[2:54] Good

[2:57] evening. Good evening. Good evening. I call to order this September 2nd, 2026 work session of the Board of Public Utilities. I thank everyone for participating. Hopefully it'll be another evening of fun and frolic.

[3:12] Please, please, we're not dealing with ECA by comparison anything that's fun and frolic.

[3:19] Anyway, first order of business is public comment.

[3:23] Do we have any public comments this evening?

[3:27] I don't see any in chambers.

[3:30] Have you, do we have any online?

[3:32] Thank you, Chair Gibson.

[3:33] For members of the public who are joining us on Zoom tonight,

[3:36] when Chair Gibson calls for public comment, please use the raise hand function.

[3:40] If you are participating by phone, press star 9 to raise your hand.

[3:45] If you wish to make a public comment at this time, raise your hand on Zoom.

[3:49] Chair Gibson, there are no hands raised.

[3:51] Okay, thank you.

[3:53] That takes us to a action to suspend procedural rules for the work session.

[4:00] Do I have a motion on that?

[4:03] Sure, I move that the Board of Public Utilities suspend the procedural rules.

[4:06] there are procedural rules for the September 2nd, 2026 work session so that formal action may be taken.

[4:13] Second.

[4:14] Okay.

[4:16] Move to the second of the We suspend procedural rules.

[4:18] Any comment?

[4:20] Discussion?

[4:22] Hold in favor?

[4:24] Motion passes three to zero.

[4:30] That takes us to approval of the agenda.

[4:37] I always saw that Kathy, to her one, is on.

[4:41] And we're not scheduled to get to the strategic planning update until very late in the meeting.

[4:48] Did you want to move that up?

[4:55] She's there now if she wants to be.

[4:59] Let's do that.

[5:00] Let's do that after the public hearing as the first item under business will just rearrange the business agenda.

[5:10] Okay. Is that okay with you, Kathy?

[5:15] Can you hear us?

[5:16] She's muted. We can't hear you, you're muted.

[5:20] Yes, that's fine with me. Thank you.

[5:24] Okay. I mean, you're welcome to stay for the later in the meeting if you prefer, but I just thought maybe you'd like to get your part done

[5:29] do something else. Thank you. Okay, we have a motion to approve the agenda with moving

[5:42] item 6D to be the first item under business. Sure, I move we approve the agenda as amended.

[5:51] Second. Okay, moved in second. Discussion. All in favor.

[5:59] Opposed, motion passes three to zero. That takes us to the consent agenda. Would anyone

[6:07] like to either amend or move to approve the consent agenda?

[6:16] I move that the Board approve the items on the consent agenda as presented and that the

[6:21] motions in the staff reports be included in the minutes for the record. I'll second

[6:25] Okay, we've been seconded to approve the consent agenda as presented.

[6:32] Any other comment?

[6:34] Seeing none, Kathy, please go the roll.

[6:39] Member Nockley?

[6:40] Member Haptor?

[6:41] Yes.

[6:41] Member Gibson?

[6:43] Thank you.

[6:44] Motion passes three to zero.

[6:47] That takes us to the public hearing on

[6:51] Code Ordnance number zero two three eighty seven

[6:55] which is to do with water service race casuals and that starts on page 20 of our agenda

[7:03] duck.

[7:06] Good evening Mr. Chair members of the board. I'm not John Janshi, but I'm here to present

[7:11] in her place tonight. It's she's enjoying overall deserved vacations. So here for any questions

[7:17] you may have on this public hearing. You do have your slides that were in the packet. Here's

[7:24] the same slides that we presented during VBP,

[7:26] last VPU introduction.

[7:28] So what does do a quick recap of that?

[7:31] This is water rate, water rate,

[7:34] code ordinance number 02387.

[7:37] If you recall, water rate ordinance 02480

[7:40] was provided to VPU on April 15, 2026,

[7:44] then it worked its way through a final VPU

[7:46] and then council.

[7:48] And then it was later seen that some of the dates

[7:51] that were in that ordinance were incorrect.

[7:54] so that we're under that ordinance void

[7:56] and this ordinance is now correcting those dates

[7:59] with the same exact rate increases that we're previously

[8:03] but approved by both board and council.

[8:10] Again, this replaces the incorrect version

[8:12] that was previously passed.

[8:14] The next two slides in the presentation

[8:17] give the recommended revisions to those dates.

[8:21] A couple of things to keep in mind

[8:23] for the water rate increase is this is a double rate increase and so it starts on a

[8:29] October 1st, 2026 through September 30th, 2027 and then the second rate increase would

[8:36] be for October 1st, 2027 on. This new this water rate ordinance also includes the bulk

[8:45] delivery rate for Lannel, the irrigation meter rate, the rate for the potty to mount

[8:52] service area and non-potable. If approved today, next step would be that it goes for

[9:00] Council introduction next week on September 8th and then the Council public hearing will

[9:05] be held on September 29th, 2026. That would be up in San Fretti questions.

[9:12] Questions?

[9:17] I have a few since I wasn't here for the original hearing on the 20th of May.

[9:25] I've got a few questions that I probably would have asked them if I had been present, so please bear with me.

[9:34] Maybe some of these were addressed then, I don't know.

[9:38] We once had progressive or tiered water rates for presidential at least,

[9:45] and those seem to have disappeared.

[9:48] Do you know when and why they disappeared?

[9:52] share gifts and I do not do you know Mr. Sulton the tiered rates are in this

[10:00] If you go to Part C, paragraph C, page, which,

[10:11] so if you 40-171, voteable, break schedule, A, A, paragraph C,

[10:21] there's different columns.

[10:24] Yeah? There's 9,000 gallons first. And then, 9, 15 and over 15. And they're all the same right.

[10:35] this is for October 1st through the 30th, that's that is the non-peak season and then if you

[10:45] continue down there's May 1st to September 30 and that's where you see the tears.

[10:56] Well that actually brings in my next question because the peak and non-peak are the same

[11:02] So no single family, you'll see 7, 53,

[11:10] 8, 28, and 9,

[11:16] 10.

[11:18] Dear dips and numbers of the board.

[11:19] If you also, then your package, there's the FAQs.

[11:23] And the second page of that gives a nice little summary of the reading.

[11:27] So you can see that there's the tiered reading.

[11:29] cases for the single-family residential, however, the rates remain

[11:33] be seen for multi-family commercial counties.

[11:37] May, that's the heading, but if you look at the rates, they're not

[11:41] different. They're different.

[11:45] 7.53, all the way across, 8.13, all

[11:48] the way across, 8.78, all the way across. For that time period, they are the

[11:53] same. Well, for non-peak October 1st, April 30th, they're the same.

[11:59] And then when you go into May 1st or September,

[12:04] you'll need the summer peak season.

[12:06] But there's the same rate.

[12:07] There's the same dollar among there's different.

[12:09] They're different in the tears.

[12:12] Seven starts at seven.

[12:15] Then it goes to eight, 28, and then nine, 10.

[12:18] Ah, OK, I missed that one.

[12:19] All right, that's for the summer season.

[12:24] OK, that they are tiered there.

[12:26] OK, I missed that.

[12:28] looked at the first column. I apologize.

[12:33] Okay.

[12:55] Next question, we have a, there's a still a bulk delivery rate schedule 8D,

[13:03] which I think used to be for the lab, but now we have a lab bulk rate schedule, who a plot to whom does this schedule 8D now apply?

[13:16] It gives them that applies for the cost of water that's provided from water production to water distribution.

[13:22] So that's an internal DP rate.

[13:25] Lannol was part of that bulk rate, but now this is establishing the Lannol bulk rate, which is higher than the cost of water rate that we charge water distribution.

[13:38] With that, we had done a cost-of-service model for landowners.

[13:41] The reason for the higher rate for landowners so that they can pay their fair share of their use of the system.

[13:53] It's an internal rate. Does it really need to be encode?

[13:57] We need to use a check-ups and for...

[13:59] Chair, we do use that rate occasionally if customers have unexpected leak.

[14:07] We charge that rate to the customer, you know, but for that leak, that's the actual cost

[14:15] of water.

[14:17] So it's a little, okay.

[14:20] That makes sense.

[14:23] All right.

[14:25] Thank you.

[14:27] Are there other questions?

[14:31] Sure, Matt.

[14:32] Well, we're digging into the rates.

[14:33] I was just curious, when we sell water for fire protection,

[14:37] the helicopters are to construction around town,

[14:39] which rate is that?

[14:40] Is that bulk or is that commercial or?

[14:45] Four fire protection.

[14:48] I think when we check out a hydrant meter

[14:51] at commercial rate,

[14:54] if there's a fire, we don't charge for that,

[14:57] you know, if they're fighting a fire at the home.

[14:59] Right away.

[15:00] I guess I was like, we're in the force service, yes, they have a meter. Okay.

[15:05] And that's commercial rate. Okay. Thanks.

[15:09] Most of their words didn't come from here.

[15:14] Okay. Other questions?

[15:18] Is there any public comment on the proposed ordinance?

[15:23] Don't see any here? Abbey online.

[15:27] Chair Gibson, thank you.

[15:29] If any members of the public are online, would like to make comment regarding this, please raise your hand now.

[15:35] Chair Gibson, there are no hands raised online.

[15:37] Thank you.

[15:40] That's true.

[15:40] The Board for discussion or motion.

[15:46] Make a motion.

[15:47] I moved that the Board of Public Utilities Recommended Incorporated County of Los Alamos,

[15:51] Code ordinance number zero two dash three eight seven.

[15:54] An ordinance amending the Department of Public Utilities Water Service

[15:57] Great schedules, chapter 40, article 3, sections 40-171, 40-173, and 40-175, and adding

[16:06] new sections 40-176, 40-177, and 40-178 to the Incorporary County of Los Alamos

[16:12] Code with revisions to the effective dates of the last service charge period to after September

[16:18] 30th, 2027, and section 40-171B and C, and after June 30th, 2027, and all other sections,

[16:26] and forward to Council for Introduction in Adoption.

[16:31] I'll second that.

[16:35] Anything further?

[16:38] Kathy?

[16:39] Member Notklee?

[16:40] Member Hadnir?

[16:41] Yes.

[16:42] Member Gibson?

[16:43] Thank you.

[16:44] Motion passes 3-0.

[16:46] Thank you.

[16:48] Thank you.

[16:53] That takes us to

[16:55] Strategic Planning Update,

[16:57] Which is on page 197 of Urgent of Duck

[17:13] by loves you have any opening comments

[17:19] I'm just flipping to the page. Sorry

[17:28] So nothing I wanted to add

[17:32] Joanne Gentry and Ben Oberkin. I met after we

[17:37] we recategorized all the objectives on ongoing versus measurable and then we work to

[17:46] add measurable items to the bullets below each objective so that in some cases the committee

[17:59] offered some, in other cases, they didn't, so we made one that was measurable, so that's what was new from the meeting time.

[18:12] At the workshop last week, till this week, and then me, I'll have Kathy add anything else that she wanted to add, because she, it was a collaborative effort, she did all the shuffling of the objectives,

[18:28] and then we work to add the measures below.

[18:36] Thank you, Final.

[18:36] I would just add that, I hope you have an opportunity to read through the measures.

[18:45] We have as many as nine and as few as two for each of our focus areas, which I, from a strategic planning standpoint,

[18:54] I mean, it gives us a mature plan that we're going to be able to track and review on an ongoing basis.

[19:03] So I would ask the board if it was accurately displayed in the document that you received in your packet.

[19:17] And I believe that a few of you may not have been actually at the workshop, so if you have questions, I would be more than happy to explain the process.

[19:32] Actually, I had a question, Kathy. If you go back up, if you get to go back up to one, that's fine.

[19:39] I don't remember discussing this, and it's fine, I was just curious, what is orthrophoto?

[19:47] Is it orthophoto or orthrophoto?

[19:50] What is that?

[19:52] It's ortho, ortho.

[19:56] Okay, and that's basically aerial photography.

[20:00] We do coordinate with laboratory every four years in pay for. They do one of the whole lab and then they include

[20:09] Los Alamos after that. Okay, so it's a shared data.

[20:14] I was just, I was just, I was just, I never heard of that. And I don't think we discussed it.

[20:21] But that's, to tell us, fine. I was curious. Thanks.

[20:29] Good question.

[20:32] Sorry, I was able to participate, but I did watch the video recap.

