President’s and General Manager’s Message Member Survey Results and Cost Factors

High Coventry Performance Insulates WEC from Raising Rates

Remembering Vice President Mary Just Skinner

Steve: I want to start by recognizing the passing of our colleague Mary Just Skinner. She’s been a big presence on WEC’s Board as long as I’ve been on it. Next to Don Douglas, she was the longest serving member of the current Board. Both she, and previously her late husband Scott, served on the Board. Combined, they contributed to WEC for several decades. Her passing leaves a big gap to fill. We’re shocked by the suddenness of her death as well as the sorrow of the loss.

Louis: Given our small size and engagement with communities we serve, folks who work at Washington Electric have more communication with the Board than a larger organization would. Our staff, many of whom have worked here for decades, knew Mary well. As a highly regulated cooperative business with a lot of interaction with the legislature, her insights as a lawyer and former legislator were very valuable.

Steve: According to our bylaws, the Board could choose to appoint a member to fill Mary’s vacant seat, but since we have an election in three months, we decided to leave the seat open. However, Mary served as Vice President of the Board, and the Vice President serves if the President is unavailable or incapacitated. With Mary’s passing,I needed to appoint a Vice President immediately in the event something happened to me. I appointed Susan Alexander of Cabot to serve as Vice President until spring when the Board selects its officers, and I am grateful she accepted the responsibility.

Member Survey Results

Steve: WEC conducts a member survey every five years. It’s one way of having a dialogue with members and raises issues to talk about throughout the year.

Louis: Members not only govern Washington Electric, but they own it. It’s a cooperative that exists solely for members’ benefit, and members determine how it’s run. Members have several ways of providing feedback, from running for a Board seat, interacting with Board and staff, calling us or writing letters, or if they’re sufficiently frustrated, filing a complaint with the Department of Public Service. The most scientific way to collect feedback is conducting a member survey every five years. We’re required to do this by regulation, and it’s a good way to get a sense of how we’re doing.

I was somewhat discouraged by the results of our 2025 survey. In general I feel a sense of frustration from members with Washington Electric on several fronts, and the Board and I are talking about this. In several key areas, Washington Electric falls below the national measures for those survey questions, and that is of great concern. We should view members as though they have a choice in who provides retail electricity, even if in a regulated system like ours, they don’t. We should still be responsive as though they could opt for service from a different utility.

A few bright spots: improvements in outage response and outage communications were noted, which was good to see. To a portion of our members, it remains important to hold our cooperative identity and have 100% renewable power. Members may assume our 100% renewable portfolio is not going to change. 

Steve: The two main issues that stuck me are the cost of providing service, and our outage response. People want electricity that’s reasonably priced and reliable. Most WEC members still want their electricity to be produced renewably.

Louis: The seriousness with which we take the member survey is evidence of our ownership by our members. We have vigorous and often contested Board elections, strong attendance at Annual Meeting, strong read rates for Co-op Currents: we have an engaged and caring membership that realize they can impact the direction of this place and are not hesitant to do it.

I will say WEC tries to do a lot of things for its membership that a traditional utility does not do, whether that’s 100% renewable power long before it was mandated, or creating the Community Fund, or advocating for net metering back when it needed that assistance. We try to do a lot of things members want us to do. That can sometimes divide up our responses, because each member may care more about one objective than the others. If we were unified on one task, it would be a little easier to achieve that one objective. But we don’t: we have a lot of programs we try to do for our members and those priorities are sometimes in conflict with each other.

Cost Comparison: WEC to GMP Bills 

Steve: The cost of WEC’s electricity has been an issue for members ever since I’ve been on the Board. It’s generally been true that WEC rates are higher than those of  other utilities. This perception is exacerbated by our two-tier rate structure in which members probably pay attention to the higher rate of the upper energy block when they look at the bill. 

But other utilities have been raising their rates over the past decade such that, as remarked elsewhere in this issue, a WEC monthly bill is not that different from a Green Mountain Power [GMP] bill when all the charges are added up. Although I’ve been tracking this topic for about a year, it’s still a surprise to me, and it’s a surprise to most members I talk to about it. I think it’s been ingrained that WEC bills are very much higher than GMP ones for identical usage. But that’s not the case, and WEC bills may even be lower for low users of electricity.

Louis: Members expressed some frustration about WEC’s rates and the cost of electricity. Some of that is valid, but we need to educate folks about the cost of distribution electricity from other utilities as compared to WEC. Electricity in the Northeast is expensive, serving rural regions is expensive, and renewable power is expensive. As other Vermont utilities increase their rates and renewable mandates take effect, the difference between our bills and our neighbors’ bills may not be as stark as in the past.

