Summary
The Vermont Supreme Court affirmed the Public Service Board’s denial of Allco Renewable Energy Limited and PLH LLC’s motion for reconsideration concerning standard-offer contracts for solar projects. The court held that Allco’s arguments under 30 V.S.A. § 8005a(d)(2), including the meaning of the “sufficient benefits” standard, were not properly raised or decided before the Board and therefore would not be addressed on appeal. The court also noted that Allco had not provided an adequate factual basis for applying that statutory provision.
Topics
Practice areas
Questions Presented
- Whether the Vermont Supreme Court could decide Allco's claim that its proposed solar projects qualified for standard-offer contracts under 30 V.S.A. § 8005a(d)(2) when that claim was not raised during the Board's request-for-proposals process and was not decided by the Board.
- Whether Allco preserved the § 8005a(d)(2) issue through its motion for reconsideration.
Holdings
- The court declined to address Allco's claim concerning the proper application of 30 V.S.A. § 8005a(d)(2) because the claim was neither raised nor decided before the Public Service Board.
- Allco could not preserve through its post-judgment motion an issue that should have been raised earlier in the Board proceedings.
Key quotations
“Because Allco’s claims relating to the correct application of § 8005a(d)(2) were neither raised nor decided below, we decline to address them on appeal.” (¶ 1)
“Although it is true that “in certain circumstances litigants may preserve issues in post-judgment motions, they may not do so when those issues should have been raised in earlier proceedings before the Board.”” (¶ 12)
Factual background
The Board's 2016 request for proposals sought renewable-energy projects eligible for standard-offer contracts under 30 V.S.A. § 8005a(c), which governs annual cumulative capacity. Allco submitted eleven of eighteen solar proposals, but only two solar projects received contracts after the Board filled the available capacity with the lowest-priced projects. In its motion for reconsideration, Allco argued for the first time that its remaining projects should receive contracts outside the cumulative-capacity limit because they provided sufficient benefits to Vermont's electric grid under § 8005a(d)(2).
Procedural history
The Public Service Board conducted a 2016 request-for-proposals process under 30 V.S.A. § 8005a(c), ranked solar projects by price, and awarded standard-offer contracts to selected projects. Allco moved for reconsideration, arguing for the first time that its remaining solar projects qualified for contracts outside the cumulative-capacity limit under § 8005a(d)(2)'s sufficient-benefits provision. The Board denied reconsideration as outside the scope of the request for proposals, and the Vermont Supreme Court affirmed.