Vermont
Jock Gill: Vermont climate plan fails to recognize batteries as strategic tools
This commentary is by Jock Gill of Peacham, an web communications advisor who served in President Invoice Clinton’s Workplace of Media Affairs. He’s city power coordinator in Peacham.
An article April 19 in VTDigger mentioned the Division of Public Service’s advisable cuts in internet metering charges. It quotes T.J. Poor, director of the division’s Regulated Utility Planning Division: ”Sustaining low electrical charges for ratepayers might incentivize Vermonters to make extra common transitions to electrical energy. We wish to guarantee that that financial proposition to modify fuels is there for individuals to resolve on their very own, and that ought to decrease the price of our transition altogether.”
Whereas the purpose of inexpensive power is laudable, it misses the important thing query: Is there a set of rules, insurance policies and incentives that may provide a lot cheaper electrical energy than is presently provided by the legacy utilities with their out of date {hardware}?
The reply is: Sure.
Sound regulatory coverage ought to encourage prospects to both go off the grid as a lot as doable or, the place transmission is ample, to share power to the grid to learn all. This would scale back the necessity for brand spanking new or upgraded transmission programs and would create a hybrid electrification mannequin, each on and off the grid, primarily based on native technology and storage.
Batteries, mixed with photo voltaic and wind, are a necessary enabling expertise. The mixture is way higher than the sum of the components. A residence would, on this mannequin, be linked to the grid solely to ship electrical energy to the grid if the batteries have been full, or to recharge the batteries when mandatory.
This association would flip the present mannequin on its head: The grid would turn into the backup reasonably than the first supply of electrical energy. As an alternative, the grid would obtain as a lot power as doable from self-powered residences.
The purpose can be to maximise the quantity of power despatched to the grid and reduce the quantity of power taken from the grid. This may assist the grid meet demand for sufficient clear, renewable power for 100,000 new warmth pumps and electrical autos.
This extra inexpensive electrical energy would make attending to an all-electric decarbonized future simpler and more likely. Clearly, it will be higher to warmth our houses with low-cost electrical energy reasonably than oil at $6 or extra per gallon.
Sadly, the Vermont Local weather Motion Plan makes issues worse. It provides quick — or no — shrift to storage in any kind, a lot much less to autos with V2X (Car to Something) capability. As, for instance, the brand new Ford F150 Lightning might be configured to energy your home.
Why the Local weather Motion Plan fails to acknowledge batteries as strategic instruments for coping with our local weather emergency is a thriller. It’s value noting that America’s largest residence builder will probably be constructing 200,000 houses with batteries included. Why not in Vermont?
If the Public Utility Fee and the Division of Public Service wish to present probably the most inexpensive electrical energy, then they should allow residents to make use of the least costly sources of power: renewable wind and photo voltaic mixed with native storage. It will require new and progressive insurance policies and rules.
In the reason for fairness and social justice, the state or the utilities ought to provide “Pay As You Save” financing, or some equal, so all Vermonters can have the advantages of photo voltaic technology and battery storage.
The world is spending trillions of {dollars} subsidizing fossil power that’s destroying the environment. Why not redirect these subsidy {dollars} to fund the transition to wash, renewable power for all? Isn’t it time to speculate sooner or later we would like?
Can this work? I do know it could as a result of I used to be not too long ago in a position to take a look at it at my residence. Because of Tesla’s forward-looking {hardware} and software program, I used to be in a position to go off the grid for 18 hours. Within the daylight, even on a cloudy day, the batteries turned absolutely recharged whereas concurrently powering the home. At that time, I went again on grid to have a spot to ship the electrical energy coming from my photo voltaic panels. As soon as the photo voltaic panels stopped producing, I took the home off the grid as soon as once more. After all, this might all be automated, as Tesla has executed.
It is a higher path to the inexpensive electrical energy desired by the Public Utility Fee and the Division of Public Service. It might additionally assist cut back the excessive value of residing in Vermont. Solely outdated insurance policies and rules stand in the way in which.
