Light Board - Regular Meeting

Good morning, everyone. I'd like to call this July 8th Concord Light Board meeting to order. I am John Dalton, chair of the board. Our first order of business, I think, is a roll call of the Light Board members who are present. I'll identify you and if you could say present. Warren Leon. Present. Chris Schaffner. Present. Tyson Kuczynski.

Present.

Nicole Grosner. Present. And I am, once again, John Dalton, chair, present. I think our next agenda item is minutes. Chris had shared minutes last evening. Could I hear a motion to approve these minutes?

I move we approve the minutes. Yeah, I think we wanted to do separate votes on these. Is that right, Jason? Yeah. The regular session, maybe do the regular session, Warren, from Okay, I move that we approve the regular session meetings. Minutes.

Second.

Tyson?

Yes, I approve.

Warren? Nicole? Yes. Chris? Yes. And I'm also yes.

I move that we approve the minutes of the executive session from the month of June.

Could I have a second?

Just a clarification, Jason, is that the correct motion?

Well, yeah, I mean, approve but not release.

Okay. That's what I said. Yeah, okay.

I second.

Tyson?

Yes.

Chris? Yes. Nicole?

Yes.

Warren?

Yes.

And I also approve. So with that, the meeting minutes are approved. Jason, I think you are the next agenda item to provide your director's update.

Yes, absolutely. Thank you. I wanted to start by mentioning that a few members of our leadership team, myself, Joe Repoff, and Laura Scott, attended the American Public Power Association's annual conference in Boston last week. It was the first time that it was in Boston since 1986, 40 years ago. Public power in Massachusetts showed up big time. We saw maybe two dozen MLPs, representatives there, and some were presenting at some of the breakout sessions. It was a really great opportunity to network with our fellow peers in public power communities and hear some of the great things that people are working on to try to improve customer service, crisis management, and hear about some of the new technologies coming out in terms of nuclear fusion and SMRs, and also talk to some of the vendors that support our industry. So it was a fantastic conference close by. We couldn't miss it. And I think that we all took away something, whether it was at the macro level of talking about federal, legislative, and regulatory environment as it relates to public power. And then also, like I said, on the micro level in terms of customer service excellence or crisis management. So it was just a great opportunity and I appreciate Joe and Laura's attendance. We worked hard to diversify our attendance in the different sessions so that we could really make use of the time. So it was a fantastic opportunity. Let's see. So shifting to the legislative front in the packet in the CMLP electric updates, I mentioned some of the legislation that's weaving through the state of Massachusetts. If you'll remember, we've talked about in the past Um, the energy affordability bill that was introduced by the governor a couple of years ago, and then the house passed a version, uh, while the Senate is now, um, got a version that they're discussing and going to vote on very soon. And, uh, we've been tracking that there are some key differences from the house version. So there's going to need to be a reconciliation process. Um, there is a, uh, an amendment attached to the house bill. that is in support of some legislation that municipal light plants have been trying to pass for a very long time that deals with what happens when a municipal light utility is supporting another community, not necessarily during an emergency, but when somebody gets hurt or, you know, God forbid, killed. Right now, there's a lot of gray area there, and so this would just treat it like it was a mutual aid emergency. And it has nearly unanimous support among people in the House and Senate. But we're hopeful that that amendment stays. And we've been talking to our local legislators to see if that can stick because it's got, like I said, nearly unanimous support across the state. And it was, I think, a smart move to weave it into this bill as it pertains to the topic. And it also has struggled to move forward as a standalone piece of legislation for a long time. So we're keeping a close eye on that. I wanted to mention that the vehicle-to-grid tariff that the board passed very recently has been filed with the DPU. It will be advertised in the paper on Thursday, no, Friday, the Concord Bridge. And so we did learn recently that the school's bus that they currently have does not support bidirectional charging. So we'll have to wait until they take delivery of their next bus or two from Highland, hopefully very soon to be able to try the bidirectional charging and discharging. So they can currently charge with a level three, so that will definitely provide some benefit to them immediately or when school starts in the fall, but hopefully it's fall or winter when they take delivery of their next buses. The audit for 2025 is wrapping up. The finance team has put in an incredible amount of effort to provide all the materials to the auditors. Again, these are new auditors, so they're asking for things that the old auditors never asked for, which to us is great. It's, you know, it's more work, but it's also a great opportunity to make sure that our financial processes align with their expectations and other municipal light plant communities. Um, there's a long PBC list, which is the provided by client list, uh, materials that we need to get for them. And they check everything that we give them. They have to check like kind of independently from a third party if they can find it. So, um, there's been a lot of work and Anna and her team have done a great job. Uh, 2025 cash has been reconciled. Now we're reviewing all the reconciliation and looking to, um, make any adjustments that are necessary. Um, Nan continues to coordinate with the town's finance department and we're trying to improve the timeliness of the journal entries that we do so that they match within the same month. It'll allow us to have fewer reconciling items on an ongoing basis and should just, um, make cash rec a lot easier going forward. Um, I just want to mention on the energy management side, these are some, sometimes, um, things that people don't see until they're vitally needed, but, um, Our energy efficiency and electrification specialist, Pamela Cady, has worked on putting together a resource for solar customers that, you know, once you get your solar system, you might have a lot of questions, questions about how RECs work or what you do with your panels when they break down over time. And there's also a lot of people who installed solar panels and then moved out and somebody has moved in and they go through the whole process. So they didn't get kind of that education as they went through the rebate application and worked with the installer. So this will be a great resource for those folks who are taking ownership of a system and didn't have any previous knowledge, or they might want to know what's happening in the future when their RECs change to a different type. So I appreciate her effort in putting that together and Laura and Jan and all the work that they do. And I just wanted to mention that regarding recruitment, We do have several open positions right now. We've got a few in the line crew as well as customer service and broadband and interviews continue. We're also just trying to increase that candidate pool. It's really challenging to recruit for these specialized positions and we've tried to leverage all the help from HR we can get as well as outside recruiters and agencies to help us. So I'll pause there and see if anybody has questions.

