]: I know. But it's if we're live streaming, correct, you'll see the big. [Chair Richard Westman ]: Bless all the last one too. [Andrea Cohen ]: We'll make sure we time stamp it and send it to him. So, Victor, I'll [Chair Richard Westman ]: turn it [Andrea Cohen ]: over to you to talk about somebody's. So do you want me to drive for you? I can follow-up. Okay. Hold on. Since we're in the documentation committee Yeah. [Speaker 4 ]: Somebody has to drive. That's right. Go and see Paul. [Speaker 7 ]: Cool. So I'm gonna touch a little bit about the impacts to the electric system of these electric vehicles. I'm gonna attempt to do it in a way that doesn't put you to sleep because I know it can be, at times a little bit in the weeds. So we really have two big impacts as it relates to these electric vehicles. One is on load growth to the system, and the second is when that load is being added. It's being added at the times of the transmission peaks, which is the times at which the system is actually at least clean and most expensive. So those are the big issues. We're anticipating about a doubling of the load by two thousand forty. Again, that all depends a little bit about the adoption levels and what happens there, but that's a pretty significant increase to us that puts a lot of stress on our infrastructure. We're anticipating around a hundred million dollars of upgrades, even more at the transmission level to support that load increase. And I'm gonna touch a little bit on our strategy to hopefully decrease that quantity by managing some of that load. So, in an attempt to kinda share what this load impact looks like, this is a this is a chart here of what someone's typical load looks like. This is data from one of our members. They happen to have a heat pump, and you can see that their peak is, like, somewhere around three to four kilowatts on the left side. Right? They're probably the washer dryer running at the same time after dinner, whatever that looks like. Right? Everyone has, little little changes here in their in their load usage. Yeah. And we can put several members onto the same location. Right? So we have we have some room here to put several people. And right now, right, there's certainly folks using load during those high times, but it's not a significant increase. When you start looking at what happens when an electric vehicle gets added to the exact same location, right, this is someone who has a Ford Lightning. They're charging at almost twenty kilowatts. We have a problem basically on the system. We have two problems. One, you can see that dotted line on top. Right? That's the limit. Just like a speed limit on the system, VC puts on the roads, VC puts limits on all of our assets, on all of our infrastructure, basically, to ensure that they don't blow up [Andrea Cohen ]: Yeah. [Speaker 7 ]: To make sure that the life of that asset lasts a long time. You know, many of our assets are sixty, eighty years old. Right? We wanna continue having those function well, so that's where that limit comes from. And then the second piece, which I've touched on a little bit earlier, is that that load, they're plugging in at five PM, right, four PM, whenever they come home from the office, that is the least, clean, most expensive time of the day. [Andrea Cohen ]: So we [Speaker 7 ]: have both of those two challenges that we're trying to mitigate. Today, as it relates to the upper limit, the infrastructure limit, we are actually giving out free transformer upgrades. We justify this through the increased sales. So because there's just so much load from this electric vehicle, it's about the same use as a house. We get a ROI of, like, less than two years on that sort of investment. And what we found is people going to buy an electric vehicle, they're not thinking about their transformer at home. Right? People in the energy industry might be, but no one else is really thinking about this thing outside on the pole. And so what we didn't wanna do is give them incentive for an electric vehicle, have them come home, try and plug in their electric vehicle, then give them a five thousand dollar bill. Right? Kinda sends the wrong signal. So that's why we've made that decision. And I'll touch a little bit on how we're hoping to actually shift that strategy a little bit to a more affordable strategy either than that. So to address this transmission peak, this timing issue, right, one of our goals, and this is fairly common. Right? There's many programs out there. Good amount of power is doing this. In fact, almost all utilities have some sort of shift program in place, right, where you shift the load from this kind of earlier time frame to a later time frame. Right? So that's generally after the transmission peak occurs, three to nine PM. So we have a variety of programs in this space. We manage chargers. We manage vehicles directly, actually, and then we also have some behavioral programs. So for folks who don't want their charger communicated with, they can set a manual schedule. Again, this is fairly common in the utility space. I would say there's nothing that we're doing that others aren't, but it's this shifting that, we're trying to do. Unfortunately, that addresses the it doesn't address the distribution issue. It only addresses this kind of, like, timing issue. And so what we're trying to do, the next phase, what we think is a little bit more, new and innovative is this shifting the shaping of load. So we have the shift to time, and then we also wanna shape and decrease that load. Why? What we're seeing is that typically people are charging for two to three hours. Right? They're not driving huge distances during the day. Even at Vermont where we have pretty significant commute mileage, generally, two to three hours is more than adequate to fully recharge your vehicle. And so what we believe that we can do, and we have demonstrated this on a small pilot that we're working on, is that we can actually ramp down that charging, which will decrease the impact to the to the system infrastructure, meaning that here, we don't have to go replace this piece of infrastructure. We can continue using it. We can compensate someone to allow us to manage their electric vehicle charger. And the idea there is that in the morning, they're not gonna notice a difference because, ultimately, most people just wanna set this piece of equipment and forget it. Right? And as long as their vehicle is charged in the morning, they don't really pay attention to what when it's happening. I mean, there's probably some folks out there who are super curious, but what we found is the vast majority of people are very interested in these programs. Again, they're getting a financial comp you know, some sort of compensation to participate in this, roughly a hundred bucks a month a hundred bucks a year. Sorry. Not a [Andrea Cohen ]: hundred percent. Really. For some. [Speaker 7 ]: So, anyway, our goal here is to both shift and shape the electric vehicle load, and that's the pilot that we're running currently. [Vice Chair Becca White ]: So that's very interesting. [Andrea Cohen ]: Do you [Vice Chair Becca White ]: how how do you do is it the charger that you kinda tamp down and limit, or is it the power going to the charger? And do people know that that's happening so that if there was, if if they did wanna go out in the middle of the night or something, they can say no. Not today. [Speaker 7 ]: Yeah. So we're actually communicating directly to the charger or the vehicle itself. Very similar to the transmission program, we're using that same communication pathway, but then just doing slightly different activity. And all of our programs have an opt out. So in the event that someone really needed it, they could opt out of that program. We see very few opt outs, so we've we've probably done about seven hundred events that we've called in the last five years. Right? There's, like, four hundred people in those events. So I don't know what that