[20:35] So I did capture the conversation and it was a great session.

[20:39] Thank you.

[20:41] The one question or thought I wanted to offer was under 5.4 underwater.

[20:46] And I think I had mailed in this comment.

[20:48] There was a little bit of discussion about it.

[20:49] But I wondered about adding a sub bullet under 5.4 about a long term.

[20:56] And we've got the new long-term water plant coming up, but I think in the discussion

[21:01] in my email, I even suggested we make sure it's not just the water resource itself,

[21:06] but also the impact of both our own hydropower, but also WAPA effects.

[21:13] So I just was going to suggest a short bullet there, shorter than what I said, maybe a long-term

[21:20] water plan, and that's a good measurable thing, but I think I want to make sure we have

[21:24] in there was the only thing I wanted to add.

[21:31] And there was discussion. I do want to acknowledge

[21:33] we appreciated your comments and you submitting those. We did review those as we went through

[21:39] each focus area.

[21:44] If I go, do you want to address the conversation around the long-term water plan?

[21:50] Sure, Chair and Board member, he even the long-term water plan, the 40-year plan got approved

[21:59] by the board last month. So we can add that as a bullet complete the that plan. It will take

[22:08] you know, good part of this next year or so to complete it and get it approved by the

[22:16] office estate engineer.

[22:23] So we'll add that directly under the number of gallons per capita if that's okay

[22:28] with you. Another bullet. Yes. Correct. Okay.

[22:34] All of these sub bullets and in the measurable

[22:38] objectives seem to have been added since we talked about it. What was it? That is correct. So

[22:47] that is correct. So this is the feedback that we received from the two small groups and with the

[22:54] of Joanne Finn and by law we were able to actually add where there were not measures discussed.

[23:05] We added what would be recommendations as measures for each of these measurable objectives.

[23:15] That opens up a whole other dimension to this.

[23:23] During our workshop, we did discuss how we would measure and actually, we actually have that on the flip charts during the workshop, how we might be able to measure those different objectives that were in that category.

[23:45] And

[23:49] where we did not have them, then that is, we added the recommendations.

[24:22] Question in one point two, the second bullet.

[24:26] Review damage report.

[24:28] What damage report are we talking about there?

[24:32] Chair.

[24:34] When we have utility locates,

[24:40] if there's a damage related that was either a contractor damage.

[24:48] That's that's a report that we get that we can review with the board.

[24:54] The only report we currently present that's damage related is when we have.

[25:00] We have a tort claim and accident records, but we haven't had one with locates that accuracy, that locates

[25:07] or contractor damage. We just had some with a gas system last week with a third party contractor that damaged gasoline, even though they were located.

[25:25] And the next bullet, what the natural gas survey, what exactly does that refer to?

[25:31] that's something that we hold every four years.

[25:36] It's part of our PRC regulation requirement.

[25:40] We do a survey of the customers.

[25:43] It's a separate survey.

[25:52] And we talked about cost of service studies.

[25:56] This is a objective 2.4.

[25:59] Okay.

[26:00] To we have a sense of what the cost of service studies

[26:06] for all four utilities would be.

[26:13] Chair that varies.

[26:15] The last one we did with electric was under $100,000.

[26:21] Many of them we do internally by staff.

[26:25] It just depends on the complexity of what we're trying to study.

[26:30] The reason the electric one was done by a consultant was we were looking at the time

[26:36] use in demand charge and trying to segregate those costs. That's when that study was performed

[26:43] made recommendations. So it depends. I would say on water, that's probably one that we did

[26:53] quite a bit of work this year on the proposal you made, but it's probably due for independent

[26:59] it review. So I would make a recommendation as part of our annual budget process, those studies,

[27:08] some fun, and we can have that discussion.

[27:13] There's a bit of a chicken and egg here.

[27:15] This sort of commets us to doing it without knowing the financial impact. And then when it comes

[27:21] the budget time, it can be said, oh, this is one of our strategic objectives. So we have to do it.

[27:29] And I don't know whether, I don't know whether we should be committing ourselves to doing that at this point.

[27:41] The waste written is once every five years,

[27:46] right?

[27:49] That objective we never changed.

[27:52] That's been for quite a while.

[28:01] When was the last time?

[28:02] Probably should remember.

[28:03] When was the last cost of service study for these utilities?

[28:07] Well, as I mentioned, we had the electric a couple years ago, that's what guided the

[28:13] thing.

[28:13] I think that's the only one I've personally seen here, and then when we did the water

[28:18] rate presentation of spring, that was done internally, the cost of service, you know,

[28:23] we established a new rate for the Paharito area, area, mountain area, service area.

[28:31] So, you vary how you might do it depending on the complexity of it in the time, and so

[28:37] There

[28:42] was discussion at the strategic planning workshop regarding that at least every five years keeping those words that wording in this objective because that did give us the flexibility.

[28:59] Last

[29:07] item 6.4, I'd like to avoid discussion of ECA, but it's like trying to avoid discussions

[29:16] about AI, it doesn't happen.

[29:20] It almost looks like the bullets don't add anything to the overall objective.

[29:27] pursue contract mods and start discussion from follow on agreement. So the bullets are

[29:33] short term long term looks almost redundant there and I do wonder as I thought about this a little bit more

[29:42] after the last meeting whether we should put anything in there

[29:47] as to why we what kind of contract mods we want to see or would like to see like reducing risk

[29:55] or at least producing risk without some offset income.

[30:01] Confensation. Whether that should be, in the objective, stated objective or not, and I'm raising

[30:14] the question, I'm not sure I have the answer,

[30:25] but from my perspective and probably fall to your recollection,

[30:29] when we were discussing the ECA with Seth, and I think our suspended meeting and then when

[30:38] got back very finely. I seem to recall that there were things, there were just some strange

[30:45] language choices that were that just needed to be fixed up, right? So I think when I thought

[30:51] short term, and his suggestion was, look, pass it, get it done in a short term, in a modification.

[30:58] I didn't think it was anything particularly substantive, but read strangely. So to my mind, I was

[31:04] thinking, okay, let's just get this things tidy up and done, right? So it reads, um, well, um,

[31:11] and then though, but then starting the discussions about follow along in the long term, and you

[31:16] put 31 there, that seems all right to me. Um, I think was, uh, probably the more from my mind, the more

[31:23] substantive thing.

[31:28] I have the same recollection as far as short term things. Roll all the technical

[31:34] Corrections or language clean up into Mod 1 was the recommendation chair and board member

[31:44] notably we've already initiated those discussions with Seth so it's in process right now and

[31:53] and then other modifications will probably see within their year is our energy day ahead market

[32:00] needs as far as any new staffing or software or contracts that we may need to support Eden.

[32:12] So one way might take it into account Chair Gibson's comments, which I agree it does seem like it's

[32:19] just a rewrite to put it into a bullet format. One might just simply write this to say like

[32:24] pursue short-term contract modifications to the ECA as an necessary and start discussion for the

[32:31] all on agreement by 2031. Something like that.

[32:38] Works for me.

[32:39] It looks like that,

[32:46] yep.

[32:47] And then in terms of measuring those, do you all have recommendations

[32:50] as how you would adjust the two bullets?

[32:56] Or is it just completion of the modifications and then?

[33:00] Yeah, I think we can just, I kind of agree with

[33:03] caregivers and we just just delete the bullets.

[33:05] And then we'll know. And then my 2031 someone will say,

[33:08] hey, have you started the long term discussions?

[33:13] Well, this does serve to remind us every year because otherwise you'll get forgotten.

[33:22] Okay.

[33:23] Maddo remember he's going to be here for 15 years.

[33:28] 15 years.

[33:30] We can make those modifications.

[33:32] And that was quite a discussion that we had laid into the evening last week.

[33:39] So, I will work with you to make that modification to 6.4.

[33:49] Other questions or enhancements you would like to make to this document?

[34:03] Good, by the way.

[34:06] I don't have much energy over this, but you could take 6.4.

[34:10] Probably put it under the ongoing objectives, right?

[34:14] At this point, because it kind of feels that way.

[34:16] I don't know if it, again, I hesitate to raise it, but it seems like if it's there more.

[34:27] Chair and Board member, not clearly. The only reason it's measurable is we put a year there,

[34:31] we have something to shoot for, so that

[34:41] you can probably go either way.

[34:44] That gives us something sort of measurable under that one. The others are all the ongoing ones are all

[34:51] Really vague, but that's the nature of partnerships,

[34:59] usually.

[35:03] Well, in that might change next year, once you have a year in front of you, because since that was just agreed upon, it might be appropriate to leave it in the measurable and then we can adjust it as needed next year.

[35:25] Okay, Kathy, Filo, do you have more?

[35:30] That's really good.

[35:33] Just the last thing I just wanted to acknowledge, I did receive

[35:37] and summarize the post strategic planning workshop results,

[35:43] and I did share those with Filo today.

[35:47] We were waiting on just a few more inputs.

[35:51] Overall, it was a positive session content, facilitation and outcomes.

[35:59] We did have some great suggestions that were made by you also.

[36:04] We will be taking those into account as we look to the future.

[36:09] One thing I do want to point out is there were two comments around not reviewing our focus areas.

[36:15] That was by design in this strategic planning workshop that we were not going to spend time on the focus area and goal statements.

[36:25] And last something came up in the small group activity.

[36:29] So I appreciate that the question about that and just wanted to clarify that with the board.

[36:37] chair. We were still missing one input for the post survey, but I anticipate we'll have

[36:47] that for the final when we bring it back in two weeks.

[36:55] So with Kathy shared this all the

[36:58] input short of one person. Okay.

[37:05] Kathy, do you have anything else? I do not unless there's anything

[37:09] final you would like me to hit on that I did not touch on. I think we covered everything that I

[37:15] appreciate the input we received tonight. Clarifications. Okay. Thanks for joining us again, Kathy.

[37:22] Well, I guess we'll see you again in two weeks. Yeah, I'll be back in two weeks. All right. Thank you all very

[37:28] much. All right.

[37:33] That takes us to business starting with the Farxdale Flat's business plan.

[37:40] The staff report for that starts in page 43, a virgin to duck, then you're up.

[37:51] Good evening, Chair.

[37:52] Board members, up I see you again.

[37:57] Been a long time.

[37:59] Be coming up familiar with this piece here.

[38:01] No, I don't order.

[38:10] It looks like my presentation's coming up.

[38:24] And would you rather have questions during a presentation or just go through the presentation

[38:28] and then bring them all up at once.

[38:32] Sure.

[38:33] It's at your discretion.

[38:34] But I encourage questions at any time.

[38:36] Okay.

[38:37] That answers my question.

[38:38] Thank you.

[38:40] All right.

[38:40] Here we go.

[38:41] Fuck sale flat.

[38:42] Flats business plan update.

[38:44] Next slide.

[38:45] Thank you.

[38:46] We're scrolling through.

[38:49] This is a overview.

[38:52] It's the same as last time.

[38:53] I gave you some giving you some prices here now though.

[38:57] So we have some reference.

[38:58] and context for where a foxtail flats fits in with the big picture. So foxtail flats

[39:04] obviously is a big step towards our ultimate goal of being carbon neutral by 2040. At the

[39:11] time of our contracting the DOE had a 50% carbon free electricity by 2030 goal that has been removed

[39:17] under the current administration. But it could come back. They have other requirements but there's

[39:25] substantially lower.

[39:27] Available long-term generational alternatives all cost more than PV does today.

[39:33] Not counting market purchases, which sometimes fluctuate below the cost of PV.

[39:39] But for new resources, we're looking at nuclear and gas turbines in the area of a hundred

[39:43] plus dollars in megawann hour.

[39:47] Sighting photovoltaics locally is we've done a small scale project.

[39:51] Again, anything that we can fit on county or available DOE parcels are going to be fairly small plants.

[40:00] We're looking at ninety to plus dollars and maybe one hour, based upon our last study we did several years ago.

[40:07] It's probably even more than that now.

[40:09] Geothermal $8 plus and maybe one hour more realistically, a hundred plus, but we have seen prices in the 80s.

[40:17] Luckily, that they'd be negotiated as all these other resources have gone up.

[40:22] We cost Geothermal has gone up to not necessarily because it costs more, but they can get more profit out of it, so of course they're going to raise the price.

[40:31] To match the other alternatives.

