Just 20 months after it started, Central Vermont Public Service’s (CVPS) Cow PowerTM is the only direct, farm-to-consumer renewable energy initiative nationally, and among the leading renewable energy programs in America, with more than 3,000 Vermonters -- or about 2% of CVPS’ 151,000 customers -- choosing to pay a little more for electricity generated from manure and other farm waste, right on the farm. That 2% is roughly twice the median rate for similar programs nationwide!

Earl Audet of Blue Spruce Farm in Bridport was Cow Power’sTM first producer, converting manure from his 1,500 cows into roughly 1.75 million kilowatts of power a year. Today, other Vermont farmers have similar projects underway, in and out of CVPS’ service area.

Systems vary, but they all heat manure in a biodigester, and allow bacteria to grow. This produces methane, which is used to generate electricity. The process takes about 3 weeks.
Unlike wind turbines, biodigesters can deliver consistent baseline power, without seasonal or weather-linked variations. In addition to yielding clean power, the process also reduces phosphorous content (and polluting run-off), bacteria, odor, weed seeds and insect larvae. The remaining solids can be separated into an odorless liquid fertilizer for fields, plus a fibrous solid material similar to peat moss, that can be used as bedding for cows or sold to tree nurseries and composters.
Last January, a group of these farmers asked for my help, when they realized they’d need special transmission equipment to get the electricity from their farm generators onto the power grid. Power lines that deliver electricity to most Vermont farms and homes carry “single-phase” power over the distribution grid. But generators produce and deliver electricity to the larger transmission grid in a different form, called “3-phase” power.

While Earl Audet’s farm has access to 3-phase power lines, the farmers who came to my office in January were off the beaten track, where installing the 3-phase link to their farms would be costly.

So we met in my office -- a loose collaborative of farmers from a half-dozen or so farms, legislative leaders and administration officials in agriculture and energy, and representatives from CVPS.

They shared their experience and expertise with all aspects of farm-generated power, and tackled the common challenge represented by the 3-phase power conversion. They also focused on sources of funding to help with that link -- and in particular, the clean energy development fund, created by the legislature in 2005 using assessments on Vermont Yankee’s stored spent fuel.

Through winter and spring, the farmers continued working through various phases of design and planning, financing and construction of their systems.

Then last week, I led a group of legislators, administration and utility officials on a tour of four of these farms in Franklin County: the Montagne farm in St. Albans, the Rowell farm in Sheldon, the Gervais farm in Enosburg and the St. Pierre farm in Berkshire.

What we saw was four outstanding farms -- all clean, well-managed 1,000-cow operations -- and the hard-working, visionary farmers who are pioneering a whole new future for farming and for energy production in our state.

But if Vermont truly wants a more robust, better diversified, more secure power supply, we should support it with the needed 3-phase transmission infrastructure -- the highway, if you will, that transports power from the generator to the light switch, from farm to consumer.

Government at all levels builds and maintains our highways, from town roads to federal interstates. We talk about the need to build infrastructure for broadband internet and wireless communications.

Seventy years ago, the Rural Electrification Act brought electricity to rural areas like Vermont for the first time. Today, we have the know-how to generate electricity in many decentralized places, with a variety of technologies: farm biodigesters, wind turbines, landfill methane, wood chip plants, small hydro plants.

Perhaps it’s time for a Rural Re-electrification Act for our century, to build a new 3-phase highway to carry power to market, from small generators to the transmission grid. We could create a bundle of services -- engineering, management, financing -- to smooth the way for homegrown Vermont energy generation.

A few years back, a movie about baseball gave us this idea: “If we build it, they will come”.

It’s worth considering, that perhaps if we build a 3-phase transmission infrastructure to cover the state, a new generation of clean, renewable generators -- led by Earl Audet in Bridport and four Franklin County farmers -- will come.