is. Twenty eight thousand or something individual times. We've had, like, less than twenty people opt out of the program. [Andrea Cohen ]: And so they'll get, like, a text or something. Yeah. They'll get to have like, tonight's gonna be different. You know, we're gonna mess with your you know? [Speaker 7 ]: Twenty four hours in advance, usually. Sometimes, you know, we're we're trying to decrease that time just because what we like having that option. It builds trust in the program. We found very few people are using it. But in lieu of that part of the program, I think people would be less interested in participating. So Yeah. [Vice Chair Becca White ]: Totally. I would appreciate it if I were yeah. [Todd Law ]: So, you [Andrea Cohen ]: know, you you need to be charged in the middle of the night. For some reason, you're going somewhere. You can just opt out and and [Vice Chair Becca White ]: Or if you have two cars used on the charger, that's what we have at my house. [Chair Richard Westman ]: So so are these all of the chargers that you've subsidized or you've held, people put in that are hooked up? [Speaker 7 ]: Yeah. So it's twofold. One is, we have a charger aspect to this. To your point, yes, those are the ones that we've subsidized to basically allow us to, manage those those loads. And then second, we're also we have around seventy vehicles that we communicate directly through. That's through cells, so very similar to, like, the OnStar network. And so Tesla, for instance, we have a program. We have around fifty or sixty Tesla vehicles that we're actually communicating directly to. The value there is that we actually understand the amount of battery capacity that they still have, which means that we can do additional kind of analytics and and sort of understand how much load do they actually need. Versus with the charger, we have no idea how much charge they need. We're just talking to the charger. So the vehicle approach is definitely where we're hoping to go. [Speaker 4 ]: But yeah. [Chair Richard Westman ]: So are these mostly class two chargers? Or Yes. Oh, yeah. We should all Yeah. [Speaker 7 ]: They're all level two chargers. Mostly because those are the ones, a, that we have visibility over through this program, b, have an upload. So level one charger, for instance, isn't really a concern for us, I would say. And then level three chargers, we just don't have the communications to those devices. And, also, I would say those are assets that are less flexible. Right? If you're in need of a level three charge, we're not really interested in managing, you know, and delaying for three hours while you're sitting there waiting to get home. That's not really [Speaker 4 ]: a a good approach. So and if [Chair Richard Westman ]: you reached out to any for example, I have a class two charger. Yes. We we got no incentive to do it. Yes. And we're not connected. [Speaker 7 ]: Yeah. Yeah. One of the one of the challenges that we face in this kind of management space is that there's costs associated with accessing those vehicle chargers. Right? So these manufacturers charge a fee Mhmm. For us to access those devices. It costs money for us to make that integration, and there has to be enough of a quantity of those devices to be out there for it to make sense. So there's lots of vendors out there that are offering these services. We've kinda focused on several that are kinda the most affordable approach, and it's a gap, I would say, to ensuring that we can kinda offer this to everyone because it just costs a lot of money to kinda make that happen. [Andrea Cohen ]: If if we provided the charger, we have been doing outreach to the folks because we know we have a list of those people. So we reach out and say, have you participated? Would you like to we also have bring your own charger. [Chair Richard Westman ]: That's right. [Andrea Cohen ]: Some people move into the service territory or they got a charger on their own, not through us, and they can also participate. So you don't have to have gotten the charger through us. Yeah. [Chair Richard Westman ]: You can [Andrea Cohen ]: k. But anyone who has a charger isn't participating, we occasionally ping them. We try not to over, you know, email people. But [Vice Chair Becca White ]: Go ahead. So you probably communicate with your elect with the electricians in the area. Right? Because you need generally, like, like, we had to put in higher [Chair Richard Westman ]: Yeah. [Vice Chair Becca White ]: Right. The head upgrade. Yeah. So so some electricians don't know about this and Correct. How it all works. But Yeah. Do you do outreach to that? [Andrea Cohen ]: I don't think we've done a direct Yeah. [Speaker 7 ]: I would say we rely pretty heavily on Efficiency Vermont. They have the contractor relationships already for for all kinds of electrification pieces. So they're really the bar conduit, I would say, to get information more so to to the masses because, again, there's just so many different entities, and they're the ones who kind of have had a lot of those relationships. So I would say in general, yes. And and, you know, as we continue to get from, like, a pilot phase to a true program phase, we see this as, like, a really valuable way to decrease the cost of connecting these electric vehicles. I would say we're not there yet on being able to, like, fully roll that out, but our strategy is very much headed in that direction. [Andrew Perchlik ]: On the on the graph of the one fifty, that was k w on the on your y axis or that? [Speaker 4 ]: Is this the KVA. Is this the Yeah. [Speaker 7 ]: Yeah. KVA and kilowatts are kind of like this wonderful, complexity. So and for all intents and purposes, you can consider those the same. You know, there is slight differences in there, but I would say there [Andrew Perchlik ]: Well, just because the level two charger is not gonna be anywhere near that. [Speaker 7 ]: This is a real level two charger. This is a nineteen kilowatt. So if you get a Ford Charge Station Pro that operates up to nineteen? [Speaker 4 ]: Yes. [Andrew Perchlik ]: Okay. [Speaker 7 ]: So those are obviously, like, significantly more concerning. The typical charging speed we see is between, like, seven and eight kilowatts roughly. Right? But, again, if you have a couple people, this is an example of a one to one relationship. If we had two people on the same transformer, which definitely we do [Andrew Perchlik ]: Right. [Speaker 7 ]: Then all of a sudden, we we have the same issue. Or, you know, if they're [Andrew Perchlik ]: I have three chargers and none of them go over. Right? [Speaker 4 ]: Yes. Yeah. [Speaker 7 ]: Right. That's fairly typical. These are these are less likely, but, you know, obviously, using the extreme example to demonstrate the point. Okay. I think, you know, one thing that we're trying to do as well as this is on just the local level, like, one transformer, one person. The same logic applies for their upstream. So when we think about our substation transformers or the transmission network, we can use the same model. So even in the event of a seven kilowatt example, which might not be causing the issue on local level, if everyone is charging at seven kilowatts, then all of a sudden, right, they might have a problem on the larger system. And so instead [Andrew Perchlik ]: of heat pump and Exactly. [Speaker 7 ]: So our our goal again is hopefully we can leverage this sort of initial learning, this initial pilot, and we're partnering with Velco to kind of look at this and understand, hey. Can we also use this for transmission issues? Because a lot of the issues that they're identifying, you know, they're identifying, like, almost a billion dollars worth of upgrades by two thousand forty. A lot of their issues are a certain number of hours a year. Right? This isn't, like, a all time problem. This is, you know, we're looking at twenty hours. So if we can decrease the load for those twenty hours, we don't need to go upgrade that