[40:32] Fox L-flat's PVN best was calculated at a combined cost of 7479 as presented to BPU and

[40:38] Council during the consideration for approval meetings.

[40:41] That was back in 2020, early 2024, February and March.

[40:47] So you can see, even with the battery, still the cheapest resource we can fight.

[40:52] Those prices are fluctuating in that area still.

[40:55] Today, they haven't gone up, they haven't gone, and PVN's gone up a little, maybe you can

[40:59] new Mexico you can get it for in the low $40 range per megawatt hour. Battery prices have

[41:05] come down a smidge. We contracted for $13.50 per kilowatt month, which is a strange unit. That's

[41:14] the way it's priced. You pay for the battery on a monthly basis based upon depending on the capacity.

[41:20] So it's a fixed cost for each power capacity for that battery.

[41:27] 1350 is what we contracted for.

[41:29] It's in the ballpark for large utility scale systems

[41:31] on around $13 today.

[41:34] Next slide, please.

[41:42] All right, so going over what we have

[41:45] with the PPA, our purchase agreement for solar power.

[41:49] They have 100-7 megawatts contracted for 20 years,

[41:51] at $37.88 per megawatt hour, no price escalator.

[41:56] So presumably as the costs of power go up

[41:58] over the next two decades, this will stay the same.

[42:01] relative to other things that will become cheaper.

[42:03] Take or pay, meaning there is you take everything that they produce.

[42:08] If you can't take it, you pay for it regardless of whether you want it or not.

[42:13] That doesn't mean you generally would choose to just not take it.

[42:17] You'd go and sell it to market if you can.

[42:20] Sometimes they're low.

[42:20] We have negative pricing in which case you would simply curtail saying,

[42:24] we don't want it, don't send it out to the grid,

[42:27] and we would pay for the power that we curtailed.

[42:30] When we entered the contract, the developer was using the arrangement of a production tax credit structure,

[42:38] which meant that they got tax credits for every megawatt hour of energy the system produced.

[42:45] They subsequently changed their tax structure to use investment tax credits, which means they got an up front lump payment tax credit that doesn't affect the cost of power generation.

[42:59] Which is beneficial to the county because it means when we curtail, we don't have to pay the additional cost of those foregone production tax credits.

[43:09] So, which potentially could be in the area of the $20 to $30 megawatt hour.

[43:13] So, when we now, under current weight or building their system, if we curtail, we pay $37.88.

[43:21] Previously, I had introduced the idea that if we did curtail, we could pay that extra production tax credit penalty.

[43:27] investment longer in play. The battery energy storage system is under the energy storage

[43:34] agreement, separate agreement. Again, we've heard this for 80 megawatts, 320 megawatt

[43:40] hours of battery storage for 20 years, coincident with the commercial operation date of

[43:45] the solar. 1350 or kilowatt month, as I mentioned, again, no price escalator. We have one

[43:51] or percent of the battery capacity available for all the 20 years, any degradation and what

[43:56] is handled and dealt for accordingly with by the developer and operator. And we could fully charge it

[44:03] and discharge it once per day. That's an average number across an entire year. So if we wanted to do

[44:09] twice in one day for whatever reason we could, but we'd have to make it up by not doing it another day.

[44:15] Next slide, please. Can you hang on one second? I'm just kind of curious. So if you give

[44:21] back to the previous slide at the bottom, you said the total we're paying is like $75.74.79. 75 dollars per megawatt hour.

[44:30] So if you go now down to the back to slide three.

[44:33] So if that $75.38 of them,

[44:37] $37.88 is the solar power.

[44:40] So that means in that odd unit of batteries,

[44:44] that accounts for the other, you know, 30 couple dollars per megawatt hour per.

[44:49] Is that how that works?

[44:49] Yes, so we've made some assumptions obviously, we're assuming that you use the full capacity of the battery with one full charge and discharge every day of the year. Otherwise, if it's sitting there.

[45:00] You're not getting benefit from it. Where you're paying for it, under, as I mentioned, under that fixed $13.50 per

[45:05] kilowatt month charge, you're paying for the battery where the use it or not. Okay. So if you want to maximize your return on it,

[45:12] you're going to use it every day as much as you can. And if you do that, and you charge it from the PV system, the average cost of all the energy

[45:20] get out of the PV that we can use together with the energy that's coming out of the battery,

[45:29] which was charged again from the PV, comes out to run a $75 megawatt arm, I see, okay.

[45:38] Not seeing any more questions, let's move on. So with the full 100 megawatt available,

[45:45] and an average, county, well, and send the initial, I've written an air force base load of about

[45:51] 120 megawatts. There will be times that fossil flash generation exceeds load. Not all the time.

[45:57] During the winter, the dead of winter when the days are short, you don't get as much PV energy.

[46:03] A lot of it will go charge the battery and for about three months in the dead of winter

[46:07] from November, December, and January, we have just about enough solar to meet our load and charge the

[46:14] battery. The rest of the months, once you start getting into spring, days get longer,

[46:19] you have more PV, you don't use the battery as much, you're still charging it fully,

[46:27] but

[46:27] we start getting an increase in the excess PV that we don't need to sink to load. Our load

[46:32] is increasing through this summer and what the PV outpaces that increase in load. So the summer

[46:38] and what we call the shoulder months in the spring and fall are the areas that we are targeting

[46:43] for, what do we do with the excess PV. And that's what this whole presentation is really focused on.

[46:49] on ways, and that we can best get the best financial return on our contract by dealing handling

[46:56] that excess PD during those months. So, as I mentioned historically, we'd planned

[47:01] to sell 15 megawatts, maybe that's a good thing we didn't secure that contract, because as I

[47:09] mentioned, that would have less of a short in the winter, and not maybe potentially having not

[47:15] of PDD and charge our battery, which is not where we want to be.

[47:20] We don't want to, we don't intend on charging the battery from grid, but as we get into

[47:23] the options here, down the road, we'll see that that is an option.

[47:26] The presentation provides this presentation provides options for what to do with that

[47:30] excess power in the summer and spring and fall months.

[47:32] Next slide, please.

[47:34] So, this is really hard to see, but this is what I was talking about, how different

[47:38] months of the year you have access generation.

[47:40] So the yellow bars, or this is all averaged out on a monthly basis, for each month of the year,

[47:46] starting with January, working yourself down the first column and then going to the second column,

[47:50] the third column and then in December. You can see in January, this is barely any extra PV,

[47:56] February March, March starts ticking up, you start seeing X-BIS PV and it grows all the way through the middle of

[48:00] summer and then it starts tapering back down around October. So pretty much what I already said,

[48:06] And that's what we need to deal with.

[48:10] As I said, the 50, so I said the 50 megawatt sale would have eliminated all the excess and more.

[48:18] The fiscal year 28 forecast we are expecting around 56,000 megawatt hours a year of excess solar during the day.

[48:26] To put that in context, the whole facility is expected to put out just a bit under 500,000 megawatt hours.

[48:31] So, little over 10, maybe 15% of excess capacity of generation, I should say.

[48:39] That equates to about $2.1 million a year to buy that excess solar, and if you didn't

[48:44] do anything with it, curtail it, that's what you'd be out for power you bought, but can't

[48:49] use.

[48:50] So, that's our trick is to figure out what to do with that power, and avoid that expensive

[48:56] $2.1 million for no benefit.

[48:59] Next slide, please.

[48:59] Ben, before you go on. Yes, when you talk about excess here, are you talking excess relative to the entire pool load?

[49:11] In the merger, are we?

[49:14] Is this a plan based on?

[49:17] Basically

[49:19] Providing all of the needed power for the pool

[49:23] Exclusive of what we get from Laramie River and Wapa and so on from Foxdale Fletz.

[49:29] Chair board members, excellent question.

[49:31] Yes, it's making the assumption that,

[49:34] best case we use is much BV as we can to serve the pool.

[49:38] If our load goes up, we'll use it all.

[49:41] If it isn't there, then we have the access.

[49:44] And is it the pool and San Diego land?

[49:47] Yes, and San Diego, Kirkland.

[49:49] I don't think we put in San Diego curtains,

[49:52] current 30 megawatt, nominal share of the facility.

[49:56] I don't believe we have included any access.

[50:01] If their load is above their needs, their needs are exceeding what they have already contracted for generation. They contracting with us, for fact, self-latch, at least we're going to get a contract in place with them. We'll talk about that another day. But they also contract with WAPA for the bulk of their power currently.

[50:22] And going ahead, they could take more of our PV to suit match their load rather than buying it from another PPA through WAPA.

[50:31] If the price works out to their advantage, they're probably will.

[50:37] Okay, so you're thinking

[50:39] So there

[50:41] What was their share typically 30 megawatts and then initially and then obviously they need more and they throughout their course of their year

[50:50] They balance they take more from Wapa, right?

[50:53] But if in the summer we've got a lot more than they might be willing to take it from us that might be good thing for them

[50:59] I believe so, and for us, that is true.

[51:03] The reason they only signed up for 30 megawatts

[51:05] was because they were anticipating

[51:07] some other local generation behind the meter projects

[51:10] at the, you know, the,

[51:12] the Nerf-4 space area, that a project called

[51:15] Asgard, I believe it was.

[51:17] It was some kind of thermal storage

[51:19] and solar constant traders and stuff like that.

[51:21] I don't believe that's going forward,

[51:23] but can't speak for sure.

[51:24] But that's part of their reasoning

[51:25] when they signed up for 30 megawatts.

[51:27] I see. Okay.

[51:31] I'm not seeing any more questions. Let's move on. Here's the options that I've identified.

[51:37] There may be some other little variations on these, but these are the five general categories that I'm seeing right now.

[51:44] And I say we have options with 50 megawatts. Again, keeping in mind it's not always 50 megawatts.

[51:49] Sometimes it's more, sometimes it's less depending on season all variations. We could sell to the California ISO extended

[51:55] day ahead market. Just put it into the market, see what it clears for. Some of these will come

[52:00] out ahead, some of these will come out behind. You take the risk of whatever the market price

[52:04] closes at for that day. And you have some indications based on the trends when it comes to that.

[52:12] And you'll say, hey, power is treating a negative prices. I don't want to bid it in. You could do that,

[52:17] but then you have to curtail. So you'll price it accordingly and say whichever option, if I,

[52:22] If selling it to the market loses me money, compared to curtailing, I'll just curtail.

[52:27] So pretty straight forward calculation there.

[52:29] We could sell it to another party through a contract.

[52:31] So similar to what we were planning to do with our 50 megawatts, if we could sell any

[52:34] portion 5, 10, 15, whatever megawatts somebody wants to buy, we could sell them to share

[52:39] that.

[52:40] We were recognizing that the wood cut into the potential to use it ourselves, or send

[52:46] here, national lab currently in our four space during the winter months.

[52:51] We can get more energy storage and use it to store the XRs for use at night.

[52:55] Lots of PV during the day, especially in the summer, not enough at night.

[53:01] Even in the winter or in the summer, we don't have enough, we'd have to get some kind of energy for the night.

[53:06] It could be through energy storage, in which case we could charge up batteries from the PV during the summer.

[53:13] And this is the colder months, we'd have to charge it from grid during the winter.

[53:18] We can use as much next option as we can use as much PV as possible as that we just talked about.

[53:24] The county national lab, senior national lab and current and therefore space.

[53:29] Serve as much load as we can with solar power and solar rest to the KISO extended day head market or another party.

[53:39] There is one option, one more option, option 5, which is a mix of options 2 and 4,

[53:46] where we pick and choose, sell a piece to another party through a contract, and also get

[53:51] more energy storage.

[53:53] The rest of the options don't really combine in that way, but there are possible permindase

[53:59] titions, maybe we could make.

[54:00] These are the main five that I want to talk about.

[54:03] If we sell less than 50 megawasks or another party, we use the PV that we whatever PV we can and get more storage if it's economical and sell the rest of the EDM.

[54:13] So we could combine them to optimize it somehow.

[54:17] Don't have any financial numbers for this.

[54:20] You know, that's getting into a domain where I'm not competent to do that kind of modeling myself.

[54:25] And I need some either tools or somebody to support that.

[54:28] But that will come becoming forward over the next year as we get closer to EDM.

[54:32] Next slide please. So pros and cons of selling it to the customer. As I mentioned, the price varies

[54:40] seasonally daily hourly. You'd never know what you're going to get. You can based it upon historical stuff

[54:45] in recent history and trends, but that's the best you can do. If something happens in spikes, the price,

[54:52] then you make out. If something happens and there's a drop in price, then you get harmed.