My photo voltaic system, even at a price of $3-plus per put in watt, lets me lock in a set worth per kWh for 25 years: $0.113 per kWh (14.5 cents earlier than any subsidies). That is a lot decrease than present utility costs. If the fee per put in watt have been the truth is $1, as it’s immediately in Australia, my value can be round 5 cents per kWh produced.
We have to ask why it prices over $3 per put in watt in Vermont however solely $1 per put in watt in Australia, regardless of comparable applied sciences in each locations. The distinction is that Australia has put in place rules and insurance policies that enable the value per watt to be simply $1.
If the Public Utility Fee and the Division of Public Service really need probably the most inexpensive electrical energy for all Vermonters, they need to liberate Vermonters from the utility monopolies, whose outdated applied sciences produce the costliest electrical energy.
As Saul Griffith factors out, even when utilities had zero value for producing stations and 0 value for gas, their transmission and their distribution prices would nonetheless make their electrical energy costlier than the lowest-cost domestically generated and saved power. Why not make this low-cost method a purpose within the subsequent 10 years?
After all, on this new and/each hybrid mannequin, we might nonetheless must pay the utilities to keep up and enhance their wired grid. This could assist the utilities unlock their grid capability limits.
The {hardware} and software program applied sciences for lower-cost distributed electrical energy and storage have converged and are actually out there. It’s time to leverage this new risk. It’s previous time to cease forcing shoppers to subsidize high-cost legacy electrical programs and defend outmoded programs from competitors. What’s lacking immediately are the insurance policies and rules to help what’s now doable.
It’s time to embrace a renewable and distributed power system. A primary step on this transition may be to convene a yearlong investigation, such because the 5270 course of that led to the creation of Effectivity Vermont, on how you can help all Vermonters to maneuver to a hybrid power method.
We will select to do that. The query is will we?
Supporting supplies:
Saul Griffith presentation to Burlington Electrical
Historical past: how you can halve the price of residential photo voltaic
Quoted common costs for photo voltaic installations
Do you know VTDigger is a nonprofit?
Our journalism is made doable by member donations. For those who worth what we do, please contribute and assist maintain this very important useful resource accessible to all.
This commentary is by Peter Langella of Moretown, a public high school and college educator.
Imagine that education in Vermont is a game of chess.
Over the years, many pieces have been taken away from the board. Student enrollment has declined, but there has also been a steady stream of cuts and consolidations, spiking during Act 46 mergers and now again over the past two years.
Conversely, many other pieces have been added that don’t mesh with the original rules of the game. This is because the United States (and Vermont, under Gov. Scott and his vetoes) has rejected many social foundations and safety nets; and schools, admirably, have often tried to fill the gap by employing special educators, social workers, psychologists, intensive paraeducators, behavior interventionists and a plethora of other important and helpful humans.
So when legislators and bureaucrats talk about “right-sizing,” they are mostly trying to play a conventional game of educational chess based on Carnegie Units, the metric developed in 1906 that awards academic credit based on the number of “seat time” hours in a given course, especially at the high school level. This is the “Reading, wRiting, aRithmetic” model many of today’s decision-makers experienced as students.
Simply put, it’s stagnant, outdated and inequitable.
So, Vermont has a choice. We can react to this education funding crisis by further cutting and consolidating, trying to put all the pieces back the way they were and play chess by the original rules, or we can flip the board over and play a new game — completely transforming our model of public education.
READ MORE
Public schools in Vermont must become more personalized and community-based, partnering with local organizations for experiential and service-driven learning. Schools must think about what it means to be a compassionate human in our modern world and appropriately backward-design curricula to grow young people to meet that challenge. Schools must be interdisciplinary, creating a fusion of conventional academics with the arts, outdoor education, and sustainability. Schools must center inclusion and intersectionality, striving to represent, honor, and affirm all learners in a way that shares power. And, schools must value the whole student, concentrating on physical, social and emotional well-being above all other metrics.
The possibilities abound. We have so many creative and empathetic people here. We also have so many amazing students, who are truly our resident experts on what school is and what it can be.