transmission line. That's the whole idea. [Andrea Cohen ]: Triple charging is interesting. I was asked a question the other day about what that's equivalent to. Like, if you were charging your car that way, what is that well, the equation in terms of [Speaker 7 ]: Probably your washer running. Washer. You know? So I got another washer. [Andrea Cohen ]: Right. [Speaker 7 ]: On the aggregate, right, that could be significant. And and you know? But I would say on a on a one on one case, it's not as big of a concern for us right now. [Andrea Cohen ]: Bunch of years ago, we asked our members how they're charging. It's been a few years since we asked, so we should ask again. Like, half of them were trickle charging, and we found that really interesting. And it was like, why why is that good enough for you? And I was like, I'm not in a hurry. I'm not going anywhere. You know? Like, I guess if more than fifty percent of our members are retired, you know, they're you know, that works for them. [Vice Chair Becca White ]: And it's the cheapest. [Andrea Cohen ]: And it's the and you don't right. You don't need electrician. Yeah. You don't need, you know, all those costs. And so the cost we typically start at like, can you explain, like, which side of the meter? [Speaker 4 ]: Like Yeah. [Speaker 7 ]: We're definitely, like, outside the house, typically. Right? So inside the house, VC generally doesn't have much responsibility. We're happy to assist however we can, but there's really not much we can do in these scenarios. So our kind of line of is always, like, outside the house. [Andrea Cohen ]: Right. So the electrician comes in and works with the member. We don't proactively we don't have the list of electricians. Yeah. But sometimes we'll get contacted and we're happy to help and we're happy to help the member. But there's costs there. Right? So so you're going like, sometimes people are just like, trickle charge is fine. I don't wanna, you know, pay an electrician. I don't wanna have to even if we're providing the meter the the charger free, there's still gonna maybe be cost that Yeah. Incur. [Speaker 7 ]: And I will say that, like, you know, we've seen definitely an increase in the amount of people who basically come to us and said, like, hey. My inside the house needs to get operated at a significant cost. Is there anything you can do? Actually, one of the new chargers we're deploying now has the capability to kind of manage on inside of the house. It's not something we do. It's something that's kind of automatically programmed in, and we have seen a couple of various options. We we generally I think what we see generally is that the electrician space is kind of definitely still learning how exactly to navigate these challenges without the kind of traditional approach. Just like here, we're talking about a nontraditional infrastructure approach. There are nontraditional approaches to solving some of these inside the house issues as well, and it's just early days in that space, I would say. The code is just was recently updated, and then a lot of the kind of understanding of the technology capabilities that out there are still kind of in its infancy. So we're hopeful that that can also, decrease the impact that that's having. And Powerwall, [Andrea Cohen ]: do you do anything with Powerwalls? [Speaker 7 ]: We have a bring your own battery program here, so we don't actually, purchase them and give them and lease them out. We we have a bring your own device program. We are starting a grant funded income qualified battery program this year, which will be taking that kind of GMP route. So we have around a hundred twenty batteries enrolled currently, just about half of the ones that are out there. We get folks around thirty to sixty dollars a month to to participate. [Andrea Cohen ]: Was that federal? I can't remember who funded that. She was talking about funding. So that's feeling safe right now. Opportunities for future, who knows? Right? [Chair Richard Westman ]: All the uncertainty around that. So Senator Lane's got questions. [Speaker 0 ]: Hello. Thank you, mister chair. This is a lovely presentation. I appreciate you taking the time, and, you know, I'm very familiar with this. So it's nice to see that VEC is kind of entering this frame of thinking about electric vehicles as well with load management. I'm wondering, you talked about making changes internal to the home. And, basically, the only thing that I've seen that folks need to do is just upgrade their subpanel. So are you speaking about that, or is there something new that's coming up with your [Speaker 7 ]: Yeah. So there's a couple a couple approaches. Right? So for instance, if you have an existing circuit to, for instance, your dryer, you can extend that circuit from your dryer, and they have these switches that you can put in place. Right? So because because your dryer doesn't run all the time. Right? You can kinda prioritize the dryer and say, when the dryer is not running, charge my EV. Right? [Speaker 0 ]: That's cool. [Speaker 7 ]: So there's there's there's and that's a very low that can be a three hundred dollar device, right, versus a multi thousand dollar or many more thousand dollar panel upgrade. Right? That's one approach to that. And then the chargers themselves can also kinda monitor, basically, hey. They can do that same thing. That same logic can kind of occur. So, again, there's technology that can drastically reduce the cost of Verint. [Speaker 0 ]: That's exciting. Yeah. I when we you know, my dad upgraded our sub panel, but we got an EV charger, and, [Chair Richard Westman ]: you know, I [Speaker 0 ]: got a pretty good discount. So it wasn't in the thousands of dollars. It was, like, two fifty. [Vice Chair Becca White ]: Yep. But [Speaker 0 ]: I'm intrigued to hear that there's an option for folks if they can switch their dryer. We found that the cost of our electric vehicle is far less than the cost of our dryer [Speaker 4 ]: Yeah. [Speaker 0 ]: Running, which is and we're a three person household, so maybe we're just drying [Vice Chair Becca White ]: our clothes. [Speaker 7 ]: Yeah. I mean, dryers are [Speaker 0 ]: You know, we cost about Yeah. Thirty dollars a month to run our vehicle. And I commute. We use it for everything. And we were paying over a hundred and fifty dollars a month in gasoline [Andrew Perchlik ]: Right. [Speaker 0 ]: When we were driving my husband's truck. So there's a huge cost savings for your customers and also a real opportunity for you. As we've seen electric costs continue to or electric use continue to go down over time as efficiency has continued to be a part of our our work in the electric sector. I see electric vehicles as actually making up that difference. Right. So it's exciting to see that you, over time, are going to be able to have an opportunity to gain back revenue as we continue to see just more and more efficient other electric appliances. So that's exciting. And the load management, you know, I love that you're texting people. GMP texts me, like, once every week, basically, to tell me there's some event that's happening. And it doesn't I can opt out if I want. It's very simple. I appreciate the texts. So it's a good angle for you [Vice Chair Becca White ]: to continue to do. Yeah. [Andrea Cohen ]: So thank you. We've been getting some good experience with us for a bunch of years now, and I I feel like the the marketplace is wrap like, the innovation that's happening is super exciting. So, you know, I'm sure, like, every day doesn't go by that we don't get pinged by some new company with some new tech that's you know, and and navigating that and making sure we're providing good like, we try things that don't always work. Right? That's what innovation is. Right? Like, not everything is always a sure thing, but we're trying to kinda prudently move along with changes that we think will serve our members well. And there's some neat stuff coming out that we're keeping our eye