[54:59] It allows for...

[55:00] More generation diversity, FOX still flats is expected to be our largest single generation source, serving load.

[55:08] During the day, FOX still flats were a big storm came over, cloud cover, rain, hail, snow, whatever.

[55:17] You'd have a big impact to our generation available to serve load, and we'd have to deal with it either on hourly or imbalance market,

[55:27] Which can have if everybody else is being affected by prices by still the storm

[55:32] We'd be facing the same high prices there ready else we don't have and by those mentioned it before and a factor in this whole calculation about what the best approach is is what does called capacity

[55:43] Where you have reliable generating resources to meet your load regardless of conditions

[55:50] It's a new plant, a base load coal or an actual gas unit.

[55:55] Those are pretty horrible.

[55:56] They can run continues.

[55:57] As long as you have fuel for them, if the weather is bad, they don't care unless you gas

[56:01] the plant gets shut off, but that doesn't generally happen.

[56:06] So they're considered to be very high, available, high capacity resources.

[56:11] PV is an intermittent resource, obviously, can be affected by weather and only goes out

[56:15] during the day.

[56:16] Batteries are somewhere in the middle right now.

[56:18] you need to charge them and they don't last very long so you don't get as much credit

[56:23] on a capacity basis for battery storage right now unless theoretically gets a long duration

[56:30] storage in which case the jacks raises the capacity credit back up selling to kaiso edam gives

[56:39] us room for dispatchable and higher capacity resources as I just mentioned so it makes it easier

[56:46] and produces potential e-damp cost the impacts of not having insufficient capacity.

[56:55] And again, there is the price uncertainty of the part being sold the market.

[57:01] Next slide, please.

[57:09] Okay, pros and cons are selling it to another party.

[57:12] You get price certainty.

[57:13] If you contract it out, you pick the terms, what the price is, the quantity, and you know what

[57:19] you're selling, you know what the price is going to be.

[57:20] known quantity for the duration and term of the agreement.

[57:25] Like the previous case, it also allows for more generation diversity.

[57:30] You can say, well now, I have sold off this capacity.

[57:33] Now I can go by another resource, whether it's geographically diverse,

[57:37] maybe behind the meter to get some additional resilience benefits,

[57:40] or, you know, just somewhere else in a different area where you're not subject

[57:45] necessary to the same weather impacts, a different type of resource that's not affected

[57:50] necessary by the same weather as well. It provides room for those sorts of capacity

[57:57] acquisitions whether through a PPA or ownership and it gives us room to get some

[58:02] what's called dispatchable resources where you can say how much output you want out of it.

[58:07] If you don't want to run it, you can choose the lower output or limit turn off the output

[58:13] and you don't have to pay for fuel.

[58:15] You start to pay for all in MMO.

[58:17] Next slide, please.

[58:21] So pros and cons and more storage storage is expensive.

[58:26] There's newer cheaper resources that are coming soon.

[58:31] We've been hearing that for five years,

[58:33] but some of them are actually seen

[58:34] to be making some headway.

[58:36] One in particular, energy dome,

[58:38] carbon dioxide based, energy storage technology,

[58:41] similar to pump hydro, but using carbon dioxide,

[58:46] is actually has a couple of big contracts with a salt river project and another major

[58:51] utilain. So we're looking at that, seeing if that becomes a thing, the downside of it

[58:56] takes a lot of space. The county doesn't have real estate for it. It takes on order of 20

[59:00] acres to fit one of their facilities. We don't have that available in the county except maybe

[59:06] down the road. The DOE has land, but we'd have to work with them to get some of that if we want

[59:12] do something like that. So the best alternative and the real only alternative today is more

[59:20] lithium ion based, lithium-based storage. Still expensive. As I mentioned, maybe 5% cheaper

[59:28] than it was two years ago.

[59:32] So hopefully that'll change. Maybe the tariff from volume would

[59:34] do a change and we'll get in line with prices, the rest of the world sees which are under $10.

[59:40] But I can't see that happening right now.

[59:43] In the winter months, the PV is insufficient to supply extra batteries,

[59:46] so if you got more battery, you'd need to charge it from grid or from other resources.

[59:50] Is that bad, maybe not still get you night,

[59:54] but if you're charging it from grid, then it's not clean power.

[59:57] Not PV, unless you go and buy some...

[1:00:00] Another resource, contract for some other resources like geo thermal or a small nuke plant or something like that.

[1:00:09] The increases the potential market sales value as storage has a higher assigned capacity.

[1:00:15] I mentioned that than PV, not as high as special resources like coal, nuclear and gas, but into your thermal, but better than PV, much better than PV.

[1:00:25] PV in fact today's market you get almost no capacity credit for the excess capacity you have and

[1:00:32] to control your thing. Next slide, please. So the pros and cons of using PV is much as possible

[1:00:39] on selling the rest. The lower is the combined cost of the solar and battery because the more

[1:00:44] solar, more PV you can use at a lower cost compared to the energy coming out of the battery,

[1:00:48] the better. It could take us from an estimated $75 megawatt order down which is the ballpark of

[1:00:54] $60 a megawatt hour.

[1:00:58] That's without getting any additional battery.

[1:01:01] So only using the extra PV.

[1:01:03] So more about PV at $378 a megawatt hour

[1:01:06] with the same amount of battery

[1:01:08] at $11 a megawatt hour.

[1:01:10] That's why it's lowering the cost.

[1:01:12] You're not increasing your battery.

[1:01:13] You're just using more PV.

[1:01:15] Then it allows for power scheduling flexibility.

[1:01:17] You use it when we can, and it's thought when we can't.

[1:01:19] This is one approach that I did mention this years ago.

[1:01:23] I don't remember when some of you probably

[1:01:25] on the board at the time, but one of the concepts for using intermittent resources or inverter-based

[1:01:31] resources is there sometimes called like solar and when is you get extra. You just get more

[1:01:37] than you think you will need for those times when it's not producing as much as you need. And you just

[1:01:43] plan on disposing of the excess. And that's one approach that some utilities, not all utilities,

[1:01:51] but some of the utilities are seeing as a potential avenue, so it could work for us.

[1:01:57] Next slide, pros and cons of a mix of the options, so less solar and battery,

[1:02:03] cost reduction than using as much PV as possible. If you choose to contract some of the PV,

[1:02:07] obviously you can't use it yourself, so you're not getting the benefit of that low cost PV.

[1:02:13] But it does allow for more power scheduling flexibility, the user will be counted, so we can't

[1:02:17] And at the same time, you get some of the benefits

[1:02:20] of additional generator diversity

[1:02:21] and dispatchable resources that I already mentioned.

[1:02:25] Additional storage increases the cost, no matter what we do.

[1:02:29] Unless we see some dramatic cost reductions

[1:02:31] in long-term long-duration storage.

[1:02:34] Don't see that yet in practice.

[1:02:39] But in theory, at least according to what these developers

[1:02:42] are promising, as I mentioned, energy dome

[1:02:46] looks to be about half the cost of lithium-based technology storage on a per-megawatt-hour basis,

[1:02:56] but again, they're not really directly comparable because an energy dome system could run

[1:03:01] is sized to run for 10 hours instead of four hours, which is reasonable, but other technologies

[1:03:09] like iron, iron flow batteries, iron air batteries have an energy storage duration of 100 hours,

[1:03:16] which means that there's no way to charge and discharge it fully in a day.

[1:03:22] It just can't do it.

[1:03:23] It takes a hundred dollars to fully discharge it.

[1:03:25] So, you're always working in, you're always fluctuating up and down

[1:03:27] some middle state of charge point with those really long

[1:03:31] duration storage technologies, which is going to raise the cost for megawattar

[1:03:35] because you can't use it all the time.

[1:03:39] Does it take it over lithium-ion?

[1:03:41] Don't know.

[1:03:41] Haven't seen any prices for that.

[1:03:42] We're keeping it around.

[1:03:45] Next slide, please.

[1:03:46] And this is the last one.

[1:03:50] So here's what we're doing now.

[1:03:52] We're looking at all these options, I mentioned.

[1:03:53] All five of the options and anything else we can find.

[1:03:56] We're evaluating how EDM sales will work.

[1:03:59] We don't know exactly yet.

[1:04:01] We're learning as much as we can.

[1:04:02] As fast as we can from our partner,

[1:04:04] UX,

[1:04:05] participation in EDM,

[1:04:07] and what P&M is going to tell us how it's going to work for us through them.

[1:04:11] And what those costs will be.

[1:04:13] We're looking for a buyer,

[1:04:14] actively looking for a buyer for 10 to 50 megawatts or a megawatts capacity if somebody wants to buy it and the price is right and it takes some risk off of us.

[1:04:23] We're open to that.

[1:04:25] We're exploring opportunities for additional storage if the costs are right and we can actually site it in a good place that works for us.

[1:04:34] And we're planning to use as much as feet and but with all those options,

[1:04:37] So I should say the buyer is not guaranteed, the additional storage will take time probably pass the commercial operation date of the solar system.

[1:04:50] So in the near term, we're looking to use as much PV as possible in FY28, which is when fossil flats will come on at its full capacity.

[1:05:00] And roll in any of the possible solutions as they arise. And that ends my presentation. Any more questions? I'd be happy to discuss.

[1:05:11] Thank you, Ben. Lots of meat here. Who would like to start?

[1:05:19] Three quick comments, I think. First, I really appreciate this. Thanks a lot.

[1:05:23] But Foxdale is exciting, and I like the way you're laying it out and pursuing all the options.

[1:05:29] Two minor comments.

[1:05:31] When you're looking at other storage options, I don't know if you've looked or if it's

[1:05:35] a realistic option to do more locally based storage, either at a field or even as a more

[1:05:42] distributed resource, a battery and every neighborhood transformer would be interesting

[1:05:48] to think about, I don't know what the cost would be.

[1:05:50] So I encourage you to keep that on the list of things.

[1:05:52] And then the other, just a comment, a side comment you made about nuclear being resilient to energy, or to weather, and with the European heat waves, they had to turn off a lot of nuclear power plants, or non-trivial amount of nuclear power plants, because of the river temperatures or so, they couldn't use them for cooling, so there's an asterix on that comment that I wanted to add, and that's everything I had now, thanks again.

[1:06:18] Just a comic first of all really nice clear presentation. I like that. Thank you for that. That makes it very easy to digest.

[1:06:27] Can you estimate, I mean, based on just historical patterns out there in the country, how much solar would go for during the summer?

[1:06:38] Surely we have plenty of data to say, to test me, like roughly speaking how much how much it would go for.

[1:06:44] And then that would give you some numbers to sort of hang on your, you know, hang on to say,

[1:06:50] okay, at this price point pursuing more storage makes sense.

[1:06:53] But below this price point, it doesn't, that's sort of thing.

[1:06:56] Do you, is there enough out there to make it, at least the back of the envelope has to

[1:06:59] move?

[1:07:01] Excellent question.

[1:07:02] Remember not the chair.

[1:07:05] Warbarmers, we've tried to do this and we're going to continue trying to do it.

[1:07:09] What we've been looking at is a hourly market,

[1:07:13] what's called the energy imbalance market at the EIM.

[1:07:16] That's part of California ISOs thing with P&M,

[1:07:21] and we're under that.

[1:07:22] And so we look at those hourly prices.

[1:07:24] We also track, we plan to buy extra power

[1:07:28] from the market hourly basis real-time purchases

[1:07:31] right now before E-DAM comes along

[1:07:34] to keep ourselves balanced, low generation to load.

[1:07:37] It ours varies a lot during the day picks up in the middle of the day depending on weather and then you know

[1:07:42] We get especially during monsoons season. We get a rain storm at 3 p.m. and the little falls because it cools off

[1:07:49] So things like that we need to adjust to that so we can do these hourly purchase to adjust for that and based upon those two sorts of prices

[1:07:55] We can make some rough indications

[1:07:57] I'll give you an example in July and some of August. There were some hours even

[1:08:04] Recently, like past week, where prices were about $150 a megawatt hour for those hourly purchases.

[1:08:11] In July, we saw some prices approaching several hundred to $700 an hour.

[1:08:18] So in that case, if you could sell your excess solar to a market,

[1:08:23] some of the summers usually when the prices are the highest.

