A utility crew from the Burlington Electric Department assists the Washington Electric Co-op as they work to restore power in East Montpelier, Vt. (VtDigger – Glenn Russell)
VTDigger – Glenn Russell
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is investing in two Vermont cooperatives, awarding an $11.2 million loan to Washington Electric Cooperative and a $2 million grant to Windy Hollow Mobile Home Cooperative Inc.
Washington Electric, a nonprofit electric cooperative headquartered in East Montpelier, serves almost 12,000 households in 41 rural towns in central Vermont. The company will use the loan to build and improve 26 miles of electrical line and they estimate to connect an additional 341 households.
“We have among the lowest densities per mile of line anywhere in the northeast, certainly the most rural, about nine members per mile of power,” said Louis Porter, general manager of Washington Electric Cooperative.
According to Porter, Washington Electric was established around 80 years ago after commercial private utilities chose not to serve the area, citing the challenging landscape and difficulty making a profit.
“Rural Utility Service loans have been incredibly successful in getting electrical service to parts of the country that would not have been served without the creation of the cooperatives,” said Porter.
The loan is part of $5.7 billion in funding through USDA’s Electric Infrastructure Loan and Loan Guarantee Program to help utility providers and electric cooperatives improve their electric infrastructure, according to a press release on Tuesday from USDA.
Last year on Dec. 23, Winter Storm Elliot left more than 75,000 homes and businesses without power across the state, with hundreds of Washington Electric customers waiting for five days for their power to be restored.
“I think we’ve had three or four FEMA-level events in the last three years,” Porter said, adding that several other major storms didn’t qualify for FEMA reimbursement. With two to three major storms annually, sometimes more, Porter said it’s difficult to maintain reliable service in a rural area.
Porter also highlighted the challenge of maintaining infrastructure in sparsely populated rural areas, where electrical costs must be covered by a relatively small number of users.
“Our territory is over 95% residential,” he said, noting the lack of large commercial and industrial users that typically help lower rates and support utility systems.
With only nine households per mile of power lines, the utility relies on 13 crew members to maintain 1,300 miles of lines. “Each member of our line crew is responsible for 100 miles of power lines,” he added. “You can imagine that’s a challenge.”
Washington Electric’s loan includes $1.2 million for smart grid technologies. According to Porter, the money will allow the utility to install new residential electric meters that will give the utility better information about real-time power usage. The current meters provide only a limited amount of data, he said.
“The new meters will allow us to get faster and better information about what is going on at the meter, and will help us improve our responses to outages,” Porter said. For example, he said, the cooperative could potentially offer dynamic pricing options like time-of-use rates based on real-time energy costs, especially during times of off-peak usage when electricity is cheaper for the utility to purchase.
Meanwhile, Windy Hollow Mobile Home Cooperative Inc., a resident-owned community in Castleton, received a $2 million grant for water system upgrades. The cooperative, which serves 44 residential connections, will use the funding to modernize its water storage, treatment, pressurization and distribution systems.