on. [Speaker 7 ]: Yeah. I think, you know, the biggest challenge remains cost and doing that in a way that, you know, ultimately, we wanna demonstrate savings here. Right? So it can very easily depending on how these programs are structured, right, we give some money participating member. We give some money to the software vendor. And then our goal is to demonstrate savings. And very quickly, that other side of the pie can show that, basically, the program is giving money to the participating member and not demonstrating savings to the rest of the membership. Right? Which is not the outcome that we want. Right? And so I would say the biggest challenge of a lot of the new technology and even doing this is making sure that that other side of the pie doesn't get eroded by the software costs, doesn't get eroded by paying every little vendor to go do these cool things. Mhmm. I know a lot of, like, larger utilities where that is not the case. And so we're we really try and navigate the space, whether it's startups, whether it's entities who have, you know, just cost structures that make sense for us. [Andrea Cohen ]: So Yeah. [Speaker 0 ]: And I and I appreciate the the other side of this conversation [Andrea Cohen ]: is [Speaker 0 ]: that you can have different rates for charging. Right. So, eventually, as we hit our goals to have, you know, eighty percent of folks driving electric vehicles, your ability to set your rates will be extremely important for maintaining the revenue and seeing that that generating for you because you I I I don't think you do have any rates that are different now. Rates? No. Just in general, do you have, like, time of use rates? [Andrea Cohen ]: Yeah. [Speaker 0 ]: Yeah. So that kind of thing, I mean, we saw when people went to electric hot water heaters. I mean, it's the same it's the same conversation. So [Andrea Cohen ]: I mean, rates, there's a lot like, there's a lot there. Right? And one of our, like, priorities is that as we try to get people to transition to electricity for driving, for heating and cooling, for all these things, we need to keep those rates low or else the value proposition. Like, if you're, like, looking at the cost of alternative fuels versus electricity, we wanna be competitive. Right? So there's a lot of things that go into rates, and some we control and some we definitely do not. So a lot of times you'll hear us in the building talking about, please don't do this or do do that. And, you know, because affordability and also just for carbon reasons, because we want people to transition, we have to not keep having electric rates go up. Right? So I think they're complementary. When we talk about reducing carbon, keeping things affordable, those are those are well aligned. There's a reason that those both matter. And we're having some good load might be just worth commenting on. Like, we do a a IRP if you've heard of an integrated resource plan. Sorel's working on the next one right now. What are you seeing in terms of load projections? [Speaker 7 ]: I mean, again, right, like, these forecasts are challenging for us to do. As you saw with Andrea's slides, the the diversity, the geographic disparity of this load growth is, like, really significant. Right? So, like, we're having to simultaneously understand the growth in these areas that are seeing almost no electric vehicles. And then, like, places like Hinesburg where one in ten members has an electric vehicle. Right? So it's, like, both of those areas need to be focuses for us. So, you know, I would say, again, we're trying to come up with strategies that are that are relevant to the entire territory while also balancing investment and things like resiliency. Right? [Speaker 4 ]: So Mhmm. [Speaker 7 ]: As as is generally the case in these kind of capital investment, entities like us, It's it's a constant kind of shifting and balancing of what is a very fixed limited resource of capital investment to to meeting the needs that we're trying to make. [Chair Richard Westman ]: And, personally, you know, the background material around the surveys and why I believe what they do when I it's very interesting to bring background information about that, I think. [Andrea Cohen ]: Like the survey itself? Like Yeah. We should Yeah. We work with a company that does this. You know, they're statistically significant. It's professional design. We do it every year. We didn't do a COVID year because we're just like, I don't even know. It's like a weird year. It it's statistically significant. It's over a thousand members, you know, so it's it's really solid, good data. And we ask a range of questions. Like Well, [Chair Richard Westman ]: when you get to it a long time Right. And there this is not [Andrea Cohen ]: Right. And we like that because we could see the trends, which is always really interesting. But we ask everything about what do you think about our rates? What do you think about our service? What do you think about our programs. You know, we really dig into all that. And every year, you know, we we try to ask the same question on certain things so we could see those trends, but we add certain questions. Like, one year, we asked about you know, we're focused on reliability, and we're like, well, what could happen if members have generators? Like, nobody wants their power to go out, but how bad is it if you have a generator versus not? Right. It's a different scenario. And about half of our members have generators. We're like, oh, that's really interesting. I would never have guessed that. So if there's things you're interested in, we're happy to sometimes add a question or two if there's something or anything. So we've used every time. Happy to come back. So if there's something you would like us to get [Chair Richard Westman ]: Any of the background information about the survey that I think would probably be interested in. Yeah. [Andrea Cohen ]: I could send a link. We put we're very transparent with our members about so every year, we we post the survey on our website so you could see all the questions and all the answers are all there. So I'll share [Chair Richard Westman ]: the link. Yeah. It's if we're gonna meet goals, I'm probably [Andrea Cohen ]: Thanks for the time. It's good to see you. Nice. [Speaker 0 ]: Okay. Wait. Can I Thank you [Andrew Perchlik ]: very much? [Andrea Cohen ]: You know, [Speaker 0 ]: I'm gonna say, I do wanna apologize. But when when I left, I was sent this giant version of the mail Oh, I did. And it just I know. [Vice Chair Becca White ]: And I'm literally out loud. It's like Yeah. Overlapping at the end. We're all getting instant. So I know the right side. [Speaker 0 ]: Oh, no. Stop me. [Speaker 7 ]: Easy to read. [Vice Chair Becca White ]: Isn't that really cool? They both stayed there. I I [Andrea Cohen ]: know that some of us are getting over the website. [Chair Richard Westman ]: Yeah. Really? So they're probably done. They're sending it to me, not you. I [Vice Chair Becca White ]: think I would have that. No. I'm sorry. [Andrea Cohen ]: I know. I'm sorry. Trick. I [Andrew Perchlik ]: didn't yeah. I was like, [Speaker 4 ]: why didn't you get this super large? [Andrew Perchlik ]: It's not even the biggest joke. [Vice Chair Becca White ]: I assume it was a joke from me. [18 seconds of silence] [Speaker 0 ]: Patrick, were you in DC? Did you come back? [Speaker 4 ]: No. It's just Michelle, Jane. [Chair Richard Westman ]: Yes. Stay home and do the work. [Andrea Cohen ]: Sit. Is it working? I don't see where I [Speaker 4 ]: can present in. [Andrea Cohen ]: You have any Yeah. I'll get it. [Chair Richard Westman ]: Alright. [Speaker 4 ]: Thanks, Morning. And for the record, Patrick Murphy, state policy director for the agency of transportation. Just have a few slides to go through Mhmm. To talk about how how possibly came to the maybe as a structured theme at this last session and then Cool. [Chair Richard Westman ]: Well, I know we're just getting started. So Sure. [Speaker 