[1:08:25] Highest demand, you keep domes, that sort of thing, that's when the prices are being higher.

[1:08:29] I haven't done a thorough statistical analysis of that.

[1:08:32] Don't have the skills, I said, I said, don't have the tools to do it, but I need to get

[1:08:37] something like that in order to inform how to make decisions with EDM.

[1:08:42] But it doesn't sound like you're expecting that.

[1:08:45] In other words, it sounds like just saying and retaining flexibility, which, at least

[1:08:49] for the first years, I would say is probably my strong preference to say it uses as much

[1:08:52] as we can, but then let's just see what happens with the access.

[1:08:56] It sounds like you wouldn't expect the county to like lose a ton of money on that

[1:09:02] Given what you just said is that fair as I said I didn't expect the maximum cost exposure

[1:09:07] Based upon a current high level analysis to be on the order of 2 million a year

[1:09:13] Which is in consideration of our 50 million dollar your budget is not terrible?

[1:09:19] Okay, thanks

[1:09:27] then your presentation

[1:09:33] was focused on economics and implicitly, you know, using PV's great from environmental standpoint.

[1:09:46] But what we haven't talked to anything about is what's really our first priority,

[1:09:51] which is reliability.

[1:09:54] And we don't know yet how fixed.

[1:10:00] How flexible that is really going to work? We don't know if it's really going to be there all the time when it's supposed to be.

[1:10:10] We don't know how he damn is going to work really, yeah, either.

[1:10:17] And I'm rather nervous about putting too many eggs in one basket right off the bat.

[1:10:23] When that's a basket that we don't have experience with,

[1:10:30] it sounds good to try to get, you know,

[1:10:33] meet all our load from PV.

[1:10:35] But that's putting essentially all the eggs in one basket.

[1:10:40] And that makes me uncomfortable,

[1:10:46] until we have more operating experience.

[1:10:49] And that might take a couple of years, three years, five years.

[1:10:56] I'm not sure what it would actually take.

[1:11:02] So that's my big concern with this general philosophy

[1:11:09] of uses much pv as we can.

[1:11:13] Yeah, that's probably the best bet economically, but I don't know.

[1:11:18] I don't yet have the confidence that we can trust it.

[1:11:23] There can be issues with the plant.

[1:11:25] There can be issues with the contracting.

[1:11:30] I don't know how he did.

[1:11:31] How he damn works when we get into that.

[1:11:37] The scheduling issues.

[1:11:39] This is a different world we're entering into.

[1:11:42] E-DAM is a different world, big PV sources are a different world, and I think we ought to,

[1:11:54] I personally would be more comfortable even if it costs us a few extra bucks,

[1:12:02] not moving quite as hard towards PV for everything for a while until we have a better handle on

[1:12:15] on how this things works. That's common one, common two, as to do with adding additional

[1:12:27] storage.

[1:12:31] 20 years ago solar panels were really expensive and they came down to where

[1:12:37] their dirt cheap. So storage seems to be sort of following more or less the same general

[1:12:44] curve. It used to be very expensive. It's still quite expensive, but it's coming down also.

[1:12:52] The existing technologies are getting less expensive and as you point out, there are promising,

[1:13:01] but not necessarily proven new technologies coming along.

[1:13:06] But we have a long-term time horizon here, we haven't even pucks to a flat, the storage

[1:13:13] there that we're talking about is 20 years.

[1:13:17] There's going to be other options in 20 years, probably a lot less than that.

[1:13:24] Energy don't might be one.

[1:13:26] You mentioned iron air batteries that might be an aluminum ion batteries or another one that's

[1:13:34] very inexpensive and economical to use for relatively long-term storage.

[1:13:41] So, turn, risk, earn, both from what happens if you get the heavy-duty cloud cover, whatever

[1:13:50] that reduces your output for day, but even just over to overnight problem.

[1:13:55] And as time goes on, the wintertime, nighttime, load, to get much larger.

[1:14:02] that'll eventually be our peak load. I don't know if it will be 20 years, but it will

[1:14:07] be eventually. We're going to need storage for that, and I don't think that lithium-based

[1:14:17] batteries are the solution for that. So I'm a little reluctant to invest a lot more now

[1:14:26] in those current technologies.

[1:14:32] We could wait five years and want to get past the uncertainties

[1:14:36] of starting up Foxdale flats, but also have some hope that other storage technologies

[1:14:46] have become...

[1:15:00] More, more practical. Can't say which is going to be or when or how much, but there's a lot of people

[1:15:07] who can really hard on a lot of different technologies there. So I'd be reluctant to commit ourselves

[1:15:13] now to a lot more lithium-based storage.

[1:15:22] Those are my two major concerns at this point that

[1:15:29] line up directly with what you're proposing, but that's where you come here. So get different perspectives. That's mine.

[1:15:41] Other board comments.

[1:15:44] Chair Gibson, I did want you to let you know that Mr. Schumberg is online.

[1:15:48] Oh, good.

[1:15:51] Hi, Eric. Welcome back.

[1:15:53] How much events presentation did you get?

[1:15:59] I don't recall the tail end of it, so, you know, I still have questions about batteries because, yes,

[1:16:06] we've got 320 megawatt hours, 80 megawatt inverter, four hours at full load if we use half of it,

[1:16:14] it's eight hours, you know, that's going to slide around all over the year, there's still a question,

[1:16:21] I mean, they're telling us that we can use 100% of that, but that doesn't, there's a problem there,

[1:16:28] because lithium ion batteries, you know,

[1:16:32] the sweet spot is to discharge and down to 20

[1:16:35] and to charge them up to 80.

[1:16:38] So there's a couple of anomalies there,

[1:16:40] which, you know, we're gonna figure out

[1:16:42] as the years go by.

[1:16:44] I agree with you, Mr. Gibson, Lithium is not

[1:16:47] the Smith-Sluderary Storyage, but thank you.

[1:16:51] The, sure, right, so I think we're contracted

[1:16:54] for bucks to flats, everything it puts out.

[1:16:57] That's right.

[1:16:57] If it doesn't put it out as much in the summer and it only puts out 70, the clouds come

[1:17:02] over and it only puts out 70% of capacity, that means we just sell less to the market.

[1:17:07] That's not an issue.

[1:17:08] It's when things go really haywire, something fails, we lose a mean power transformer,

[1:17:14] you know, transmission line goes down whatever, 10 inches of snow covers the things and

[1:17:19] the production drops down to 5% because they can't shake it off the panels because it

[1:17:22] on it. I used them up. Those are the issues high probability of the utilities think about the

[1:17:29] links or buying other resources. Geothermal nuclear or whatever. Accepted that. Yeah, you could do that.

[1:17:37] And they're going to be pretty slow at least two years out to get them running minimum. If you talk

[1:17:43] Geothermal nuclear, you're talking more like three to ten years. You can get some rice units or some

[1:17:49] small natural gas fire generators for in probably within a year or two. So that's an option.

[1:17:56] Something you could do if you really wanted to have that rampant will dispatchable capability

[1:17:59] for load following. You could do that. You could even do it behind the mirror if you wanted to.

[1:18:06] And there's also financial methods for buying capacity, sort of like buying options. You

[1:18:12] say, hey, I want to get this capacity for this time period and then you can call on that capacity

[1:18:17] to. Again, that comes with a big cost when we looked at this for natural gas, it was just

[1:18:23] ridiculous costs in the way it worked. I think the electric market would be a little different,

[1:18:27] but what we're seeing is that those costs of capacity are very high as well, even if they're

[1:18:32] suitable for what we need. So we'd probably use it in a targeted approach in the near term,

[1:18:38] you know, starting next fiscal year, we'd get it when we needed it, particularly in the winter.

[1:20:00] I think that chair Gibson mentioned, yeah, that's in our calculations as well. Besides just economics, that's why I mentioned dispatch and the value of dispatchable capacity and things like that. So we're also trying to calculate that in economically, as well as, you know, prudent utility practices and having a diverse generation portfolio.

[1:20:19] Where the balance point lands in the near term and the longer term is TBD.

[1:20:26] So I think what I just heard was we're going to have nighttime PPAs anyway and maybe we

[1:20:35] buy some insurance because it's really what we want some insurance in case we have one

[1:20:39] of these big failures right that you were talking about is that right?

[1:20:44] So basically an option on a PPA or would you just go to the daily market and say okay we'll

[1:20:50] just buy what we need?

[1:20:51] That's another way of doing it.

[1:20:53] Then you take the risk though if the market, if the whole regions in under a storm condition

[1:20:58] you're a middle away everybody's everybody's in the same boat whether they have pv or

[1:21:02] other resources as well yeah so question is just how much how much money do you want to pay

[1:21:08] for insurance right I wish you want to mitigate that cost real okay and what do you want to pay for

[1:21:14] it

[1:21:15] so it all comes back to economics in one where another

[1:21:22] hello I just wanted to add you know another

[1:21:24] risk that maybe next two weeks when Mason Baker here with the u amp's has some question about

[1:21:32] development timeline risk with data centers around the nation, having to do on-site generation.

[1:21:42] These natural gas turbines, transformers, all the electric infrastructure you need to

[1:21:47] develop power is being consumed by this private sector, and so the demands up for, you know,

[1:22:01] extended out. So they're finding, you know, that they make an order for that. It's a three year

[1:22:08] proposition, not one any longer given the data centers or demanding that. So there's a lot of

[1:22:14] risks that we get to think about too. So you might want geothermal tomorrow, but it reality is

[1:22:21] it's, if you started today, it could take five years just to develop it put it on. So if they're

[1:22:28] and trying to find it.

[1:22:30] Looking tonight, consensus from the border,

[1:22:34] you're just looking for what you've gotten so far,

[1:22:36] which is random inputs from individual board members.

[1:22:39] Chair, board members, I appreciate the informed comments

[1:22:43] that you have provided to me tonight.

[1:22:46] I'm not specifically looking for anything unless

[1:22:49] it's contrary to the vision that I've already presented.

[1:22:57] Well, what you presented is we have options,

[1:22:59] And you're pursuing a number of options.

[1:23:05] I don't know that anything's been closed off yet,

[1:23:09] and that presume we'll have further discussions on this

[1:23:14] as those options clarify.

[1:23:19] When do we think we'll be, when is it again that we're going to be,

[1:23:23] hope to start getting power from Foxdale fund?

[1:23:26] where we're not the chair. April, mid-April of 27 is when we expect to get 50% capacity of the PV.

[1:23:33] They're about plus or minus the expected give us what they call test energy deliveries in advance

[1:23:39] of that as they bring modules and fields online. And then likewise it'll ramp up in some unknown

[1:23:46] pace where we get full capacity in mid-June. I believe. Oh, gosh, mid end of June.

[1:23:53] 27, so come July we should and that's when the battery comes long as well, full capacity all at once.

[1:24:00] So that's what we anticipate for our planned development schedule.

[1:24:05] Okay, so come next fiscal year we should be 100% of both the solar and the battery.

[1:24:13] We're at least we'll have that available.

[1:24:19] Okay,

[1:24:22] any other last minute comments?

[1:24:26] Thank you, Ben, to appreciate it.

[1:24:28] Thank you, and welcome multidimensional job you've got here.

[1:25:00] That takes us to, I believe,

[1:25:07] the DPU 4th quarter of FY26, quarterly report.

[1:25:16] And it says,

[1:25:17] Abby, is this going to be Abby or Filo?

[1:25:23] Chair, I was planning to have Abby present, she put in the staff report, the highlights and

[1:25:30] all right? Yeah. Thank you, Chair Gibson. Members of the board, I'm going to

[1:25:34] freeze through this, but please if you find something you want me to stop and linger on

[1:25:37] let me know. On page 3, a file provided an update on the revenue transfer process and what

[1:25:43] it means to the county charter, coming this fall, get the right mouse here.

[1:25:53] Okay. Actually, let's stop there. I did have a question about that as I was reading it.