Any questions from board members or comments? Sounds good. Not seeing any. I guess, Jason, are you going to be providing the broadband update?

I will, yeah. And if we have a future topic soon, Dale can come and talk about the MDU plan. So I know there was some interest on that. So this week, work is commencing on Gifford Lane, which is that area where We have existing broadband infrastructure, but it's not connected to the larger broadband network. So we're still in the electric space. So the teams are out there kind of coming up with a work plan. And we're doing the paving in conjunction with Public Works on this project since it's a one-off. And we've coordinated with them to kind of talk about how this process works and can work going forward. So we do expect to continue to do more work like this as we seek to separate the two for both reliability and safety reasons. The team, the broadband team is working on setting up a new provisioning tool. So right now we have a customer management system, which is our ERP and it handles all of our billing and contains meter data and everything. And then we have a system that manages all the equipment that our customers have for broadband. And previously, prior to the big upgrade that happened, those two systems were talking. And what that meant was that you could make a change in the billing system and it would actually change, you know, say the speed that you have on the customer equipment management system. And when we moved to the new platform, that link had to be kind of reestablished and it's quite a process. So Dale and Jennifer and their teams have been working on getting that piece set back up to allow for provisioning. It will really streamline so that when a customer calls into customer service, they can directly make a change to a customer's account and it will have all the right workflows and make the changes necessary. Today in the state, basically, they have to take a note and send it to the broadband team. They have to change something. And then there's a more detailed reconciliation that needs to happen to make sure that people are being billed at the appropriate level. So this is important work and hopefully will be done in the next few weeks. We're still finalizing the agreement to support bringing fiber to the Concord Housing Authority. This is a great win for getting fiber to more places. Again, we are not providing the service to the end customer. We are providing the service to the company who's providing the service to the end customer. So it will result in some additional revenue. This is a different type of internet service, though. than we usually offer. And so we had to create a new service agreement and have council vet it and their council has written comments. And so we're kind of going back and forth, but once we get that signed by both parties, we should be able to move forward with the actual installation to get them the fiber. They're doing work in all the buildings as it is to get the, they're using point to point wireless and some other technologies to distribute it once it gets there. So they're still working on that. Dale and Daniel, our network engineer, are working on removing old equipment from the upgrade. There are several pieces of equipment that are still connected to power supplies and other things. So they're removing those carefully to make sure there's no disruptions in service. They'll probably wait for one of them for a maintenance window for doing other things in the future as there's just a risk of it causing an issue. So they're going to wait for that one. But They're just trying to take these out carefully and ensure that we still have complete redundant power and adequate rack space for future expansion. We are phasing out one of our internet service providers. Currently, Concord Broadband has four. So originally, we operate with three for redundancy reasons, and each of the three ISPs brings their circuit in in kind of a different direction. So the thought process there is that if there were a big fiber break or some sort of pole was struck somewhere. It might take down one or even two of the service providers, but not all three. We did add a new one recently because we needed faster speeds. And so the intention was to always reduce back to three. It's quite a project because these ISPs come with IP addresses and those get assigned statically to customers. So The team has been working with customers and the town that have been using these IP addresses to transfer them over to a block that we lease independently so that we won't have to deal with that again. And then we'll be able to save some money. Probably, as you can imagine, internet speed pricing does tend to drop over time as speeds increase in general. So we're getting the much faster speed at nearly the same price as we're getting much slower speed. there won't be a net cost increase at all when we reduce this fourth ISP. And so it's important work for cost savings and it still leaves us as protected as we've always been. So I'll pause there and see if anybody has any questions.

