WEC General Manager’s Report By Louis Porter With increasingly severe storms causing more damage to electrical infrastructure across Vermont, I hope to have a conversation with WEC members at our Annual Meeting about winter outages, and how we as members respond to them, both individually and collectively through our Cooperative. Outages, particularly those in the winter, are understandably one of …
President’s and GM’s Message: Weather Trends and Today’s Priorities
Storms Impact Vermont rural utilities in patterns of threes; welcoming JJ Vandette and Pat Barnes; acknowledging Dan Couture and Elaine Gonier; grant and legislative updates Weather and Outage Management Louis: Weather and outage management continue to be a major focus area not just for Washington Electric, but for our fellow electric distribution utilities. Where and how the weather hits makes …
President’s & GM’s Message: Proactive Changes In WEC’s Major Outage Communication; Winter Storms Hit WEC Territory Hard
Truck Accident Causes Coventry Plant Shutdown; GMP’s Zero Outages Initiative Irasburg truck accident Steve: Members may have heard about the truck accident in Irasburg where a propane truck drove into the Black River and burned. What was not included in most coverage was that the accident impacted our generation plant at Coventry. Louis: The morning of December 4, a propane …
President’s & GM’s Message: With focus on greatest good, WEC will invest in advanced metering system
Also: recognizing Roger Fox, trucks cause sunny-day outages, winter storm preparation Co-op Month Louis: I grew up in Adamant, which was kind of a center of the early cooperative movement generally, so co-ops were just a normal part of life for me. The Adamant store, which is the oldest continually operating food co-op in the country, is what a store …
WEC Plans to Upgrade Members’ Meters
New system will improve outage restoration, allow time-of-use rates “These additional capabilities will assist us in outage restoration and in giving accurate restoration estimates, help our crews know what’s going on when there’s an issue on our system, enable us to do time-of-use rates and other types of rates, and better work with members who have solar and heat pumps.” …
A Tour of Coventry: Landfill Processes and Gas-to-Electricity Generation
Every September, WEC and Casella host an open house at Coventry Landfill, welcoming Co-op members and the public to learn about how the landfill operates and how landfill gas is captured to power WEC members’ homes.A few weeks before the September 16 open house, WEC Board member Betsy Allen toured the landfill and gas-to-electricity plant and took pictures. Here she …
President’s & GM’s Message: WEC infrastructure tolerates catastrophic flooding; excess solar threatens substation
Regulators’ order requiring a income-qualified reduction system calls into question Co-op’s ability to self-govern WEC’s flood response, outages Louis: Our poles and wires were not too badly affected by the initial storm on July 10 that caused catastrophic statewide flooding. We had about 1,100 members out. We did, however, have a pretty major outage the following Thursday and Friday, July …
Incumbents re-elected, storm resilience focus of Annual Meeting
Storms and an equitable energy future discussed at first in-person Annual Meeting since 2019 The Annual Meeting took place in WEC’s Operations Center, where a few dozen transformers were ready for deployment. Most were ordered in 2020, and only just delivered after three years tied up in the supply chain. Members, staff, and guests mingled and enjoyed farm-to-table dining from …
President’s & GM’s Message: WEC Accesses Contracted Hydro-Québec Power
Longstanding contract provides 2 MW of baseload power as Co-op members’ winter needs and WEC’s electric peaks rise. Also: member education around EV charging, adding load, and safety Background to Hydro-Québec Contract Steve: In 2012, WEC negotiated a new 25-year contract with Hydro-Québec [HQ], and the Board at that time approved it. At the time, WEC did not have a …
Manager’s Report: Why Cooperate?
What’s the benefit of public power in our current era? By Louis Porter Most members of Washington Electric Cooperative know why and how electric cooperatives in general, and WEC in particular, came into being. They know the history of rural territories, whose lack of population density and rugged landscapes made electrification difficult, expensive, unprofitable, and therefore unappealing to investor-owned utilities. …