In 2022, WEC members elected one incumbent and two new Directors to the Board. Co-op Currents invited these three Directors to talk about the values and experience they bring to the role, how they’ll balance vision and fiscal responsibility, and what interests them most. The following profiles do not necessarily represent the values and policy decisions set by WEC’s Board as a whole, but rather represent the individual perspectives of these three Board members.
Susan Alexander
Susan Alexander of Cabot was tapped by a Board member to run for an open seat several years ago, but she was too busy to run. She loved that her electric utility was a cooperative, she felt good about WEC’s leadership in renewable generation, and she liked that WEC was involved in the statewide conversation about climate policy, because she thinks it’s unfortunate “to see decisions young people are making now are based on environmental crisis.”
In 2022, with some extra time, she decided it was the year to run. And then she almost backed out, when she saw the number of candidates and the breadth of knowledge and experience they brought to their campaigns. “The class of 2022, there were some valedictorians, for sure,” she said.
During her campaign Alexander was pleased with how many members contacted her, and the level of engagement she saw. “There are a lot of caring, concerned, and curious people out there who don’t necessarily want to serve on the Board, but are clear about their expectations and want to be assured a lot of things are taken into consideration.”
Many members contacted Alexander with concerns about net metering, framed as an equity problem with “the majority of the membership footing the bill for those who are doing solar and not paying for the infrastructure. I got letters from people asking if I agree or disagree.” Decisions like this aren’t cut-and-dry, she said. Her response was to appreciate each writer’s thoughtfulness in raising the issue, but that “I don’t come to the board with that perfect knowledge and perfect experience, and I hope that’s not the expectation of the membership. But I am clearly willing to learn.”
Another juggle, she said, is lining up WEC’s commitment to affordability and reliability with its commitment to the environment. Nobody gets everything they want in the end, she conceded. Alexander is not necessarily talking about meet-in-the-middle compromises, but rather, making decisions through sort of a ranked-choice grid approach. Often, it can turn out that an obviously good choice through one lens–say, replace all combustion-engine vehicles with electric vehicles–doesn’t work for other reasons: affordability, sudden increase to grid load, battery-related environmental costs, and of course personal reasons. “We have to make rubrics and matrixes every time we make a decision,” she pointed out. “You have to weigh all the options and give different weights to different factors to come up with what’s, in the end, defensible, smart, and forward thinking.” And, she said, there is honor in allowing decision makers the room to backtrack and amend decisions that have unintended consequences. “I think honesty and transparency are what’s going to make us successful in the long run,” she said.
Alexander works for a board as the independent contractor managing the Lamoille Solid Waste District’s recycling and composting facilities. Reporting directly to a board, as well as serving on WEC’s, improves her ability to understand staff needs and to contribute to open communication, clarity, setting expectations, and relationship building, she said.
And, she said, she’s already reached out to some candidates who were not elected this cycle, to make sure they stay engaged. “I thought there was some great knowledge and experience and good creative thinking. When people have obvious value and knowledge and want to be useful, that’s a good thing to continue to capture,” she said.
Betsy Allen
Allen first thought about running for the Board several years ago, at the recommendation of her friend, former Board Secretary Annie Reed. But in 2022, she was newly retired from full-time work, and ready to dedicate the time. “I want to keep learning new things,” she said. “New technology, and the relationship between electricity and our environment and climate change. There are big decisions to be made, like how to deal with net metering, which seems to be a hot topic.”
As an educator and former business owner, Allen enjoys working on teams–the diversity of experience, personalities, and expertise, the complex logistics, the environmental factors. “One of the things that appealed to me about WEC is it’s a group of people who are working with each other with a similar mission in mind, responding to the direction our country is going with climate change.”
Before she participates in setting policy for the Co-op, Allen says, she needs to learn a lot. She’s new to serving on a board, and she needs to learn more about the membership and all its nuances. As an example of that complexity, she described the question that stuck with her after a meeting where WEC leaders discussed how to help members who were unable to pay their bills, when the Co-op depends on that revenue– “if part of WEC’s vision is supplying reliable electricity to all of its members in a fiscally responsible way, how do we do that?”
But Allen has lots of experience with hands-on energy use, and she is a student of new technology. About fifteen years ago, Allen chose to live off the grid with a solar and battery system–though installing solar was expensive at that time, it was part of her philosophical choice to live in as self-reliant and low-impact a manner as possible. She loves the simple, frugal lifestyle of rural Vermont: chopping her own wood, gardening, living quietly.
Now, grid-tied and living in Plainfield, she’s exploring the nuances of solar as it relates to the WEC membership. As a community, she said, Plainfield has talked about installing a community solar array. On one hand, net metering as it’s currently structured leads to cost inequities. On the other hand, “people want to keep their bills down.” If it works cooperatively, she said, she would certainly be interested in community solar.
When she was collecting signatures to get on WEC’s ballot, she said, “questions about solar were definitely on people’s minds.” She asked a net-metering friend on a different utility’s lines what their bill looked like, because “I wanted a better understanding of why it’s not working here and what we can do. I certainly do believe in solar.”