[1:25:59] So I went through the two pages and I was wondering if you could say a little more plainly,

[1:26:06] like what is it you want you want to delete item number six I think it was but I didn't

[1:26:11] follow like how that was going to actually benefit the dpu I just if you could tell me that

[1:26:19] or maybe it was just me it could have been late at night I don't know. I'm not sure it's phased correctly

[1:26:26] here. Okay. Chair and board member not clean I think it's it's a plus and minuses right now revenue

[1:26:37] transfer or the profit transfer component that's scheduled each year at the end of each

[1:26:43] audit. It gets redirected back to projects for DPU to follow public works. And each year,

[1:26:54] that could vary what the need is. So you could have most of the money going towards water,

[1:27:01] line replacements this year I gave the example at Trinity because we have water and gas

[1:27:08] improvements that are going with this street project. So the reason I did that example is

[1:27:18] just that's what that money is being used for today and if the voters elect to

[1:27:26] eliminate that, that money would not be there. Now, we would collect revenues based on

[1:27:35] the current rates in gas, because it's set up to do that 5% revenue transfer.

[1:27:45] And in this

[1:27:46] example, I gave that pretty much covered the Trinity project for gas. But if we didn't do it

[1:27:54] electric, we wouldn't have that money going to the water project and so a water

[1:28:04] fund would have to make up that money that would have been transferred from the

[1:28:10] electric, you know, go from electric fund to the general fund back to the

[1:28:15] water fund. It gets redirected into where the dollars are needed. That mechanism

[1:28:22] would go away. That's what I'm trying to say. You don't want it. Well, no, I'm not taking a position on it. I'm just saying it would change how we do our budgeting.

[1:28:35] Is right now we do a five-year budget plan for those monies to be redirected. So the existence of paragraph six at the moment enables you to have flexibility to

[1:28:51] break money to projects where needed at any given year. And if it was gone, you would not have

[1:28:55] that flexibility, so you might have some funds running in the black, but you couldn't take

[1:29:00] that extra money to put into a development project in some other funds. That's the, those

[1:29:07] rest of it, or just of it. It depends on what council chooses. Right now they choose to redirect

[1:29:15] it to these capital projects that follow public works, they could do it to an economic

[1:29:20] development project or they could choose put anywhere else.

[1:29:24] General fund.

[1:29:25] So the risk, I guess the risk is if it does not pass, there's opportunities for those

[1:29:34] money to go a lot of different ways at council's choosing.

[1:29:37] If the ballot question does pass, we need to, as utility, make adjustments.

[1:29:47] It's a follow-up public works type projects, or any other project, there would,

[1:29:57] we

[1:29:58] you're example.

[1:30:00] But it varies year to year. That's why it's hard to, you know, it will be a budgeting challenge that

[1:30:08] will have to address. Okay. I'm not sure. I see it the same way. Right now, we transfer 5% of gas and electric revenues to the general fund.

[1:30:25] for a number, for several years since 2020, Council has directed those back to utilities.

[1:30:35] So, it winds up being offsetting transfers.

[1:30:39] Now, if this passes those offsetting transfers in, we don't have to, we don't transfer money to the general fund.

[1:30:49] Money doesn't come back. It stays here. It stays in utilities, which gives us a good deal.

[1:30:54] more flexibility in how and where to spend it. We don't have to make a list of particular

[1:31:02] projects that ask council to approve it, which they might or might not do. So what's the

[1:31:11] downside? Well, we collect revenues in each fund. Right. Electric gas. Yeah. We can't move money

[1:31:19] and less counsel and board on a money legislatively from electric fund, a gas fund.

[1:31:29] Or wherever.

[1:31:33] So what would happen is we need to budget differently in the water fund or, you know,

[1:31:40] because we won't see a revenue transfer to match the project that's.

[1:31:46] That's true. But if you look at utilities as a whole, it's a zero-sum game.

[1:31:53] As a whole, yes. But it can affect how you select your revenues and charge rates will change.

[1:32:01] That could change. But as a whole, we wind up coming out even and get rid of all the extra

[1:32:11] counting and passing funds back and forth.

[1:32:16] And it's cop, K, and that's why I just use an example.

[1:32:19] Let's say that things will change if this happens.

[1:32:23] And we'll have to deal with it in our budget.

[1:32:26] That sounds like a good problem to have.

[1:32:30] The simplification.

[1:32:33] By the way, that 5% transfer actually started in 1997.

[1:32:38] But before that it was all at Hock, and that year, this 5% transfer was put in, was standardized

[1:32:51] until 2020 when the transfer back was added, which has, so now it's really, it's

[1:33:03] overall for the utility fund of zero-sum game.

[1:33:12] That's my comments on page one.

[1:33:18] Thank you, Chair Gibson. Our safety employee of the quarter was Patrick Moore,

[1:33:23] his nomination form said he prioritized team safety and developed a work order system to

[1:33:28] eliminate complacency in the workplace. He works in the wastewater treatment plant, so it's often

[1:33:32] just checklist checklist day and day out kind of thing. So making sure team safety is priority there.

[1:33:40] electric distribution. The average, excuse me, they've been busy with some major projects working

[1:33:48] and finishing out some tie lines, prepping for the new transformer and white rock, contracting

[1:33:53] to address the transit pipe, up-sizing electrical access for customers, and in-between

[1:33:58] all of that, the electrical team has been handling some significant power outages that are

[1:34:03] readable about on page 15 and 16, but I'm not going to dwell on.

[1:34:10] If we go to electric production,

[1:34:14] the average power, if we go back to this page,

[1:34:17] the average power from non-carbon resources for the years about 12%.

[1:34:21] We were able to actually get power from both hydroelectric dams in April,

[1:34:26] jumping that month's percentage to 19% of non-carbon load.

[1:34:31] I had a question about this graph, just what are the units on the numbers in the table?

[1:34:37] In the table, let me refresh my memory.

[1:34:44] Anyway, you just put them in.

[1:34:46] Yeah.

[1:34:46] Whatever they are.

[1:34:48] We get them from the electric production resource loading.

[1:34:53] Ben Yvonne does this chart.

[1:34:57] Do you know what unit she does real quick?

[1:34:59] For the...

[1:35:00] The table that's down there. Yeah, five thousand five hundred and sixty nine. What for?

[1:35:06] I just read the numbers. I just read the numbers. Remember, not me.

[1:35:10] That would be made of water. There we go. Do you just put that in the table someplace?

[1:35:14] I can add that. Yeah.

[1:35:15] What page are you on, Charlie?

[1:35:16] Twenty-the-one, she's on.

[1:35:19] I just noted that when I was reading through.

[1:35:20] I was like, I got a question about L.R.S. in May and June.

[1:35:25] Was there really no, no generation from L.R.S.?

[1:35:29] That's what was recorded in our worksheet.

[1:35:31] What happened?

[1:35:33] That's a great question.

[1:35:37] We still have the PPA.

[1:35:39] We're just not taking delivery of energy from that resource.

[1:35:43] With the entry of that resource into SPP's Western Expression,

[1:35:49] we are big at that in four months now.

[1:35:52] That's financially one way that we need to go.

[1:35:54] So let me see if I heard that.

[1:35:57] that he goes into the ECA, which are all very skip to gas water sewer team, they successfully

[1:36:07] completed the Elkridge gas system replacement project during this quarter developed and

[1:36:13] continued with ongoing maintenance of their systems, overhauled the fine screen head

[1:36:17] works, which you can see here, that click give an update about, and that was it.

[1:36:26] I was seeing highlights.

[1:36:29] Engineering is in the middle of a ton of projects and they hosted three summer interns throughout the year.

[1:36:36] Here are a handful of them.

[1:36:39] It's hard to ring all the interns, so here's a handful of them.

[1:36:44] I will add that electrical distribution also had a summer intern as well as me.

[1:36:49] So with your like that's more than three and that's four.

[1:36:51] There's actually five and they were scattered throughout the utilities department.

[1:36:58] conservation. These are all the projects that I'm skipping over. They're updates.

[1:37:04] Conservation in PR. We did Kathy retired in May so we went down to a staff of one and a half.

[1:37:10] We continued with most of our regular programming. The work tours and the water production tours were both very

[1:37:15] successful over the summer. We have one more water production tour September 11th.

[1:37:20] The Rept tool on the county website continues to be a success.

[1:37:25] It's an estimated 51 hours of staff time saved this last quarter,

[1:37:30] with 613 queries entered.

[1:37:33] I will add real quickly that if you are on the website and use the Rept tool,

[1:37:37] which I encourage you to do, if you see it giving

[1:37:40] incorrect or you're not interpreting the answer correctly, just let me or

[1:37:44] I don't know because we're still continuing to make sure it's pulling the right information and we want to make sure our customers are really seeing that correct information, especially regarding rates and and our utility stuff that's a little more time sensitive.

[1:37:56] I have used it so when I thought it was kind of cool.

[1:37:58] Yeah, it's very handy and they're coming out with a lot of cool stuff.

[1:38:03] It's, you know, it's AI so it's evolving.

[1:38:07] And finance and admin get to their pages.

[1:38:14] They give general financial updates, but this time they really focused on where each of those

[1:38:18] utilities fall within targeted set targets, so within each section you can read about where

[1:38:24] we are to those set targets. And then the most exciting part of this I think is our staffing

[1:38:32] updates. So we usually include a bunch of staffing updates at the end here, and you can read

[1:38:37] about promotions and new hires and what happened, but we had three employees, Ivankitana,

[1:38:44] Vincent Kerona, and Jennifer Baca, and five degrees between them, this last quarter

[1:38:48] they all graduated.

[1:38:50] So big congratulations to them in addition to our general Cudodos from the county.

[1:38:56] So with that, I'll see you in for any additional questions.

[1:39:01] I just want to say I thought it was nice, I really enjoyed reading it, it was really nice.

[1:39:05] Thank you.

[1:39:12] Thank you.

[1:39:13] mentioned a vacancy for energy and water conservation, is that been been filled?

[1:39:21] Sure, it gets in that has been filled.

[1:40:00] Fourth quarter, it wasn't filled, but we did hire her. She started August 17th, and as hit the ground

[1:40:05] running, so you'll hear from her soon. Look forward to it. Thank you. Chair, Eric Scott.

[1:40:14] Eric.

[1:40:16] Yeah, it's kind of funny. A friend of mine sent me a picture as you tell me Bill and said it to me.

[1:40:22] And so the electric bill, the total kill, the total kill, total kill at ours, but then there was

[1:40:28] on peak and off peak. And the on peak, if you added the on peak and off peak, they were

[1:40:33] way, way, way over the total. So I'm guessing or I guess my question is how many issues did we

[1:40:42] had with the new building and the building and are those getting resolved? Have they been resolved yet?

[1:40:51] Chair, board member, Stromberg, we are still working through many issues of the building.

[1:40:56] The chief issue that's if people looked at their bar chart, it's difficult to compare it to the year before because the billing period will vary from 30 days to almost 60 days during this transition, so you won't get a good month snapshot.

[1:41:20] I know my was for 45 day billing period. So in this case, in this case, let's just say that the total was on the bill showed to be 800 kilowatt hours, let's just say. And if you had the on peak and off peak, it added up maybe to 1,400.

[1:41:43] So I might, I might just say that I need to see a copy of what he sent you and we can probably

[1:41:52] talk offline.

[1:41:53] There is all of that.

[1:41:54] I don't think we put this in the quarterly report, but we can, I without to get with you.

[1:42:00] I definitely do that and I appreciate that, Father.

[1:42:03] But I guess my question was more of a general question in terms of, I know the billings

[1:42:08] have been changed and, you know, there's bumps in the road whenever you change something,

[1:42:13] and has that, do we have confidence that all those bumps in the road are over or we kind

[1:42:19] of still going through a transition period?

[1:42:22] Still gone through transition period.

[1:42:24] Okay.

[1:42:25] That was my question.

[1:42:25] Okay.

[1:42:26] Thanks.

[1:42:26] I'll get offline with you about the other one.

[1:42:28] Thank you.

[1:42:30] All right.

[1:42:30] Thank you.

[1:42:36] other questions or comments on the usual excellent report.

[1:42:46] Thank you, Abby.

[1:42:48] Thank you.

[1:42:54] We move to approval of revisions to the BPU procedural roles

[1:42:59] and reaffirmation by board members.

[1:43:04] This is Kristala.