We could harness that, but we aren’t, at least not at a statewide level. For example, the Commission on the Future of Public Education, by statute, was supposed to “represent the State’s geographic, gender, racial, and ethnic diversity,” and it knows it failed on multiple levels of its most basic charge. There also aren’t any current educators or school employees who are part of the group, and there are no students, who repeatedly lack power, access and representation in official spaces where their future is being decided, especially when they come from marginalized backgrounds.
On a more micro level, this isn’t happening in most districts or schools, either. Like many around the state, the district I work in had its budget defeated last year. The school board moved quickly to adopt a new number, and district and building administrators were tasked with identifying cuts.
Instead of having a more transformational conversation, they cut librarians, drama teachers, music teachers, business teachers, French teachers, personalized learning coordinators, restorative practices coordinators, mentoring coordinators, instructional coaches, intensive paraeducators and JV sports programs.
It was and is horrendous.
Imagine something better. Imagine flipping that chessboard over and looking at an open canvas. Before talking about tax rates, yield bills and common levels of appraisal; imagine centering teaching and learning. Imagine a visioning process where we, all of us, collectively redefine what school can be.
I’m not naive enough to think it would fit my exact hopes, and I’m not idealistic enough to think it wouldn’t include some cuts and consolidations. But at least it would be intentional.
The current narrative around this crisis is reactionary. The state is trying to force its way back to the chessboard, and it’s being falsely portrayed as the harder choice.
The harder choice, in actuality, is to transform. Create a bold vision and initiate a brand new game of school — creative, holistic, inclusive — that could serve as an example for the entire country.
The 2024-2025 Vermont high school winter season has begun. See below for scores, schedules and game details (statistical leaders, game notes) from basketball, hockey, gymnastics, wrestling, Nordic/Alpine skiing and other winter sports.
TO REPORT SCORES
Coaches or team representatives are asked to report results ASAP after games by emailing sports@burlingtonfreepress.com. Please submit with a name/contact number.
►Contact Alex Abrami at aabrami@freepressmedia.com. Follow him on X, formerly known as Twitter:@aabrami5.
►Contact Judith Altneu at jaltneu@gannett.com. Follow her on X, formerly known as Twitter: @Judith_Altneu.
TUESDAY’S H.S. GAMES
Girls basketball
Burlington 68, Champlain Valley 59
B: Bree McDonald 24 points. Nylah Mitchell 20 points. Atika Haji 16 points.
C: Zoey McNabb 23 points. Kaitlyn Jovell 10 points.
Note: Burlington defeated CVU for the first time since Feb. 17, 2012.
Oxbow 64, Peoples 33
O: Braylee Phelps 24 points. Maggi Ellsworth 15 points.
P: Daisy Berg 13 points. Sophie Beck 11 points.
Note: Phelps made five 3-pointers to lead Oxbow, which led 40-16 at the break.
Harwood 44, Lyndon 34
H: Eloise Lilley 14 points. Maddie Ryley 9 points. Kendra Rocheleau 8 rebounds. Adelaide Chalmers 5 rebounds. Roanha Chalmers 5 rebounds.
L: Ella Marshia 15 points.
Note: Harwood led 25-17 at the break and 24-29 through three quarters before pulling away for the road win.
Winooski 36, BFA-Fairfax 31
W: Ashlyn Parris 9 points. Taraji Bradley 8 points.
F: Anna Villeneuve 16 points.
Note: Winooski opened a 26-7 halftime lead.
Windsor 58, Lake Region 18
W: Sophia Rockwood 20 points. Amelia Rockwood 14 points. Audrey Rupp 8 points.
North Country 64, Spaulding 27
NC: Sabine Brueck 20 points. Ava Patten 10 points. Addie Nelson 10 points. Marlow Maxwell 9 points.
S: Taylor Keel 9 points.
Lamoille 60, U-32 34
L: Alyssa Small 17 points, 10 rebounds, 3 assists. Evie Pirie 10 points. Ava Baisley 9 points. Maddex Percey 8 points. Alana Crittenden 7 points, 7 assists, 5 rebounds.
U: Paige Parker 14 points. Clara Wilson 12 points.
Twinfield/Cabot 60, Northfield 35
T/C: Kendall Fowler 16 points. Jorja Washburn 12 points. Carly Mancini 11 points.