Any questions from board members or comments?

Sounds good.

Not seeing any. I guess the next agenda item is battery pushback on the distribution system. Are you going to be presenting that, Jason?

Yeah, I'll start. And Laura and Joe might chime in at different times. So I just want to frame this briefly to explain the purpose of the conversation. You know, the policy since battery storage has been introduced, residential battery storage has been introduced and conquered is to and not allow those systems to push back in excess of the home's consumption. So it can match the home's consumption in terms of its output, but it can't exceed it and push back. And all of the batteries that are installed have a setting that allows that to take place. And they can, you know, they can say allow energy pushback or don't allow energy pushback. And so we mentioned this recently and somebody asked kind of the question, like, why is this? And, you know, are we, changing that. And so we thought it would be good to provide a little bit of background about battery pushback and why, why it is the way it is and how it is, and then allow the board to have asked questions and have a discussion about it. And then, you know, in the future we could talk about whether it's something that can change or should change. So with that, let me share my screen. All right. Let me just find my other screen. Okay, everybody can see that slide? All right, so I'm gonna go through this particular section a little bit quickly. This has to do with kind of the regulations surrounding BESS or battery storage. I think the key takeaway is that battery storage as a technology has evolved a lot faster than the regulations have popped up to kind of ensure the safety of and safe operation of these systems. You know, the Tesla Powerwall was released in 2015. Obviously, energy storage systems existed before then, but in terms of the sealed single unit package came out and it was quite popular. But at the time, you know, the National Electric Code really was only dealt with battery storage systems peripherally, and it didn't really have, like, standalone sections that dealt with these types of systems. So they did create a task force to create a new rule and kind of addressed it, but only in 2017. And I believe the Powerwall 2 came out in that year or even in 2016. So Powerwall 2 was dramatically more popular than Powerwall 1. So early on, I think there was a attempt from a fire safety perspective to limit the size of these systems to prevent large thermal runaway situations that might fully engulf a home or structure. And so you saw this 20 kilowatt hour cap and early on that was kind of like the recommended maximum size of these systems. And really it was not arbitrary, but kind of seen as a limit that would ensure somewhat of a containment if there was a problem. But you saw codes applied very unevenly across the country. Even in Massachusetts, there are some communities where fire chiefs or fire departments insist that these systems cannot be mounted on living structures. They have to be on detached garages or on sheds or mounted on some sort of other structure. So And then in terms of safety and overall, you know, chemistry issues, we saw the Underwriters Laboratory UL coming out with some standards that would either prevent or contain thermal runaway, right? So you might have a cell that fails, but you don't want to have an entire module or an entire battery pack or a rack, or if it's a large scale, you know, energy storage, you don't want to have the entire container have a thermal runaway situation. So These standards were created and adapted over time to ensure that there was a higher degree of safety. This is just a short timeline of looking at that UL standard and note that it was revised as early as or recent as 2025. And again, this applies for very small systems and also very large systems. But, you know, if you imagine that the products were being sold back when these standards were developed, they weren't clearly in existence. I will say that in general, the number of batteries that are being deployed is increasing at a very high pace. And the number of annual incidents is seemingly flat, which indicates that the safety of these systems is improving over time, which is great. So now we kind of need to talk about net metering and what that is. And I think most people understand, but on the simplest level, It's kind of like an electron for an electron. If the utility gives you an electron, you can give it back and we'll call that the same. Even though you might give us the electron during the day and you might take it back at night, we're calling it the same. And when that system was created, the state of Massachusetts kind of did that because they were trying to drive the adoption of DER and solar in particular. And so the thought process was that it would help with the payback calculation of solar and some of these resources to improve the economics and drive widespread adoption. And it did. But in 2019, the DPU regulation basically said that a battery system that charges from solar and from the grid cannot participate in net metering tariffs. And that's because the DPU is looking