Allen is also on her second electric car, and has experienced both the transition from combustion to electric, and the progression of electric technology: what happens with batteries in the winter, how it drives in the summer, how it changes her bill. She’s asked herself if she would drive all-electric if she were single or if she frequently drove long distances. Parking an EV to shop at the Hunger Mountain Co-op, she noted, is like having a baby or a dog: other EV drivers approach her and they talk about their cars.
Allen is attuned to battery storage as an important and still emerging technology. She likes the idea behind WEC’s PowerShift concept: using heat pump water heaters or, in the future, electric vehicles as battery storage, that members can share with WEC’s grid to reduce peak power. And she wonders if battery storage will allow for more equity with distributed generation, like net metering, “so it doesn’t cost WEC money to have people have solar.”
In her candidacy, Allen said members asked her a lot of questions about broadband–particularly younger members who work remotely. The direction is clearer now, she said, that Communications Union Districts have access to federal grants, and WEC’s partnership no longer involves taking out a loan.
The second topic, she said, involves WEC’s rate redesign. “There are still people who are upset about the rate change, who worked so hard to cut down on their electricity,” she noted. There needs to be more education about why the rate change was important, and how it compares across markets, she suggested. “We should talk more about that, to help people understand the base fee and how rates work,” she suggested.
Steven Farnham
The only incumbent running during the 2022 election cycle, Steven Farnham said, “I have a particular interest in the future of the way we energize our homes.” He sees his role on the Board as a necessary, and sometimes lone, voice raising ideas that challenge conventional thinking. Farnham agrees that WEC’s primary role is to provide electricity safely, reliably, and affordably to its membership, and to maintain fiscal responsibility so that it may continue to do so. Where his philosophy differs from that of his fellow Directors, he explained, is he believes WEC’s objective ought to be “just energizing its members’ homes, full stop. If that means the Co-op is a retailer and installer of home energy systems, that’s what they are.”
The only incumbent running during the 2022 election cycle, Steven Farnham said, “I have a particular interest in the future of the way we energize our homes.” He sees his role on the Board as a necessary, and sometimes lone, voice raising ideas that challenge conventional thinking. Farnham agrees that WEC’s primary role is to provide electricity safely, reliably, and affordably to its membership, and to maintain fiscal responsibility so that it may continue to do so. Where his philosophy differs from that of his fellow Directors, he explained, is he believes WEC’s objective ought to be “just energizing its members’ homes, full stop. If that means the Co-op is a retailer and installer of home energy systems, that’s what they are.”
Farnham sees WEC entering the retail space–or re-entering the retail space, for those who remember the Co-op Store–as a way to recoup income lost as members install net metering. He raised the concept at members’ meetings before he was first elected to the Board in 2019: “if our members are going to buy solar installations anyway,” he asked, “why not have WEC sell it to them, and profit from it, instead of somebody else?”
As it is currently structured, net metering shifts fixed costs onto members who do not net meter. Farnham thinks it’s possible to make net metering a more equitable proposition – if statewide regulations changed to allow it – by charging net metering members a higher monthly membership fee, to more adequately cover their portion of infrastructure costs, or to implement a rate structure specific to net meterers. “You can’t use communally-owned resources without paying your fair share for them, but that’s what’s happening now,” he said.
A key difference between the status quo Farnham perceives and his own view is whether, in a cooperative utility, power sources ought to be collectively held. Farnham thinks there is room for individual ownership, like net metering, and that distributed generation allows more room for WEC to share its 100% renewable generated power with other utilities whose power mixes are not yet so green.
Beneficial electrification is the idea that lower rates and financial incentives will help members cycle off of fossil fuel combustion heaters, vehicles, and other devices, reducing emissions and fossil fuel reliance. Farnham is concerned about what he sees as the prevailing idea that “beneficial electrification is the panacea that’s going to solve all of our environmental problems, if it means all members must buy power from the Co-op, just because the Co-op is 100% renewable.”
He said it’s not only about freedom of choice, but about potential grid load. Farnham understands that WEC’s landfill gas plant in Coventry is generating power at full capacity, and pointed to curtailments as a result of SHEI (the Sheffield-Highgate Export Interface) grid constraints that prevent some of the capacity that’s already available from even being transmitted. If, he asked, electric demand increases as members switch off of fossil fuels, how will WEC supply that additional power?
Farnham thinks it will be bought off the grid, which would reduce the amount of renewable power on the market for utilities with a less green power mix. So, he would like to see WEC envision a future that encourages, and perhaps also harnesses, distributed generation installed and owned by its members. “If we all have our own solar array or microhydro, we’re generating our own power, we’re not putting that load on the grid, and that makes more of the green energy on the grid available to urban dwellers who need it because they don’t have access to the resources we have.”
Farnham hasn’t explored the Co-op’s role in distributed generation from a financial standpoint, because, he said, he’s first trying to open the conversation. “The WEC Board should be having these conversations, saying, ‘How could we make this work?’” he said.
He’d also like the Board to encourage more input from the membership at large. “I would like the Co-op to continue as a member-owned business, to provide goods and services to its members, rather than just being an electric utility. Other people are more traditional and would like the Co-op to remain more like what it is now. I represent this viewpoint, others represent the other, but every Board member has the responsibility to carry out their fiduciary responsibilities and make sure the lights stay on.”