[1:43:08] Good evening, Mr. Chair. Board members. Percewing to Section 1.5, the BPU reviewed the procedural

[1:43:16] roles at its August 19th meeting, including revisions that were proposed by the Department of

[1:43:23] Public Utilities staff. Those recommendations included revisions to section 4.6,

[1:43:31] right ordinances, and to section 3.3, the annual calendar of EPU activities, and the BPU

[1:43:38] recommended the revisions to section 3.3 to move the approval of the resolution regarding

[1:43:46] uncollectable utility accounts from August to September and also noted that the page numbers

[1:43:52] identified in the table of contents needed to be updated and unfortunately I recommend that you

[1:44:08] Someone may have tried to help fully match the red line to the actual red line document other than to what

[1:44:15] version would be. So this the number that's been struck through in the version provided in your packet

[1:44:23] beginning at 3.3 is actually the correct page number disregard the number in blue to the

[1:44:30] left and you've been provided a version of the red line that has the correct

[1:44:36] Refines page numbers. I believe your clean version has the correct table of contents page numbers.

[1:44:48] Okay.

[1:44:53] Questions? Comments?

[1:45:02] I don't want to leave effectively done.

[1:45:10] I guess for this one, I should public comment.

[1:45:19] I don't see any here, Abbey.

[1:45:22] Thank you, Chair Gibbs. Any members of the public on Zoom? Make sure to make a public comment. Please raise your hand.

[1:45:29] Chair Gibbs in there. No hands.

[1:45:31] Okay. Thank you.

[1:45:33] Mr. Tara at point nine of the procedural role requires that each year each board member of

[1:45:40] whom that he or she has received read to abide by the procedural roles of the applicable

[1:45:45] documents referenced in its appendix and the reaffirmation signature sheet will be routed for

[1:45:52] signature at the end of the sheet.

[1:45:57] You're going to fly it over to Jenna.

[1:46:12] We'll be distributed through DocuSign.

[1:46:15] We'll get DocuSign on that, okay?

[1:46:22] If there are no further comments, and we think to now now, thank you for, I guess we're ready for motion.

[1:46:33] So, I move to approve revisions to the table of contents and sections 3.3, section 3.3 of the BPU procedural rules.

[1:46:43] I will second that.

[1:46:46] Move in second and to approve the procedural rules.

[1:46:52] Kathy.

[1:46:53] Member Stromberg?

[1:46:55] Yes.

[1:46:56] Member Notkley?

[1:46:56] Yes.

[1:46:57] Member Havender?

[1:46:58] Yes.

[1:46:58] Thank you.

[1:47:00] Motion passes for the zero.

[1:47:05] Thank you.

[1:47:06] Thank you, Kristella.

[1:47:07] Now,

[1:47:18] that takes us to item 6E discussion of utility data needs and there's a really long

[1:47:27] complex staff report there.

[1:47:35] So it's kind of the beginning of a discussion, which I thought we ought to have and I'll

[1:47:44] make a few comments to start with and then hopefully we get the input from the board and

[1:47:52] can go forward there. I thought we ought to talk about this because the department has a lot

[1:48:00] of data. Question is, can we make better use of what we have or is there more that we need?

[1:48:08] And we have really two kinds of data. We have commodity use data and we have financial data.

[1:48:13] We also have two, well, actually multiple levels of data.

[1:48:17] We've got the individual customer, the other and the spectrum we have aggregated data, which is most could be in between.

[1:48:24] And we can figure out, loads on individual feeders, individual distribution trends, which we don't do right now I don't believe.

[1:48:34] The board clearly uses individual customer data to generate billing and eventually I'm not suggesting any time.

[1:48:44] We might be able to use that to customers.

[1:48:49] Show their usage patterns over time or comparisons to their neighborhood or type of construction,

[1:48:58] in town site, or the county as a whole,

[1:49:02] I think maybe things that could eventually be done

[1:49:05] there to help the individual customer.

[1:49:08] Aggregate a day is necessary for power scheduling,

[1:49:11] water pumping, pumping, planning things like that.

[1:49:14] We already do.

[1:49:15] We see aggregated financial data in a fair amount of detail.

[1:50:00] But we don't see a lot of commodity use data or analysis that we can use for policy development in the future.

[1:50:12] for identifying power supply needs,

[1:50:19] distribution upgrade as we're looking at tracking greenhouse gas emissions, for our environmental goals, looking at our water supply, those have been pretty stable for a long, a lot of housing units now.

[1:50:38] And at the same time, we have one of our main wells out of service for

[1:50:43] in perpetuity.

[1:50:44] I don't know that we have a good handle on where we stand there looking forward.

[1:50:48] I think we have data that would tell us that.

[1:50:54] There are, of course, all of them, we're also doing policy development.

[1:51:04] examples where good data analysis can be helpful or not so wrong direction.

[1:51:13] In one of the reports recently, I think was the annual report graph shown that said,

[1:51:22] ah natural gas usage is going down. We've met our 2030 milestone.

[1:51:28] Well, it has natural gases correlated to temperatures and temperatures were up, gas usage was

[1:51:35] down.

[1:51:36] If you take that or effort yet have shown meaningful results, well, that's a big difference

[1:51:44] in saying, oh, we've better milestone.

[1:51:48] That's the sort of thing we need to make sure that our analysis is a current one.

[1:51:58] That's a path.

[1:52:00] We've just implemented time one for another.

[1:52:02] Guys are our power resource planning distribution system planning.

[1:52:07] There's a lot that flows from several years where to tell what changes have occurred

[1:52:13] When we implemented place to track, we'll have it, when we want to look at it, which is we rely

[1:52:22] now almost exclusively on education, but do we really know whom to target, and do we know

[1:52:30] what's working,

[1:52:33] the, which we've known for a long time, residential uses, users are

[1:52:40] users, just using group, should say. We have a number of the classified as commercial,

[1:52:51] actually not all commercial. Some of those are residential. A little bit more parsing of that,

[1:52:56] not for billing purposes, not for changing rates, but for B. We could get more information out

[1:53:04] that. And then could potentially look at various subgroups and target them for more education,

[1:53:15] like the largest individual customers, for all government homes, for instance, as a group.

[1:53:24] And then, of course, when we look at all of our environmental goals,

[1:53:34] the general

[1:55:00] It's not very useful. It's annual. It's not monthly or any finer grade. Be it's one year, 2022, which was not here anyway, coming out of the pandemic. And there's some very large errors in it that make it qualitatively useless.

[1:55:18] Now, it doesn't affect policy right now, because we know all of our primary energy sources

[1:55:24] are large, and all of them need to be reduced.

[1:55:28] The only thing it really changes is, it says the transportation is our biggest greenhouse

[1:55:36] gas emission source, and that's not really true with natural gas.

[1:55:42] But that doesn't make a huge difference right now, and it's said all of them need to be reduced.

[1:55:46] But over time if we're going to track progress, we need to be able to see small variations because we're going to be looking at a few percent at a time.

[1:55:59] And those might not even be at single event incidents.

[1:56:03] They might be a few percent over a few years.

[1:56:06] We got to have good data, reliable data, and consistent methodologies to be able to see those things.

[1:56:16] Because we're going to have to mine progress out of that kind of data.

[1:56:24] And also look at what happens in response to events, policies, programs, etc.

[1:56:36] That's how we're going to tell what's working and what's not.

[1:56:40] So we, utilities, has most of that one form or another, but I think we need to ask as from a board perspective what would be useful to us.

[1:56:54] You know, count,

[1:57:00] file on a staff can't produce everything tomorrow, although we do have

[1:57:04] a data analyst and now we have an energy and water coordinator again, conservation coordinator

[1:57:10] again.

[1:57:12] So, you know, we can wait till next week or something like that.

[1:57:16] Anyway, what are people think would be useful and useful in particular to us and use

[1:57:25] So now, it might be useful in the future, so that maybe we can start thinking about, how do we analyze this mass of data that we have and make use of it?

[1:57:48] I think, thank you for opening this discussion, and first I'd say I think we're all in favor of more and better use of the data.

[1:57:56] But all data, I think you were scared to run some of them all over the world.

[1:57:59] Sorry, I thought we are.

[1:58:01] So I guess maybe my thoughts to sort of sharpen the discussion

[1:58:04] where I think we might focus is asking who's the end user.

[1:58:08] So I think you posted is what do we need for policy decisions.

[1:58:11] I think that's one of them.

[1:58:12] But I think it's also, how do we empower staff to use data better?

[1:58:15] And then, as we're thinking about this,

[1:58:17] customers as well.

[1:58:19] So those are the three cases of how do we empower everybody to use the data better?

[1:58:23] And I think identifying the opportunities are the needs is important and there's a few that you talk through, but I think the other part to consider what's the biggest friction point or why.

[1:58:36] Where's the challenging using data better?

[1:58:39] And my experience has been 90% of data analysis is data preparation and data management.

[1:58:44] And so I think thinking about how we're managing all this data or how we can access this data might be addressing that, might open up data usage to all the end users perhaps.

[1:58:58] That's my thought on it.

[1:59:03] And I really, you know, there's so many different cases that you offered that I resonated with where I would really like data.

[1:59:09] I play around with my house and try different experiments.

[1:59:12] And I don't know if I'm typical or not,

[1:59:14] you know, I've got anecdot, anecdotes.

[1:59:17] And I think we've struggled with that often

[1:59:19] of where my bill said or I got this one bill.

[1:59:23] So I think we need better data management, data utilization.

[1:59:29] And I think what are the best needs

[1:59:33] and also where they're easy opportunities.

[1:59:35] So I'm thinking if we think about data management

[1:59:38] from the Utilities Perspective,

[1:59:43] I see a lot of interest from people in the community.

[1:59:45] If we make the data available, I think citizens would be interested in playing around with it.

[1:59:50] I don't know if they're student projects, I mean I think people are looking for good data sets.

[1:59:53] And I think we've seen a couple of partnerships with some of the local universities where they've exploited data.

[2:00:00] Let me think of where are some friction points? I mean, where are there privacy issues? There's a few things that we'll get in and they'll be snarling. So I think asking staff, you know, or council, or the lawyers, where do we run into issues that we really need to think about privacy issues? The personal is a come to mind. So to summarize that, I think we're the biggest hindances to using data. I think everybody would use data if we could get it.

[2:00:27] And then, where are the opportunities and where are the biggest needs for policy?

[2:00:32] So, I have more questions than answers, but I think the discussion is really right.

[2:00:37] So, I'd start with that. Thanks.

[2:00:43] Assuming that all the data would be necessarily made public.

[2:00:48] I could imagine that for the Department of the Board, there could be more data,

[2:00:53] or more fine-grained data potentially used. I would imagine. Or, I could imagine.

[2:00:58] I don't know. I don't know how that works with Open Media.

[2:01:00] Right, everything we do is public and I think that's one of the unique things about the county

[2:01:06] Even individual customer data is public

[2:01:09] Something maybe there's not really an issue then but we want to be sensitive to of course

[2:01:14] Yeah, but

[2:01:20] yeah, I think that's one of the unique things about the county data says

[2:01:23] County owns publicly on it's pretty open, so that's where I might get I don't know

[2:01:30] Yeah, but maybe there's other universities that look at what would want a data set that they couldn't get from a

[2:01:34] privately owned utility. So let's sort of think about it in terms of opportunities we

[2:01:39] may have a unique data set.

[2:01:52] I'll just give you a little experience I had with the

[2:01:56] pathways as zero natural gas we did have the university do the open records request

[2:02:02] to collect the data that they needed and it was substantial amount of data over several

[2:02:08] years. They have super computing capacity. We don't. So there's also some technology and

[2:02:17] how much you want to dive down into the data and manipulate it that we don't necessarily have

[2:02:23] the resources to do that depending on, you know, if you're modeling something and

[2:02:30] need hourly data and over several years, etc. They did that analysis for us as part

[2:02:38] of that study.

[2:02:41] And so those are some of the things. Privacy, there are some customers

[2:02:47] that don't want to share data. Now, when you go through the April, it's not prohibited.

[2:02:53] but, you know, if you want to see your neighbors data, you'd have to

[2:03:00] it breath that.

[2:03:05] We wouldn't just give it to you. You'd have to go through

[2:03:08] those channels. To take time, it's another layer of work that we run through our

[2:03:18] public inspection of public records act.

[2:03:25] For most of our purposes, of course, it can be

[2:03:31] start looking at it for our department purposes, board purposes, et cetera. We don't care

[2:03:40] too much about the individual, we care about the aggregate, maybe small aggregate. It's like

[2:03:48] it might be neighborhood or it might be feeder or it might be even an individual distribution

[2:03:53] transform or something that eventually, not today probably.

[2:03:59] And of course, you know, we're looking at

[2:04:06] overall use patterns.