at this from a fairness perspective. They're trying to protect all rate payers And they already know that net metering is inherently beneficial to the solar customers. But that level of arbitrage was seen as kind of an illegal use of these public funds. Because it's for the public good that we have some of these systems. But that was a line that they set that said going further than this could be problematic. So in terms of what how batteries actually operate, there are these programs. And Warren, maybe this looks familiar. This is from the Clean Energy Group. The Connected Solutions Program is a battery funding program that offers incentives to residential and commercial electric customers. And so it basically says, if you enroll in this program, we'll give you some money. And in exchange, we will discharge your battery when it's beneficial to the utility. But that's the only time that your battery can discharge. It can't discharge at other times. So then there is this regulation that defines net metering, that what can participate in net metering in Massachusetts, and it does not name battery storage. So the investor in utilities had to file tariffs with the DPU on how interconnections work. And they all state that if you apply as an exporting facility for battery, you must participate in connected solutions or some other qualifying PPA kind of a one-off agreement. they do not allow batteries to push back in IOU territories because they are utilizing net metering. So municipal light plants though are not beholden to some of these regulations and rules and so they obviously have the freedom to create their own tariffs and moving to a net billing credit instead of a net metering credit is kind of a way to ensure fairness so that people are not necessarily arbitraging unfairly. And net billing, just to clarify, is every electron that you send us, we're going to give you a credit for it. And every electron that we send you, we're going to charge you for instead of just calling them a swap. And as you know, the time of day rate that was set and the solar compensation does less the distribution charge from that because it is less operates under the assumption that those electrons are traveling through the infrastructure, the transformers, and there is a cost to the distribution system. And so they're paying that in terms of getting their credits. So just a couple more slides before I get to the kind of the numbers of what we have in Concord. So just a reminder, solar inverters, they're grid following. They can't create their own sine waves. When they lose line power, they shut down. Battery storage inverters are grid forming, which means they can actually create those sine waves. One implication there is that a battery that's running can allow a solar system to charge it even when line power is lost. But it does create the situation that if the grid is down, then a battery could push back if it were configured to do so. There is an IEEE standard that says that solar and battery inverters must detect unintentional islanding and cease backfeeding. What that means is that when there's a power outage, they have two seconds to stop discharging. And they usually do that with like a physical transfer switch that basically cuts the power. And it can't be restored until power is back on. It detects line power. But keep in mind that, you know, that is under the assumption that the system that's installed is complying with all these standards and that it's not configured in a way that's inconsistent with kind of the manufacturer's instructions. And there are usually physical disconnect switches on all solar and battery installations, but those are difficult to find. And keep in mind, even if you flip a switch in terms of OSHA standards and lockout tagout protocols, you know, you can't assume that that is fully de-energized permanently unless it can be actually secured. And so you'd need to be able to put like a padlock on it or something. And that can be very tricky when you're dealing with a restoration across many, many customers. And, you know, I think the other thing I'll say here is that early on when you're dealing with a manufacturer and it's a contained environment, there's a single battery unit, or maybe there's a battery in a gateway, you know, there's a higher degree of certainty that it can be programmed and managed and controlled as expected. But as time has gone on and as newer generations of equipment have been released, we're starting to see some non-standard things like old units being paired with newer units or one manufacturer being paired with another or equipment that was orphaned or abandoned and then being kind of Frankensteined into something else with a different manufacturer. And so the assurances that these systems will operate as expected are sometimes not 100%. And so we do still have some concerns with battery systems during outages, for example. We do still treat all lines like they could be energized, but keep in mind in the old world of generators, it's really hard to hide a generator because they're so noisy, but a battery is nearly silent. Joe, is there anything else you want me to add on that particular safety thing?