4 ]: Let an update is probably good. Yep. So we'll go through sort of the thinking behind it last session, what we're expecting for revenue, and then just some of the issues that have come up as we we strive to implement. I won't read all of this. It just it's here for reference if we have to go back to the actual actual text. Well, Ian, we brought it, so he [Chair Richard Westman ]: can probably. Yeah. That's right. [Speaker 4 ]: But I will just summarize. So there's four sections in last year's Tivo. The first section just establishes the fee for eighty nine dollars for battery electric vehicles, forty four and a half dollars for the plug in hybrids. And it does so by tying the fee to the registration fee. So it's not setting an absolute cost. It's a relationship between the registration fee. If the registration fee were to change, then it too would change. It directs the revenue from the EV infrastructure fee to the agency of commerce community development in support of their community charging programs. The the last year, there was not a a lot of money in the budget as this year to be able to go into what, you know, Andrea and Daryl just talked about as being a significant issue access to charging, in particular charging. And so the I think the feeling of both committees last year was that by linking this fee, there would be greater acceptance of the fee in the first place, but then it would benefit both existing and future EDB owners. The other statistic you heard earlier surrounds EV adoption among renters, and so providing home charging access, whether it be direct or shared is an important way to to provide that confidence that you can get by with the electric vehicle. If you have to sort of charge out in about using the public infrastructure, it becomes more of a challenge. You're competing for spaces and and for the ability to to get around. [Andrea Cohen ]: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. [Chair Richard Westman ]: So this section just remind us. Sure. Andy might be better at this than why didn't we come up with that eighty nine, ten, eleven, forty four, fifty, and and what was the history of that? Right. [Speaker 4 ]: Sure. So I can skip ahead. [Chair Richard Westman ]: Is that a handy new presentation? Well, then Okay. Don't do it. Okay. So [Speaker 4 ]: just a second section thirty seven, it directed DMV to implement public outreach plan. They did this this past fall to notify all EV owners that there would be a fee. That that would be followed by a communication when you actually go to renew your registration. So people are paying a fee all come, you know, January first. They're paying on their registration cycle, and some people have, you know, the two year registration cycle, so they won't see this be until next year possibly. So section thirty eight then actually repeals what was introduced in section thirty six. And then upon passage of a monospace user fee, we would then have the fee for battery electric vehicles replaced by that and buffed. And then for plug in hybrids, you would have that fee continue. But the linkage between the revenue and the charging of the structure would then be severed and to go back to the transportation fund. So and then in section thirty nine directs the agency to include a project in the f y twenty six budget for the commerce and community development to support the small ten unit dwelling carbon and the workplace charging. And that's the piece that we we just gotta have a conversation about today. [Andrew Perchlik ]: What about if we the fee if we accomplish what we want with charging stations, that's where the fees going down, right? Yes, sir. [Chair Richard Westman ]: We need to get to where [Andrew Perchlik ]: we gotta get without implementing the mileage based user fee system at that time when we reach where we're supposed to be with charging stations. Does this sunset then? Yeah. If we haven't implemented the the program? [Speaker 4 ]: So the language as it's written, only sunsets after a Milospace user fee is implemented. It's unlikely that the amount of revenue that we'll see from this will get us to, like, our Where we got full charge and needs. And we do plan to bring for this session to actually put into statute the the the outlines of a monospace user feed for plug in electric vehicles, which would, you know, recall can still be done on the timeline that we've presented in the past, which is July one, twenty twenty six. So, from now until, you know, you're talking about eighteen months, there's not going to be a significant amount of Right. Revenue or excess revenue if it were to continue. K. So this is just the language that was included on their on Dean Pete's website. And some of the language was then adapted to what's being included in the registration renewal notices. I think we had a conversation at some point earlier in the session about what people were understanding the fee was going towards. And so all folks who are renewing their registrations from here on out are receiving this kind of message that not just what the fee is, but what it's going towards. And this is to help kind of frame an answer to your question earlier. So committee last year had looked at what where where else is this happening in the country? And it's most stays through the throughout the country have some sort of fee that's charged to electric vehicles, the average being about under thirty, yeah, hundred thirty seven dollars. And, you know, the agency had presented our proposal for the Myspace user fee, which worked its way through a a stakeholder process. And we there was a a real feeling among those participants that a flat fee wasn't the fairest way to assess, whether it be electric vehicle owners or even high efficiency fuel efficiency vehicle owners, that a flat fee falls short on a number of different fronts. First, it just falls unevenly on different folks in terms of income, whether they're based in more rural areas or urban areas. But then there's the question of how do you that we've had earlier in in the session about how do you continue to maintain the revenue over time. And a flat fee just doesn't do that. Even if you sort of peg it to some index, it doesn't necessarily keep up with all of the mileage that is actually being being driven on Vermont roads. So that was a key consideration that, you know, a a flat fee, if it's too high, would be too much of a burden on folks with low incomes right off but whereas a mileage based student fee can be paid as you go. So we didn't want necessarily to get into, you know, some of the fees that maybe are upwards of two hundred dollars, but limit the amount that billing that had to be done through DMV, which also came with its own administrative costs and just keep it as one set amount. So I think the the the direction that we received from the committee last year was we wanted to be high enough that it actually brings in some revenue that can go towards the investments in charging infrastructure, but not so high that it it acts as a inequitable sort of impediment to electric vehicle adopt adoption. [Vice Chair Becca White ]: Thank you. That's very helpful. So New Hampshire has a hundred dollar fee? [Speaker 4 ]: Yes. Do you [Vice Chair Becca White ]: know what they use it for, or is it just general revenue? [Speaker 4 ]: I think it's just it goes to their transportation. [Vice Chair Becca White ]: It's not allocated program. Something else. [Speaker 4 ]: There's I don't believe that there's any other program in the country that specifically directs it towards EV charging infrastructure. I think that was something you need to go about. Okay. Thank you. [Chair Richard Westman ]: So what's the total number of states that you're doing with flat fees? [Speaker 4 ]: I think it's At least forty. Easier to count. