Vermont opens a rulemaking to rewrite its net-metering rule, and has not yet said what is in it

The Vermont Public Utility Commission issued an order on 9 September 2026 opening a rulemaking to update Commission Rule 5.100, the rule governing the construction and operation of net-metering systems in the state. A workshop is scheduled for 2 October 2026 at 9:30 a.m. That is the whole of what the Commission's public notice establishes, and it is worth saying so plainly rather than filling the gap. Rule 5.100 is the instrument that decides who may install a net-metered system in Vermont, on what terms, at what compensation, and with what siting constraints: in other words, the terms on which a Vermont household or business is permitted to generate. The current version of the rule is dated 12 November 2024, the product of the previous rulemaking cycle. What this sweep could not establish from the Commission's own pages: the scope of the proposed amendments, the docket number assigned to the new rulemaking, whether a draft rule text accompanies the order, and any comment deadline. The Commission's electronic case system refused the connection. There is a temptation here worth naming, because it is the kind of error that gets printed. Vermont's previous Rule 5.100 rewrite, which concluded in November 2024, touched the definition of "preferred site", limits on forest clearing associated with preferred-site projects, registration and application processes, project amendment procedures, transfer and extension requirements for certificates of public good, and, most consequentially, language authorising utilities to propose tariffs assessing locational adjustor fees for constrained areas of the grid. A locational adjustor fee is the mechanism by which a utility charges a distributed generator differently depending on where on the network it sits, which is one of the sharper live questions in net metering anywhere. That list is available and it is tempting to attach it to this order. It belongs to the earlier cycle. Nothing in the 9 September notice says any of it returns. Separately, Vermont is running a 2026 biennial update of its net-metering rate adjustors, in which the Department of Public Service filed recommendations in April 2026. Whether the rulemaking opened on 9 September is connected to that biennial process is not established here. The reason a procedural notice of this kind is worth logging at all: the rules that determine what a rooftop system earns in a small US state are rewritten in workshops with a handful of attendees, and the 2 October date is the first moment at which anyone outside the room can see what is being proposed.