Green Mountain Power vows new plan will end outages - WCAX

Green Mountain Power vows new plan will end outages

COLCHESTER, Vt. (WCAX) - A first in the United States-- a utility has announced that in about six years, the power will never go out again. And the announcement came from a Vermont company.

Wind, snow, ice and flooding rain: all weather events that can knock out power. But Vermont’s largest utility says not for long.

“It is our responsibility to deliver a system that is always on for our customers,” said Mari McClure, the president of Green Mountain Power.

GMP just filed a first-of-its-kind plan with state regulators that the company says will end outages for all of its 270,000 customers by the year 2030.

“No matter where you live or who you are, by 2030 a power system that’s there for you whenever you need it,” McClure said.

GMP wants the Vermont Public Utility Commission to approve spending up to $280 million over the next two years to bury powerlines and strengthen the overhead lines that are not buried with so-called spacer cables, that can more easily withstand trees falling on them. And to supply homeowners in really rural areas with battery backup storage units.

They would start in the central and southern parts of Vermont.

“It’s keeping the lights on and it will eventually lower costs for customers,” McClure said.

The company has been doing this for years on a much smaller scale and says where it’s already in place, it’s working.

“They don’t have outages,” McClure said.

So, in two years, they will go back to state regulators to bring what they call the 2030 Zero Outages Initiative statewide. The total price tag could reach $1.5 billion.

Reporter Darren Perron: But GMP isn’t doing this out of the kindness of its heart. It’s a business. So what’s in it for the utility?

Mari McClure: So, one thing we’ve done at GMP for many, many years is we put customers first in all of our decisions. So, we firmly believe in a structure where you put customers first, and your customers are happy, your regulator will be happy and your investor will be happy.

Customers would pay for it. GMP says the average homeowner’s bill will go up about 2%, but that it must be done because of climate change.

Extreme weather in Vermont has cost the company $115 million since 2014, 60% of that in the last five years.

And in the last 12 months alone, GMP has spent $45 million on storm repairs-- the most in one year ever for the company, after dealing with three of the most damaging storms in the company’s history. Those bills were covered by customers.

“The weather patterns entering the state are much more severe than they used to be,” McClure said.

Infrastructure, overtime and out-of-state help make up most of the costs, costs GMP expects to increase as the storms get worse.

“The status quo is very expensive,” McClure said. “We’ve got to create a grid in the face of climate change that not only saves costs and stays on but one that our employees can safely work on.”

Adding to the high costs-- trimming to prevent downed trees from toppling lines. That too, the company’s president says, would mostly go away.

“When we were building the grid 70, 80 years ago, Vermont’s tree growth was not like it is now,” McClure said.

Regulators just got the filing on Monday. A decision could take six to nine months, and the public can weigh in during that time.

If approved, work could begin in the spring of next year.

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