WEC has a rate structure that encourages people to use electricity conservatively and at the lower end of the rate scale. For the half of our membership that uses less than 500 kwh /month, it’s cheaper to be a WEC member than a GMP ratepayer.

For one thing, GMP has a different rate structure. They break out costs differently than we do. Just doing a comparison of electricity and customer charges doesn’t give us the full picture, because WEC embeds the cost of storm restoration, and GMP doesn’t. We have to compare total bill to total bill. 

Cost Factors

Steve: Making the surprising case that WEC’s electricity bills are not so much different from others in Vermont is fine and dandy but I doubt it makes our members happy, because it doesn’t address their feeling that they’re paying more for everything these days. Everyone has heard that electricity costs in many parts of the country are rapidly ramping up. What can we do to avoid that happening to us? 

Our long-term power contracts provide a good hedge against rapid increases, for one. We are taking steps toward managing our peak loads with batteries to reduce our transmission costs. In addition to transitioning our workflow in the office and field to be more efficient, we are upgrading our vegetation management operation, which could help control outage costs and should certainly assist in outage management.

These are among efforts underway to contain long-term cost increases. We hear the message loud and clear from members: they think their electricity is expensive. It’s an important topic on which to keep a dialogue going. It’s our goal to keep costs reasonable within the constraints we face.

Louis: It’s worth noting when Washington Electric does not have a rate increase, when other utilities are increasing rates — some with back-to-back increases. We do not plan to raise rates in 2026: part of that is due to the fact that we had no major storms in 2025. A large part is because 2025 saw a record production year at Coventry.

There are a lot of things that make electric bills in New England higher than other parts of the country. The decision to rely on renewable more in New England and not to use coal makes electricity more expensive in our region. I think that’s a good decision and one we should be proud of, but it has a cost. Building maintenance and repair is expensive in our region: we have a lot of trees, and they fall down. Net metering: Vermont and New England overall have been quite aggressive in net metering, and net metering gives ratepayers and members a lot of autonomy to manage their own power, but it certainly increases costs in our area. 

Coventry’s 2025 Performance

 Louis: We haven’t done analysis for power production for 2025, so I don’t have the actual numbers, but all evidence points to record production from Coventry’s landfill-gas-to-electricity plant last year. Two decades ago WEC’s Board made the decision to build and invest in our in-state renewable generation plant, and it’s paying dividends to members, because it costs a lot to buy market power in New England now. Coventry production is a major factor in Washington Electric not raising rates this year.

Steve: Perhaps you can hear me knocking on wood. Of course, the output may fluctuate from one year to the next because of events outside WEC’s control. Nonetheless, we continue to invest in the plant for its optimal operation. An aging condenser to remove water from the input landfill gas will be replaced early this year to ensure efficient combustion within the engine.

Louis: It’s a big complicated operation at Coventry and it takes a team of different people and organizations to make it work. There’s always a risk. Now, this is true for any plant where you have set expenses that don’t change with production: when you have an increase in production, it’s great, because it’s less cost per unit produced. Coventry’s high production benefits members doubly: first because the power from Coventry is cheaper than market value, second because the costs are set and not variable. When the per unit price goes down, and you’re getting kilowatt hours cheaper than buying them on the market, it’s doubly beneficial when production is high.

Steve: It is good news when production is high. We often let our members know that their investments allow WEC to purchase and produce fully renewable power. But it’s not really like checking a box and saying we’re done. I’ve come to recognize that staying 100% renewable requires oversight, maintenance, and planning, because you’re dealing with quantities that aren’t completely predictable.

Additional Updates

Louis: I know members want regular updates about Coventry output, the possible sale of the Wrightsville plant, and our timeline for rolling out AMI [advanced metering infrastructure.] I don’t have an update regarding Wrightsville at this time.

Steve: We are moving toward selecting a contractor for new AMI [advanced metering infrastructure].

Louis: We have two grant agreements intended to cover the vast majority of costs associated with the meter upgrade, though we have not yet received the checks. As Steve said, concurrently we are working toward a contract.

We’re also planning changes to our PowerShift peak management program, and considering a bill credit benefit for enrolled members — this is basically a stopgap until we have an AMI system that allows us to offer time-of-use rates. Our approach on PowerShift, and on peak management generally, is the benefit of those programs should accrue to both the member who has the equipment to enroll, and to the general membership. We try to roughly split the benefit between the membership and the particular member. In general the idea is, it can benefit the member by reducing their electric bill, and benefit the membership by reducing our combined costs at the right time. 

Steve: We look for a win-win situation. We feel this is something all members would support, because these programs support lowering costs for all members.

BOX: See WEC’s 2025 member survey results on washingtonelectric.coop.