No, I think that you get pretty much all the big things there. I apologize for my camera not working this morning, but yeah, I think you fit pretty much most of it right there.

Okay. So in terms of the benefits of a battery, like, well, if we can't push back, what are they being used for? Why are people installing them? So number one, in lieu of a generator, these systems can be used to power a house when there is a power outage. And as I mentioned, they can allow the solar panels to operate and produce even when the grid is down. And then they can be programmed to maximize self-consumption. So this is like discharge the battery to match my home's usage during a peak time, for example, so that I don't need to import from the grid at one of those more expensive times under time of day. The last piece that I want to mention before I show some metrics of what we have is transformer sizing. So one of the barriers, if we consider changing this policy, will be how we've treated the existing customers and how we size transformers. So here are a couple sizes of residential transformers. There are many others. These are probably the most common sizes. And keep in mind that there is a sweet spot for a transformer in terms of the load that it serves. You're trying to target kind of mid-range, maybe 50% to 80%. You don't want to get too high or they're going to overheat. If you exceed the nameplate rating, you can have a catastrophic failure. It can be a very bad situation. But you also don't want to put in a huge transformer everywhere, both because of cost, size implications might need a different pull. And again, if you put in a huge transformer where it's not needed, it's not going to be as efficient and you're going to have more line losses. So the way that we handle transformer sizing now is we're You know, when an application for interconnection comes in to add DER, the engineering team looks at the transformer that's there and calculates kind of the impact of this new resource on there. And it assumes the worst case scenario, right? So if it's a solar customer and they're installing a 10kW system, they need to assume that that system may be pushing 10kW onto the transformer. And they need to calculate if it can withstand that or if that's going to exceed the rating for its safe use. But again, customers are usually hooked up to the same transformer. So in this example, there are four. And you can see there's a couple with solar and a couple without. So, you know, when number three applies for solar, they're looking to see like, OK, how will that impact it? So today, if customer number three applies for solar and battery, we are only calculating the solar load in sizing that transformer. And so what that means is that if we suddenly allowed customer number three to then push back after we had already done the interconnection for the solar and battery, that transformer might not have the capacity to do that. And changing a transformer is not just a, you know, a 10 minute job. It takes a lot of engineering time. There's procurement involved and then replacing the transformer is obviously going to impact all the customers that are connected to it as they will be down for a period of time. And, um, And it can also, as I mentioned, if you're upsizing, create other issues and trigger pole replacements, and it can have a lot of other side effects. So, yeah, anything else, Joe, on transformer sizing that I missed on that?