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm I'm gonna throw out a number now that it's up on this thing. [Chair Richard Westman ]: With all the problems with the flat fee, it is the easiest to Sure. [Speaker 4 ]: That's the least least cost there. Yeah. For for for sure. Go ahead. [Speaker 0 ]: Thank you, mister chair. I mean, obviously, last session, I was very disappointed by the introduction of this fee, and I submitted a multiple forms of amendment. I'm hoping to not see this fee go into place before we hit fifteen percent adoption of electric vehicles in purchase. So not even fifty percent of vehicles overall, but even just the purchase of them. [Speaker 4 ]: Right. [Andrea Cohen ]: And I [Speaker 0 ]: know that agency felt strongly they had to move ahead on that even though we weren't necessarily going to hit that. So did we hit fifteen percent uptake? Because that was the argument that was given to me as why we were doing it, is we would hit it by the time we got to the PB implemented. [Speaker 4 ]: Yeah. So I think if you go back to testimony last spring, we said we think we're gonna get Yeah. Pretty close, and we're certainly trending in that direction. We you know, in the month of October, this past October, we hit fourteen point six percent. [Speaker 0 ]: Good. [Speaker 4 ]: For the last quarter, it appears that we're for the last so the third quarter, we're about thirteen point six percent overall, and we're still waiting from data from ANR that cleans the DMV data that should be out within the next week. [Speaker 0 ]: Oh, so what now? [Speaker 4 ]: For the last quarter. We're not we're not sure yet. [Andrea Cohen ]: Oh, okay. [Andrew Perchlik ]: But we We're October is one month one was high, but the quarter was thirteen. [Vice Chair Becca White ]: Okay. The Okay. So [Speaker 4 ]: So low. Yeah. Sorry. [Andrea Cohen ]: I [Speaker 0 ]: see what you're saying, but you're not sure yet because we don't know. [Speaker 4 ]: So July yeah. Okay. July, August, September, that was, thirteen point six percent. It was collectively then fourteen point six percent in October, and we don't know what the overall for October and November in December was. [Speaker 0 ]: Yeah. And the reason I was so adamant was because we have a climate action plan. We have a climate council and they put forward that recommendation and it felt like a little bit of a, kinda insult to injury, to not go with their recommendation. But, we've moved forward with it. So I respect that that's what's happening. And obviously, as an EV driver, I'll pay the fee. But I was also surprised because the main argument I heard for us implementing the fee was that EV drivers aren't paying their fair share for gross and bridges. Like, that was the just the drumbeat of opposition I heard to it. So to then have it go to EV infrastructure was very surprising to me. And I obviously won't argue against that, but I think it does perpetuate that argument still, which is, are they paying for roads and bridges? So it feels like we've put a lot of administrative effort and time into a short term solution that didn't hit the tick boxes of what our climate council asked for or answered the main argument that I heard from opponents to not having EBPs. [Speaker 4 ]: Yeah. So I would say a couple of things. One, we didn't spend, a great deal of administrative funds at all as [Andrea Cohen ]: Oh, good. [Speaker 4 ]: As a chair, A reference that is the sort of most cost effective revenue generating measure that we couldn't possibly implement. So a lot of the investments that went into the DMV IT systems make it much easier to sort of flip a switch and assign new fees. So there weren't significant administrative costs. Okay. But I think, again, to the chair's earlier question about how do we come up with this this notion of linkage between the revenue to EV charging infrastructure was, again, to look back to the climate action plan [Andrea Cohen ]: and [Speaker 4 ]: recognize that what we were trying to do is to actually support EV adoption. So if we didn't feel that a, you know, eighty nine dollar, forty four and a half dollar fee would be a significant detriment to be the adoption. People pay registration fees at that level or or or twice as much if you're paying for a plug in hybrid. And when you look at the overall sort of revenue that's brought in through the gas tax on average per vehicle in the state, it's about a hundred and seventy, two hundred dollars. So you're you're assigning a fee to vehicles that aren't paying anything right now towards any part of the infrastructure system that we have And, and doing so at a level that's, you know, almost half of what the average fuel possible fuel vehicle does. So the feeling was, just as was referenced in the earlier presentation, that charging infrastructure is a significant impediment to EDU adoption. And the more that we can invest in that, the more people will feel comfortable at making that shift. And I think the committee decided that investing in particular in multiunit dwellings and workplaces ensure that this was done equitably, that people would have access to home charging if they were a renter or lived in a multilunate dwelling, or they would have access to to workplace charging as another means to kind of access charging outside of, you know, their the residential situation. So So I don't wanna but [Chair Richard Westman ]: how much more do you have in the presentation? [Speaker 4 ]: So just, couple of slides. [Chair Richard Westman ]: And then, I have one to I do have a few questions about the decisions made to for the workplace versus more I think I can where we decided to direct these funds. So if we can, sure, get that, then maybe we can open up a little discussion. [Speaker 4 ]: So and just to clarify one one more point is that this proposal originated in the senate committee Yeah. Not from the not from the agency, including administration. [Speaker 0 ]: Thank you for making that point. Sure. [Speaker 4 ]: So this also gives you [Chair Richard Westman ]: a sense of You mean the the slimmer committee because there's only one of us that is here. [Vice Chair Becca White ]: Andy was really here. The same committee. [Chair Richard Westman ]: I gestured as a kid. [Vice Chair Becca White ]: No. It's not. Care. [Chair Richard Westman ]: It it is a pretty much new committee. That's why I think it's important for us to hear where we came to and Sure. [Speaker 4 ]: So this was also this is part of the report that was filed last year on the mileage based user fee, and it gives you a sense that on average different vehicle types of pay. I think, you know, when we presented in house ways and means, for example, whether it was last year or the year before. So one of the takeaways for members there was just how little, on average, FAMACHA's paid for the infrastructure that they use every day. So we have, you know, the low end of, you know, if you had a vehicle traveling five thousand miles, that that would equate roughly to about eighty nine dollars in the gas tax, forty four and a half dollars for the plug in hybrids. You you could drive twenty thousand miles and and still take less than the average gas tax that that a fossil fuel vehicle pays. So these are the revenue projections that were worked up for the committee's consideration last year. They might have been on a mapping or something, but this is put more neatly into the table. And they're based on Delco estimates that were done several years ago for a medium EV adoption scenario that had low, medium, and high adoption scenarios. And we're tracking just above the medium adoption curve for that data. So we used the vehicle counts based on where we expected we might be at the beginning of those years and projected out the eighty nine dollars and forty four and a half dollars. So looking at and then these were taken by Logan at the JFO to do their own analysis and then rework it based on the state fiscal year, right, or calendar year. And so this is the initial estimates provided by the the joint fiscal office just noting that the state fiscal year twenty five was based on an earlier iteration