The Vermont Public Service Board has seen a spate of activity over the past several months in the renewable energy arena. This has included both broad policy setting as well as project-specific decisions. Much of the activity has centered around the Standard Offer Program.
The SPEED Standard Offer Program, created by the Legislature in 2009, established a guaranteed long-term price that is available to renewable energy projects of 2.2 MW or less. After an initial round of PSB proceedings in 2009 and 2010 that set the rates for each technology type (solar, wind, biomass and hydro), as well as addressing program implementation issues, the Board has largely focused on reviewing individual projects under section 248. Many of the program-related documents can be found at www.vermontspeed.com and on the Public Service Board’s website.
More recently, the Board has again focused on program-wide issues. For example, on July 7th, 2011, the PSB issued a revised Standard Offer Contract, making a number of changes to the standard offer contract that are largely designed to clarify the rights of the project developers (producers). See our blog post on July 9th.
In future posts we will review the Board’s rulings regarding Standard Offer technology caps, SPEED Facilitator costs, the Board’s new price-setting docket for Standard Offer projects, and the Board’s permit decisions on a number of standard offer projects.
