A recent ruling from the Vermont Public Service Board addressed the issue of whether proposed Standard Offer projects sharing one developer and adjacent project sites constitute a single plant or two separate plants.  The ruling was issued in response to a request for reconsideration filed by Ecos Energy, LLC—a renewable energy developer that submitted three proposals pursuant to the Board’s RFP selection process.  We blogged about the entities that were selected pursuant to the RFP process here.

The importance of characterizing a plant as singular or in multiples arises from the size limit imposed by the Standard Offer program.  For example, adjacent projects of 2.2 MW that are determined to constitute a single “plant” would together exceed this limit and, thus, one or more projects may be disqualified for consideration in the RFP process by the Board.  The Board’s policy is to determine whether two projects constitute a single plant on a case-by-case basis.  The present decision was prompted after Ecos appealed to the Board for reconsideration of a ruling determining that the Bennington and Apple Hill Solar projects constitute a single plant, even though the projects were to be sited on adjacent land advanced by a single developer, but were to have separate interconnection points, fencing, access roads, financing parties, and equipment.  The Board upheld its earlier decision and determined that the Bennington and Apple Hill projects would constitute a single plant:

Based on our review of the site plans provided by [developer] with its request for reconsideration, it is reasonable to infer that they are a single plant. Adopting [developer’s] highly-technical interpretation of Section 8002(14) would thwart the Legislature’s intent to encourage the development of small or moderate sized plants. Under [developer’s] logic, any size facility could be constructed so long as it could be partitioned into “technically independent” 2.2 MW pieces by including redundant equipment and separating each piece by a mere fence. Such clustered development would also frustrate the Legislature’s desire to distribute these small-to-moderate sized facilities across the state’s electric grid.

The Board’s decision upholds its previous disqualification of the Apple Hill Solar project from standard-offer selection, while allowing the Bennington project to retain its selection in the RFP process.  For more information, read the full decision here.

Photo via Flickr.