of this proposal that That had DMV implemented in October. So, and that was revised. It was estimated about six hundred thousand. For this first, I guess, the. For the first half of the year that the fee is in effect for the last half of this state fiscal year, and then one point seven million dollars for state fiscal year twenty six. [Speaker 0 ]: And you should know Candice in her presentation to us yesterday had six hundred thousand dollars listed. That was, I believe, the amount she had. Right. So the actual number should be five hundred thousand. [Speaker 4 ]: So we reached out to DMV, I don't know, a week or two ago, and and they, you know, looked for their to they pulled their data from their system and estimated out their own projections on what they would expect for this year, and they said about five hundred thousand and one point four million for next year. But we we're still in discussions with them about what what they're using for plug in hybrids. In the legacy system, there was no differentiation between the coding of plug in hybrids and conventional hybrids. So they made it difficult to parse out which vehicle type was which. So we just have to kind of work with that and see, you know, that way, if there were some vehicles that were being left out, that would reduce the, revenue escalation. So this is just to give you a sense of sort of where we are in our the timeline working towards the advisory suite. We expected to to begin work this January. There's a lot of uncertainty right now with federal competitive grants. So So we were awarded three million dollars in November to implement this, but we're still awaiting feedback from on working out a grant agreement and beginning the work. So we still are hopeful that that can be done in the next few months and that we can stay within our timeline to implement July of twenty twenty six. [Andrew Perchlik ]: Great. Would you need legislation to to do that, or do you already have [Speaker 4 ]: We we we have legislative language in act sixty two that allowed us to apply for a grant, proceed, begin work on things, but we would we would need statutory language to actually, you know, implement [Chair Richard Westman ]: all Would that be in the T bill this year? Or [Speaker 4 ]: Yes. Yeah. [Chair Richard Westman ]: And would teachers repose it? Or [Speaker 4 ]: Yeah. We're still working with no problem. [Chair Richard Westman ]: Is it [Speaker 0 ]: our office a and r bill that we're gonna be hearing about in house new connotation? [Chair Richard Westman ]: Oh, no. That's That's [Speaker 4 ]: distinct. Okay. Problematic. [Chair Richard Westman ]: So we should expect to see language coming over the fence. Yes. Yeah. [Speaker 4 ]: And so this is in the last slide. I just wanted to highlight section thirty nine, which was not picked up on by the agency in this and what's been submitted for the government to recommend for state fiscal year twenty twenty six. So the so we have a you know, I don't know if Candice talked about this at all yesterday, but we have an issue where this should have been included as a project in the transportation program. Even though it's not staying in the agency of transportation, it's being transferred to agency of commerce development for them to do their work in their program through a memorandum of understanding. That should have been in the transportation program and is is not. So it's a conversation that we're gonna have to have on how best to proceed there. Okay. Can Candace has some ideas around that and, you know, looking at end of year versions to to make sure that we have at least that one point seven million budgeted for, say, fiscal twenty twenty six. But that's she'll come in Friday to discuss that more. So I [Chair Richard Westman ]: would say that I'm still not real clear why how the decision was made in this committee and legal legislation about multiunit develop developments and workplace. I'm I'm still not clear about all of that. And and I don't really know what I think about all of this because I'm just because most of the charging, eighty five percent, is done in homes. There is somewhat of a disconnect for Right. When I hear the power companies come in and they're trying to control the load to make sure that there's some connection whereby we don't charge during peaks. We have ISO New England who comes in and said, we certainly can manage load to provide power to everybody. But if we do it at the wrong time, they have to use a carbon product to generate, which I'd like to overweight. And it disturbs me that we put charging stations in generally around, and there's still some out there's some out there that there isn't the maintenance for that I just find that disturbing. And not sure there's anything to do about it, but that this I just think there's questions around all of that that I'm not settled in my head that as we move into this area, is that exactly the right places to be? And those are just general questions that I have about all of this that and I know as we marched off into that, are we doing did we make the right decisions rather than [Andrew Perchlik ]: and go ahead. Me to from my perspective, the we had a multifamily charging program. Yeah. We got reports on it. They said run out of money. We had the NEVI funds, so there was a bunch of work happening in the state to do level three charters on the corridors following our NEVI plan. We and there's money there to The utilities are working with homeowners on getting chargers, whether it's free or discounted. So that seemed like it was happening. Homeowners that can afford it were doing it, and there were some incentives there. Where there seemed to be a gap is with folks that lived in apartment buildings and how that program was successful, but the money had run out. So that was seen as a gap. And they could still participate in the utilities, charging programs, charging rates at a multifamily building. But those people that live in apartment buildings were gonna likely buy an electric vehicle vehicle or plug in vehicle if they had no place plug in at night because that's like I said, that's the most convenient time to do it. Workplace, there's similar to one program, money, and then and that's another place where people are stationary for a big chunk of time. So it's not for every business. [Andrea Cohen ]: Yeah. [Andrew Perchlik ]: But so that's why we did it. We said, well, you can do do it for both because sometimes, you know, you just don't get those apartment buildings to apply or whatever the problem. But if there's a if there's a business that has employees that are there all day, it's kinda the same with charging at night. You're just charging during the day. They could also still participate in utilities management programs. So that was the reason around choosing that program because that seemed like a good program that was successful where it was a a gap in our charging point. There was no money [Chair Richard Westman ]: I think I'm not saying they're bad choices. I just Yeah. [Andrew Perchlik ]: No. No. No. Be fine. [Chair Richard Westman ]: I'm just struggling in my head to understand all of the pieces. [Andrew Perchlik ]: And, you know, we've had I forget her name. [Speaker 7 ]: Yes. [Andrew Perchlik ]: Yeah. She she's great. You can come in and talk about that program and why, you know, what's successful and what what need it's needed compared with the other charging programs. [Chair Richard Westman ]: I I I still do find it. And not to say that we put chargers in and then we haven't Oh, yeah. The maintenance change. And that bothers me. Yeah. [Vice Chair Becca White ]: Yes. Thank you, mister Shipp. So that that bothered me too. And the ones that I mentioned that were particularly bothersome, that was five years ago, four years ago. So from what I've heard with the presentation, the state learned from that. Mhmm. And so the the new charging areas that that you mentioned were you're just in line with them. That