No, I mean, you know, we also have to look at conductors. We have to look at poles. Sometimes we have to upgrade the pole or it's a pad mount. We might be looking at, you know, upsizing that. If we don't have the ability to, sometimes we have to add a second transformer and we'll split the houses. We have to look at things like voltage drops. We have to look at fault current availabilities for both not having over current problems, but also under current. We want to make sure that we have enough to trip a circuit if there's an issue. So just some of the other things that we do look at. Of course, like Jason said too, even the money stuff, we want to make sure that we're doing things effectively and efficiently when we do it. So if we know an area is going to be upgraded at some point or some of the neighbors are looking to do something and we know we have plans to do something within a few years, we'll try to put all that into our decision, whatever we do. So there is a lot that does go on in the background.

Yeah, John, do you have a question?

Yeah, Jason, just wondering in terms of like technical solutions here, is there a way that, for example, if a customer had a solar array and they wanted to add a battery, that there could be a constraint that could be imposed that they couldn't inject more than the rated capacity of the solar array so that there wouldn't be a need to replace a transformer as a result?

Yes. And that's one of the trickier things that is involved in this conversation. And that is that there are software solutions to many of these problems. But we have seen in the real world that the software sometimes gets changed. Now, usually homeowners cannot change the software. It needs to be the licensed installer or the manufacturer who does that. But those people are working for the customer. and it can be changed. So we do a witness test when we leave. So for example, we could say, you know, limit export to this KW. And that setting is probably there for most battery storage, you know, devices that are installed today or being installed today. And the problem is that that number can be changed. And so the utility is not necessarily notified when that number is changed. And every company who has one of these units has kind of a different protocol of who can change it and under what circumstances. Some are really good and they will only change it when the utility tells them they can change it. Others, you know, maybe it's the installer and the installer, again, works, is, you know, hired by the customer. So there are still concerns about relying on a software configuration that could impact, you know, a serious power outage or, you know, a fire or explosion of a transformer. So we're We understand that we have to rely on technology to a degree, but we also would prefer that we size things under the worst case scenario. Joe, do you want to add anything to that?

No, I think you hit it right there. And we do, like Jason said, we've done a battery witness test. We will make sure that A, it's not pushing back onto us. And then B, we make sure that everybody Every single battery installation in town currently has a 300-second delay before the system will switch back over. So what that means is that once utility power is restored, the whole system, the solar plus battery, will not actually connect back to us for 300 seconds. That helps us in case there's any intermittent, you know, the power comes back on, then it's off again. You know, a lot of times this can happen with reclosal operations or something is, you know, making a breaking in the field. It just protects everything. You know, I know Jason mentioned earlier about one of the IEEE standards of two seconds. Two seconds is a long time, you know, in the electric world, right? A lot of things can, a lot of, energy can flow in two seconds. So these are just some of the things that we also have to keep in mind when we're looking at some of the safety aspects of designing this stuff.

Yeah, you'll see in a second that we have about a megawatt of battery storage in Concord today, and two seconds of a megawatt is not an insignificant amount. So Laura, since you and your team lead the rebate process, do you want to talk about the number of systems that we have and the pending in the queue? Sure.

Good morning, everyone. Right now we have a total of 37 systems, either online or pending interconnection. You can see most of those 34 online and the other three are pending. Total capacity is 485 kilowatts. Remember the difference between capacity and storage is the size of the pipe and then the amount of water it can hold. So the size of the pipe is 485 kilowatts and then the total storage capacity is 1,044 kilowatt hours, which is just a little over one megawatt. You can see that the average capacity is roughly 20 kilowatt hours, a little less, maybe 15 to 20 kilowatt hours. And so that's kind of what is already existing on our system. That's as of July 1st of this year.

Chris, do you have a question?

My question is not related to this. So finish this and then I can come back.

I'm done. Yeah, you can go, Chris. Do you want me to go back a slide?

No, a while back, I guess. I was holding my question to Leanne, but I jumped in. So you mentioned the Connected Solutions Program that the IOUs have. And my question, and excuse my ignorance, but does CLMP have anything similar for commercial customers?

Well, we didn't until you just approved a new vehicle, the grid tariff.

That was kind of our first. So that's the only one?

That's the only one, and it's a pilot. So, yeah, we don't have one right now. Although I will say, Laura, do you want to talk about the Connected Homes program?

