Montpelier — A proposal to have Vermont buy a series of 13 power dams on the Connecticut and Deerfield rivers in hopes of stabilizing power prices appears to be dead.

Instead, state officials are talking about pursuing a long-term power purchase from the entity that ends up owning the properties.

Administration Secretary Justin Johnson, chairman of a special working group looking at buying the series of hydro stations that energy giant Trans-Canada has put up for sale, provided that update in an interview this week.

While a purchase price estimated at $800 million to $1.2 billion would be too much for Vermont to swallow, Johnson said, there’s strong interest in buying power generated by the dams from their future owner.

Interest in the dams, which the state and a private partner tried to buy before being outbid by TransCanada a little over a decade ago, was rekindled in March with news that Trans-Canada was trying to sell power generation properties in the northeastern United States to raise money to buy a Texas-based natural gas company.

Johnson said one impediment was that several of the properties lie partly or completely out of state.

New Hampshire owns the Connecticut River to the Vermont bank, so the dams on the river’s main stem north of Massachusetts are mainly in that state.