the contracts for that sound great. Well, I includes maintenance. Yeah. I Wonderful. So we have learned, which is terrific. And then just on the apartment buildings, because, actually, rental homes can have chargers, which is Do that. A fair amount of our rentals are are single family homes, so they can have chargers, which and many of them do. We talked about this in economic development last year because we had a bill. And it gets really complicated with with the multifamily because there's issues from the owner of the multifamily. Right. You know, how do you do I really have to pay for all of this, and how do I charge the person? No. Unintended. And what if they move, and what if I have chargers and I assign people? It it just gets really complicated, but it's something that can be managed for sure. It it just takes more time, and and each development really needs to to be looked at individually. [Todd Law ]: The grant money was basically essential to make it happen. [Vice Chair Becca White ]: Yes. Yes. And so that's gonna be a longer impact, but we also have we put in incentives for new developments to to include charges. So that's a better way to do it too is is to do it when it's when it's when it's [Chair Richard Westman ]: when we sell through to me. [Todd Law ]: Ron who works on with Cook. She works in the [Speaker 4 ]: problem with housing community development. [Andrew Perchlik ]: She ran out of that program. Yeah. Yeah. [Speaker 0 ]: Mister chair, I am wondering to your question. Personally, I have not experienced the same level of unworking charging stations as a regular user of charging stations that hasn't been a specific issue I've experienced. Okay. But there are way there is data on how frequently they're down. I know we could email or ask ChargePoint, who is our largest network provider, or EVgo. We could ask them to provide that how what is the percentage of down chargers at any given point. And the last time I looked at ChargePoint, they had info on their website. It's like ninety seven percent of all chargers are active and working properly at the moment. So Yeah. Of their chargers. So it would I don't know if they're [Vice Chair Becca White ]: if you have any interest in getting that data. [Chair Richard Westman ]: I'm just interested because Tesla, I hear there's no problem. And then it I it just sounded like and I have no experience in it. But the only thing I will say is in the more rural areas of the state, when I hear the survey stuff, if we're ever gonna break the the attitude, he's it's something I not that I'm suggesting that we charge in there, but we at least have to be aware of it. [Vice Chair Becca White ]: So Yes. On a different topic, but Sure. Part of this conversation, the the rate setting consideration where you showed the the various costs or actually charges to the tax to the folks depending on how much they they drive. I'd be interested to see, what we would need to charge the folks in order to recoup our costs. You know, the you know, look look at it from the other side because this is just revenue. But what what would we need from a gasoline tax in terms of mileage? Oh, I'm sorry. If we wanted to cover a certain amount of our costs with a mileage based fee, what would that fee look like? I I think that's relevant to the conversation. [Speaker 4 ]: What about the The [Vice Chair Becca White ]: the maintenance of the [Andrea Cohen ]: of [Vice Chair Becca White ]: roads and the maintenance of the highway. Okay. Yeah. I'm sorry. I should've said that. Yeah. Or or or whatever costs are appropriate, but it's roadway maintenance is is a big one. [Speaker 4 ]: Yeah. There there's a few different ways we could look at it. I mean, sort of the bigger picture general sense of the cost that that's sort of the analysis that we perform for the transportation funding study. Okay. Looking looking at, you know, overall funding needs, and then we could prong those numbers back into, you know, where what we can set up mileage fees to be into. We can also just provide a follow-up taking a session from that monospace GERD report, which goes into how we came to, you know, this estimated one point seven eight cents per mile went into the the the different factors that went into [Speaker 7 ]: that as an estimate. Okay. Now that's not [Speaker 4 ]: that's not what the agency necessarily is proposing. That would be a part of the discussion with with Citigroup. [Chair Richard Westman ]: A broader discussion around that. And I've asked a number of questions around and really find it hard to get in here. And there are some studies from other places in the country. It appears to me from some of the studies in that the general use of vehicles and transportation, separate from electric vehicles and all of that, the amount of the of family's income that we're using today is much less than it was going back in time. You know? If I go back to the nineteen fifties, it was a much higher percentage than it is today in in the net piece. Any information that the agency has generally about what the cost of transportation is to families today versus any one in would be helpful in our thinking around where we go and what we do. Not asking for your positions or anything from the agency. These are pretty straightforward estimates that people think about in periods of time. And that's regardless of whether now we move towards electric or somebody keeps a gas vehicle, I just think it says a lot about what we're all paying for the upkeep of the system that we've been handed and in many respects been handed by a generation before and what they put into maintaining the system versus what we seem to be. [Speaker 0 ]: Mister chair, if you're interested, energy act there's an energy burden report that is done about Vermont every year, that we can have presented to us, which does say that eleven percent of Vermonters' income is spent on energy costs and forty five percent of that, the the largest share of it is transportation. Mhmm. So we do have specific costs for and it's, I think, annually around seven thousand dollars. [Chair Richard Westman ]: But I think for me, I'd like and I totally would like to hear that, but also there is historical data because I think it's helpful for us to understand what we're doing versus what generations before are doing because it's my opinion that we've been handed an asset and a responsibility. And comparing that to what we've been handing and what people have done before is an important thing, I think, to understand. Because when people say we're paying, you know, don't raise my taxes, then they're flat fees. And, really, what the burden is so we all can be is dropping compared to what it was twenty five years ago or fifty years ago. I think it's an important thing for us to look at and consider. But I think, certainly, that's really important information to have. [Speaker 0 ]: Okay. We should schedule them for testing. [Chair Richard Westman ]: So that is a question for you, Patrick, and what the agency has to. [Speaker 4 ]: Sure. Yeah. I would definitely follow-up. I I know that for our study, it's the the report due on the fifteenth for the capital invest program. There's a lot that's in there in terms of household energy burns related to transportation Mhmm. Now given the mix of different fuel sources and what it might look like in the future. So we can probably draw some out of that report. [Chair Richard Westman ]: I would suspect as our revenues drop in transportation because of flat fees and stuff, the burden on fees is probably dropping too. [Vice Chair Becca White ]: Great. Thank you. Yeah. [Chair Richard Westman ]: That was just a follow-up. Yeah. Because yours are specific to electric, but I'd like to see it in the overall too. [Vice Chair Becca White ]: I didn't mean for it [Andrea Cohen ]: to be specific to to electric. [Vice Chair Becca White ]: I I wasn't clear then. No. Yeah. Just all cars.

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