Laura, you're muted. In the case of connected homes, it's virtual peakers software. The battery could actually push back and help reduce the utilities load beyond what the customer was using.

Our customers, unfortunately, when we rolled out time of day, we discovered that many of the manufacturers of these devices, while they would allow periodic dial backs of their equipment to meet peak load, they wouldn't allow cycling these equipment every single day for time of day. So we've not been able to offer the same type of benefit to our customer because instead of just trying to reduce the utilities peaks, we are now encouraging customers to reduce usage during those peaks through the time of day rate rather than from a per device per month customer credit, which is a good thing because it's more accurate, but yeah. So that's sort of the summary of where we are with connected homes. I see questions.

Yeah, I think many of us just got booted off and came back. Maybe it was not just me. And so I'm going to have to say that I missed most of what you said, Laura.

Okay, good, because I didn't say it very well the first time. So maybe I can do better the second time. Jason was asking about what CMLP offers to customers in the way of our program we call Connected Homes. And Connected Homes is the MLP equivalent of Connected Solutions. You know, Connected Solutions is for the IOUs. Well, Connected Homes is operated through MWEC, and it operates very similarly. A customer can sign up a device, could be an EV, could be a battery, could be a thermostat. And through an integrated software platform, in this case, Virtual Peeker, the utility can dial back usage of these devices during limited peak events each month. So when we're trying to determine when the transmission and or capacity peak is gonna occur during a month, we usually need four or five, six tries to do that. So on those four or five or six days, we notify the customer, hey, we think we might have a peak tomorrow between five and 8 p.m. They have an opportunity to opt out. If they don't opt out, then they are participating in the, And in the case of thermostats, they might be dialed back three degrees. In the case of home batteries, if the MLP does not allow pushback, the batteries would be discharged simply to reduce the customer's usage during those peak hours. But if the MLP does allow pushback, then the battery would actually be discharged back onto the grid to help reduce the utility's overall peak usage during those hours. The customer typically receives a monthly compensation amount for participation in this type of program. I will say that since we've rolled out time of day, we've had to modify our offerings under this program because many of these manufacturers, while they will allow their equipment to be dialed back on a limited number of days per month, they often will not allow the utility to cycle them every single day for time of day rates. So we're moving away from the connected homes Laura Leenhouts, monthly credit utility controlled to the time of day, encouraging customers to reduce usage during the peak through a higher rate. Laura Leenhouts, Hopefully that got through this time without interruption.

That was great.

Thank you.

Yeah. Thanks, Laura. So just to clarify with the connected homes, you're you would have the capability to basically, in a sense, modify what is being pushed back by a system. Is that correct?

Jason, can you repeat the question? Because I couldn't quite hear him.

Yeah. Can we modulate under connected homes if a battery is discharging? Can we say only 5 or only 7 kW? Oh. I don't think we can.

Well, through the batteries, it would be through the interconnection application process with the utility, what those rules are. As I said, the Connected Homes program can accommodate both utilities that allow pushback and those that don't, but it's not the Connected Homes software that's controlling that. It is the software of the customer's device that is set up and checked by the utility as part of the interconnection application process.

Okay, so we don't have an actual connection into the system itself to module?

No. Usually it's like an API where the battery manufacturer gets an alert that we're calling a peak, and then they discharge according to their rules. And usually it's all in pretty quickly. That's from the kind of inadvertent test that we did. We saw massive pushback happen immediately and sustained through as long as it could.

Okay, thanks for answering the question.

Chris, do you have a question?

Just a comment. So, I mean, I certainly appreciate all the reasons why people can't push back now. I think we should, in the future, think about, at least for commercial customers, having some ability to push back, similar to what the Connected Solutions Program does. I know I've worked with some municipal projects in nearby towns that have participated in that. It's been, I think, very beneficial for those projects, as well as good for the utilities and, you know, certainly gotten more buy-in from the community on things like batteries at schools, for example, if they knew that there was some kind of a direct financial benefit to that. So I think that's worth us thinking about for future.