[2:04:08] That's, you know, aggregated a lot.

[2:04:11] But as I mentioned, we might eventually be able to help the individual

[2:04:14] customer by providing customized reports back to them.

[2:04:20] You know, once you've got an algorithm that can do that,

[2:04:22] doesn't take a whole lot to do a lot of them when she had that algorithm, and that would

[2:04:30] be their own data and other neighbors, but unless it is in an aggregate of form.

[2:04:40] There are issues in there, but I think those are not big issues.

[2:04:44] I can be wrong, but I think there's a lot that can be learned without running

[2:04:58] into those kinds of concerns.

[2:05:02] So, I would say, I mean, just thinking about a little bit off the cuff, the data we would like, I think, from a board perspective, would be data that would be useful to help formulate or inform an integrated resource planning process, right?

[2:05:17] That seems to be at least one application that would be very useful to have on a probably a much finer

[2:05:25] more frequent timescale to make it useful in dynamic times and perhaps more fine-grained

[2:05:31] in various dimensions.

[2:05:34] So that seems like that would be something quite useful.

[2:05:37] Are you thinking IRP as we currently use it that is strictly for electric or integrated resource planning?

[2:05:44] I think you're going to be for anything, right?

[2:05:46] That's what I would think too.

[2:05:47] Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, you'd like to be able to, I think Matt's right that the first thing is getting data quality and data health make sure it's on like format it correctly and usable and the missing field to manage or whatever that that makes a lot and it's accurate right there's not

[2:06:04] You know, things that are wrong about it, that would be, and easily available and easily

[2:06:10] ingestible.

[2:06:12] And then I think, you know, then the real, the real meat of it is formulating a model to fit

[2:06:17] and then fitting the data and then trying to use that to make predictions with uncertainties

[2:06:20] and I think that would be what we would need for some sort of planning process for all

[2:06:25] of our resources.

[2:06:30] Yeah, going, the model is going forward to the hard part, but you can learn a lot by looking

[2:06:35] back also.

[2:06:36] We would like to see what the trends are and gas and if you can establish correlations to policy

[2:06:43] Things that were done at some point, for example,

[2:06:49] and as you say you're looking for fine effects, right?

[2:06:52] Yeah, we're going to be yes.

[2:07:02] Yeah, I guess maybe I don't know.

[2:07:04] File is this an easy question to answer.

[2:07:07] How what's the state of the data?

[2:07:10] Is it accessible?

[2:07:11] Is it uniform?

[2:07:11] Is it machine ingestable?

[2:07:13] Or is it in different servers and your notebook?

[2:07:18] It's not, it's, the data's not consolidated in, you know, and one guru managing data.

[2:07:25] We don't have that.

[2:07:29] It's basically, there'll be financial data in our finance system.

[2:07:34] Ben has data on, you know, hourly purchases.

[2:07:38] They're in a lot of different software packages.

[2:07:41] And so it is challenging to extract it and then re-manipulate it and use it.

[2:07:49] Yeah, it seems to me like that's the big challenge if we had three different top priorities.

[2:07:54] It would be a huge effort to address each of those and then we come back with one in six months and it's reinvented.

[2:07:59] So I don't know what investing in it.

[2:08:01] If we really want to get serious about utilizing our data,

[2:08:06] what does it look like investing in better data management?

[2:08:09] And what would the benefit be to staff to custom-type everybody?

[2:08:16] I think that's something we'd have to wrestle with.

[2:08:19] I certainly don't know all of the reports that the Department generates internally, but there

[2:08:29] are certainly some that already exist the consumption report, for instance.

[2:08:37] It tells you every month how much for each utility, how much of the commodity is used

[2:08:43] by residential, by commercial, by the county, by educational institutions,

[2:08:52] and that's been

[2:08:54] in a more or less consistent form for a long time,

[2:09:01] but there's information there, kind

[2:09:05] of gross information, the aggregate information that hasn't been used for anything.

[2:09:16] There's lots of, you know, I've plotted that up for the last 25 years plus, and you can see lots of different things there that you don't see when you just look at annual or more versed data.

[2:09:33] Like the double humped double peaked usage of electricity during the year, and of course you see the seasonal variations and cashews that you'd expect.

[2:09:45] But it tells you exactly what those variations are and how they correlate those two outside air temperature.

[2:09:54] I think we actually have the data to the hour I only used it to the month.

[2:10:02] But there's a lot that already exists. It doesn't. But you have to get it and use it for something.

[2:10:13] So, but my question really is, what's useful to us

[2:10:21] in, of course, five of us to tell us, what's useful to the department?

[2:10:26] And then what can we realistically do?

[2:10:30] Maybe I think the value in the effect of the time of use is going to be our test case of that.

[2:10:35] And so we'll look forward to the report on what was the impact of the rate change and the rate structure of the time of use in the peak demand.

[2:10:43] But I guess maybe if there's an appendix to that that says this state it was easy.

[2:10:48] We had to go out and get this data because I can imagine it's going to be financial data usage data.

[2:10:55] And I don't know what, you know, co-factors there might be, you know, you get a couple of examples,

[2:11:00] chair that, you know, you wouldn't consider the co-factors and did you have to go out,

[2:11:04] pull weather data from somebody else's site, so I think maybe an appendix on how, how is the data

[2:11:10] utilization for the evaluation of the time you used to might be a good way to get at some of these

[2:11:14] questions?

[2:11:17] That's certainly a timely one.

[2:11:18] We don't.

[2:11:19] You know, it hasn't been in place long enough that we can do it any with it today, like I said,

[2:11:24] I think we need a baseline to work from.

[2:11:27] So what a data for the last five years or something might be useful as a baseline.

[2:11:37] Get that working and then it's easy to, if you've got a good methodology, just to carry

[2:11:43] it forward as we start seeing the effects or maybe there won't be much effect.

[2:11:51] We don't know, but potential effects, as we say,

[2:11:57] over the next year or two may be longer.

[2:12:10] A really high level one that I can think of is, I don't have a good field where we are

[2:12:17] on water, and now the 40-year water plan will probably answer that question, but we shouldn't

[2:12:24] a week for 40-year water plan to update our usage data and of course supply as an issue also

[2:12:35] with the well being by out of service. How much can we really get?

[2:12:43] So we're adding more housing

[2:12:45] units but most of those are multi-family units which don't have irrigation needs.

[2:12:53] Well, we ought to be able to look at existing multi-family units and see what their water

[2:12:59] usage is versus the single-family units that typically have irrigation and be able to

[2:13:07] extrapolate from there as to if we add x housing units, how much water demand increase might

[2:13:16] we see the 40-year water plan may do all of that. I don't know. If not, it's something

[2:13:22] that we're going to need. Probably fairly soon, just another example.

[2:13:34] And I would guess

[2:13:36] with the issue out on the table. People start thinking more about what we really like to

[2:13:43] know.

[2:13:47] Some of it may already exist, it just isn't here. Or we can see it. You can see it.

[2:13:53] But we might be able to make better use, make it more visible to where department or board

[2:14:04] can make use of it.

[2:14:08] So what do you think in caps on this subject will probably come back?

[2:14:14] Yeah, it kind of looks like it.

[2:14:16] Did you have a comment?

[2:14:22] So, I just, so happened, could you give your name, both of the two, please?

[2:14:26] James Ornicky.

[2:14:28] I did do some analysis, I did an Ipra for the 2025 utility data like consumer data and it wasn't too bad to work with a couple like points of feedback.

[2:14:44] There was like no labels on anything. So basically what I had to do is like find, you know, my data and match it to my utility to build it like figure out what things were.

[2:14:53] So like the type of utility is like it's just a code, it's not like it doesn't take gas.

[2:15:00] This is like 30, 100 or something, right? But when you look at the values, you know, you can match up the values and then figure out what's what the water comes in like hundreds of gallons is the unit that's used there.

[2:15:17] So that was like a little weird to figure out. So that's just kind of my feedback is to have some labels there, especially if it's like a university that they don't have their own utility bills to look at.

[2:15:29] match up with. But other than that, it was pretty easy to work with. If you publish the

[2:15:38] data, like put it up on the utility website or something, like as a big data set, and

[2:15:44] you know, you can pull out names if you want. The parcels can be useful. That was like the main

[2:15:49] thing I was using it for was as a proxy for vacant housing. My theory was that if there's no water

[2:15:56] usage in a house. There's probably nobody live in there. And so that's why I wanted to look at it.

[2:16:03] But I just pulled one year, request one year, didn't want to like put too much burden on the department.

[2:16:11] But yeah, if you have more years, I would I would love to see that data. So that's it. Thank you.

[2:16:19] you.

[2:16:27] There's lots of data nerds in this community.

[2:16:31] Is there any other public comment?

[2:16:36] Happy to have anyone?

[2:16:41] Would you like a public comment on your gifts in this item or general public comment?

[2:16:45] Right now this item

[2:16:51] will ask for general public comment in just a few minutes.

[2:16:54] Hi, John parchment, I just spent 20 minutes of my life wasted basically being answered by AI.

[2:17:01] That's what AI does.

[2:17:03] It analyzes data, sees trend lines, and finds things that you may not have seen in the data.

[2:17:09] So get a $20 chat, GPT license, throw your data into it, you might be surprised if what you get back.

[2:17:16] So, thank you. Hey, did 20 seconds look at that.

[2:17:19] Thank you.

[2:17:23] Any other public comment either here or online anyone wishing to make public comment online please raise your hand now

[2:17:30] There are no hands triggers. Okay, thank you and that takes us to our final public comment on any subject

[2:17:39] Do we have any

[2:17:42] Other public comment this evening?

[2:17:44] I don't see any here

[2:17:50] the back there is.

[2:18:05] Sorry I wrote this in 12 point font and it's now like in 2.8 micro font so

[2:18:11] hang with me for a moment. You guys have had a hell of a month. I mean that's quite a month

[2:18:18] yet there. I can't say it was for the best but is what it is. I'm going to keep these short obviously

[2:18:23] because I only have a short period of time. But basically EV charging I'll start with that one.

[2:18:29] You guys charge 58 cents per kilowatt hour for EV charging, Tesla charges be 38 cents for a level 4 charger.

[2:18:39] You guys are the charger of last resort.

[2:18:42] So if you wonder why you lose money every period on EV chargers, it's because your rate is too high.

[2:18:50] Nobody in the right mind would actually use them.

[2:18:52] So if you want to expand the EV charging network, if you want to have it utilized, you're going to have to change the rates.

[2:19:00] You've at 87% profit margin.

[2:19:03] I'm EV power, and you still lose money.

[2:19:08] Your electrical rates, I'll get the second point here is a electrical rate process is bonkers.

[2:19:15] Um, I don't know if any municipalities that use search pricing search arch in their rate and it's just doesn't make sense.

[2:19:25] Residents or customers can't change their usage pattern to meet that.

[2:19:30] So, if you want to tell somebody that they need to buy a smaller dryer, so it doesn't use up so much power when it fires off. Good luck with that. Really appreciate that thought.

[2:19:45] Try to keep this short.

[2:19:47] You guys are looking at the plug-in solar

[2:19:48] for just general, put things in,

[2:19:52] do not charge $500.

[2:19:54] To put it in, that is goofy.

[2:19:58] You will never make back any month.

[2:20:00] On that, and you're going to just basically kill it. So, it doesn't make any sense. Just go with you all 3700 and move on. It's really simple.

[2:20:11] Batteries, who 50 seconds. Batteries. Your number one thing is batteries. I appreciate the presentation that was made earlier.

[2:20:21] But the reality is that people are putting batteries in and that levels your use charges, and you also have vehicle, the great, good vehicle.

[2:20:30] opportunities for battery storage. You kind of overbuilt the flats, but hey, that is where it is.

[2:20:38] Oh, I'm sorry. Get batteries, instead of size, batteries and micro grids. And you will solve your problem.

[2:20:46] That's where it really belongs. It's localized batteries and micro grids. So thank you for your time.

[2:20:53] Thank you.

[2:20:56] Any other comment, public comment?

[2:21:01] Anyone wishing to make public comment online please raise your hand?

[2:21:05] There are no hands raised.

[2:21:08] Okay, thanks everyone.

[2:21:10] I do appreciate it and we are adjourned.

Board of Public Utilities Work Session on 2026-09-02 5:30 PM - Public Participation ~ in person or

Agenda

Transcript