Williamstown 58, Danville 52
W: Julia French 20 points, 5 steals. Natalie Beliveau 15 points, 15 rebounds. Hannah Spencer 14 points. Courtney Beliveau 8 points, 5 rebounds.
D: Myah Morgan 15 points. Lauren Joncas 15 points.
Rutland 46, South Burlington 28
R: Brinley Gandin 18 points. Lanza Bellomo 9 points.
SB: Lexi Paquette 18 points.
Montpelier 49, Woodstock 42 (OT)
Randolph 47, Thetford 41
Stowe at Richford
Enosburg at Hazen, ppd.
Boys basketball
Rice 78, St. Johnsbury 56
R: Owen Eaton 22 points. Dallas St. Peter 21 points. Evan Eaton 16 points.
SJ: Rex Hauser 23 points. Michael Rodriguez Guerrero 12 points. Will Eaton 8 points.
Note: Owen Eaton drained five 3-pointers for Rice, which led 38-19 at the break.
South Burlington 76, Milton 29
SB: Deng Aguek 22 points. Oli Avdibegovic 14 points. Paul Comba 13 points. Kai Davidson 10 points.
M: Keegan Fitzgerald 7 points. Carter McGregor 7 points.
Note: Host South Burlington led 24-6 after the first quarter and 41-14 at the break.
Champlain Valley 60, Essex 36
CV: Owen Scott 21 points, 3 assists. Luke Allen 10 points, 9 rebounds.
Burlington 93, BFA-St. Albans 48
BHS: Abdi Sharif 19 points, 10 rebounds, 4 steals. Pascal Munezero 14 points, 7 rebounds, 4 steals.
BFA: Gabe Howrigan 19 points. Ryan Munger 11 points.
Note: Host BHS (6-0) raced to a 51-24 halftime lead.
Woodstock 61, Brattleboro 52
W: Elvis Lavallee 18 points. Caleb Sammel 17 points. Caeden Perreault 10 points.
B: John Satterfield 18 points. Oscar Korson 14 points. Jack Cady 10 points.
Colchester at Mount Mansfield
WEDNESDAY’S H.S. GAMES
Boys basketball
Games at 7 p.m unless noted
Williamstown at BFA-Fairfax
Fair Haven at Middlebury
Winooski at Richford
Lyndon at Montpelier
Lamoille at U-32
Lake Region at Hazen
Thetford at Peoples
Randolph at Mount Abraham
Twinfield/Cabot at Danville, 7:30 p.m.
Girls basketball
Games at 7 p.m unless noted
BFA-St. Albans at Missisquoi
Essex at Colchester
Rice at Burr and Burton
Boys hockey
Burr and Burton at Colchester, 4:30 p.m.
Woodstock at Harwood, 5 p.m.
Hartford at Rice, 5:25 p.m.
Milton at St. Johnsbury, 6 p.m.
Stowe vs North Country at Jay Peak, 6 p.m.
Middlebury at Burlington, 7 p.m.
U-32 at Brattleboro, 7:15 p.m.
BFA-St. Albans at South Burlington, 5:15 p.m.
Essex at Champlain Valley, 7:40 p.m.
Missisquoi at Mount Mansfield, 8 p.m.
Girls hockey
Kingdom Blades at Middlebury, 5 p.m.
Woodstock at Spaulding, 5:15 p.m.
Stowe at Hartford, 5:45 p.m.
Champlain Valley/Mount Mansfield at Essex, 6 p.m.
Burlington/Colchester at BFA-St. Albans, 7 p.m.
U-32 at Missisquoi, 7:15 p.m.
Wrestling
Champlain Valley, St. Johnsbury at Essex, 6 p.m.
(Subject to change)
Take a Bow
Saturday 11
New York City’s DragonBoot Quartet bring compelling string compositions to Waterbury Congregational Church for an afternoon of nimble musicianship. The vibrant foursome — all current students of the Juilliard School — plays familiar favorites by Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, as well as contemporary works by American composer and Pulitzer laureate Caroline Shaw.