Yeah. And I'll just say that we have been looking at and understanding battery pushback and trying to look at, you know, now that we've moved beyond net metering, which was one barrier, understanding the safety and trying to understand how other communities do it. We recently talked to Belmont about their situation because they do allow batteries to push back. And it definitely has some unintended consequences in terms of how much and when. It happens immediately. Some customers have a lot of batteries. One, I think, had nine batteries on their house. And so when all that discharges, it can happen pretty rapidly. So, yeah, we are studying this. I think the vehicle, the grid pilot will be a good indication too of how kind of a more commercial, larger size discharge could work. But, you know, I think we'd be, we'd love to hear the board's thoughts on like where we go from here and, you know, what we can study or how we can move the conversation forward. And Laura has something to add too.

Yeah, I just wanted, in response to Chris's idea, I did want to mention that for medium and large general service or commercial customers, They do have a pretty big incentive to reduce their usage during the non-coincident peak because there is a fairly hefty demand fee. You know, it's over $10 a KW that they would save. Now, that's the non-coincident peak, which isn't the same thing as the coincident peak, but...

John, do you still hear me?

Yeah, it seems like my screen has frozen.

Yeah, everyone else froze.

All right.

We're having some internet disruptions and several people have been kicked off. So go ahead, John. I'll kick it over to you.

Okay. So now I'd like to open it up for public comment and questions. Pamela Dritt, I see your hand is raised.

You should be able to unmute now, Pamela.

Hi. Pamela Dritt, 13 Concord Green. I put my video on, but I'm not allowed. I think... I'm glad that you're investigating, that we are investigating grid, battery back to grid, pushing back to the grid, because... The future of power is a distributed grid with virtual power plants, virtual peaker plants made up of, you know, hundreds or thousands of batteries, local batteries, networked together to provide consistent inexpensive power. We have to aim at that. connected with, um, uh, grid scale storage that we were getting in the high school and that we should get in association with the large solar fields that we should start to build. We should end up with, and the, and the, the bus batteries. When we're doing the rates for, uh, net metering. The fact is that it isn't unfair to the other customers that the solar customers are paid, don't have to pay the distribution charges because they don't use the distribution charges. And the fact that net metering that makes a benefit to the homeowners that have solar is a very good thing for the whole community. It makes all of our electricity cheaper. That's what we want. We need to do anything that makes the power that a solar customer pushes back onto the grid pay them less than the power that they buy from the grid does a disservice to all of the customers, everybody, including the people that aren't even in our MLP, the world as a whole. We need to financially incentivize that, not because that paves the future.

We hear you. Thank you. Thank you for that comment. Jason, it sounds like I should call for a motion to adjourn.

Yeah, well, do you want to move an executive session or since we're not here and I don't know what timing is, maybe we just reschedule the executive session. So maybe just adjourn.

Recognizing we've only got three members here.

Yeah.

I would recommend that we try to reschedule.

Yeah. I'll move to adjourn and reschedule the executive session.

Can I have a second? Dean Banfield has his hand up.

All right. I'm not sure what you expect to talk about during the executive session, but I'd appreciate it if you can schedule with great haste any conversations about a PPA over on top of the middle school time is kind of clicking away and the loss of a possible conversation about a PPA up there now, and then moving that to, you know, the next month's meeting loses us a possible construction month for putting solar up on that roof. So just a concern from my point of view that there's a lot of focus on from the community on getting that job done and uh this is kind of unfortunate this is unfortunate if in the event that it i i'm not sure exactly what you're going to talk about there but in the event that that was going to be a conversation about a ppa vendor um Please try to do everything you can to reschedule that rather than wait till the next month's meeting. Okay. All right. Thanks.

Yep. Understood. And that is one of the items for the, for the executive session, one of the agenda items for the executive session.

Thanks. So there's a motion. Is there a second? Is that Tyson? Yeah, sorry.

Go ahead.

And Chris? Yes. Tyson?

Yes.

Voting to adjourn. Yes. And I also vote to adjourn.