Best Rest
Wednesday 15
Girls’ Night Out With Beth Kruger at the Essex Resort & Spa invites women over 40 to step into the New Year seeking balance, harmony and a bit of self-care. The event kicks off with a refreshing spa experience — including use of the sauna, hot tub and steam room — followed by refreshments around the fireplace and a deep dive into Kruger’s “Menopause Toolkit.”
Finding Their Footing
Saturday 11
The Marble Valley Dance Collective captivates audience members with New Dances Dawning, staged at Vermont State University’s Casella Theater in Castleton. Eighteen dancers from the state’s southwest region evoke a sense of unbridled joy, community and belonging through movement — emphasizing the nonprofit’s mission of forging deep connections through dance.
Clap Your Hands
Saturday 11
Prolific local songwriter Matt Hagen takes center stage for Burlington’s FlynnZone Kids Hour — a monthly performance series in the Flynn lobby designed for wee ones ages 3 to 5. Through musical improvisation, Hagen leads kiddos and their caregivers in interactive, playful songs built to foster imagination, make memories and introduce children to the arts.
Ski Ya There
Saturday 11
Sleepy Hollow Inn’s Full Moon Ski Party in Huntington invites snow sports enthusiasts of all ages and abilities to ski beneath the milky twilight and snowshoe out on the moonlit floor. The event opens with a free ski lesson, followed by folks taking to the trails with headlamps — or opting for the 1K lighted loop. The adventure concludes with music, hot drinks and treats by the fire.
Dynamic Duo
Saturday 11
Boston juke-joint revival band the Smack Dabs and virtuosic New England foursome Rhythm Future Quartet light up the night with a soulful double bill at Next Stage Arts in Putney. Audience members get groovy with the former’s 1930s good-time swing blues and the latter’s hot-club jazz tunes (think Django Reinhardt) — an energy so contagious, listeners can’t help but tap a toe.
Swiss Scapes
Ongoing
Acclaimed German artist Thomas Struth‘s exhibition of large-scale color photographs at Hall Art Foundation in Reading showcases the rural landscapes of Northern Switzerland. Struth’s soft, unidealized shots were taken in the early 1990s and began as a commissioned project for a private hospital in Winterthur — the works serving as a portal for patients to the outside world.
New PBS North Carolina Show to Look at a State “Shaped by Sound”
Our opinion: Tougher sentences on certain crimes in North Dakota needed, no matter cost or jail crowding
Cotton Bowl weather worry prompts Texas-Ohio State CFP ‘contingencies’
Unpacking Future Packers: No. 99, Oklahoma DE Ethan Downs
A tale of patience and a bribe: Oregon State’s Parsa Fallah fulfills his basketball dream
Colorado Rockies game no. 116 thread: Zac Gallen vs José Ureña
Why Marjorie Taylor Greene was ‘kicked out’ of the Freedom Caucus according to Rep. Buck
See it: Tesla crashes into Columbus convention center at 70 mph
Fox News Politics: Georgia the whole day through
Death of missing Oregon girl found in stream ruled homicide
Two Friends’ Rush to Save a Pacific Palisades Family Home From the Fire
Trump files emergency petition to Supreme Court to prevent sentencing in NY v. Trump
German politicians rebuke Trump over NATO defence spending demand
As winter storms strike, airlines scramble to de-ice planes and keep them flying
Photos: Pacific Palisades Wildfire Engulfs Homes in an L.A. Neighborhood
-
Business1 week agoThese are the top 7 issues facing the struggling restaurant industry in 2025
-
Culture1 week agoThe 25 worst losses in college football history, including Baylor’s 2024 entry at Colorado
-
Sports7 days agoThe top out-of-contract players available as free transfers: Kimmich, De Bruyne, Van Dijk…
-
Politics6 days agoNew Orleans attacker had 'remote detonator' for explosives in French Quarter, Biden says
-
Politics5 days agoCarter's judicial picks reshaped the federal bench across the country
-
Politics4 days agoWho Are the Recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom?
-
Health3 days agoOzempic ‘microdosing’ is the new weight-loss trend: Should you try it?
-
World1 week agoIvory Coast says French troops to leave country after decades