EPUD May 2011 Community Meeting Overview
EPUD hosted five community meetings during the month of May to connect with our Customers-Owners. For those unable to make the presentation, here is a basic recap of the topics discussed. Please also make sure to download the full handout/visuals in the "Related Documents" section on the right-hand navigation bar.
Reliability:
EPUD experienced a strong windstorm in March that knocked out power to roughly 12,000 EPUD Customer-Owners. During that storm, EPUD crews repaired 100,000 feet of line, and replaced 12 poles and 15 transformers. During an outage, EPUD crews prioritize repairs based on restoring service to the greatest number of customers at a time. Steps to Restoring Power:
EPUD has a variety of measures in place to improve reliability to our service district, including a robust, in-house tree-trimming program. Five EPUD crews work year-round to clear all 2,000 miles of line and right-of-ways in EPUD’s District. While these efforts have greatly minimized outages, EPUD has little control over the trees outside the right-of-way, which cause most outages. Here are the projects we're working on to increase reliability in our District:
MARCOLA/MOHAWK:
- New substation built in 2000.
- EPUD rebuilt the tie to Coburg, creating a back-up power source to the McKenzie View area. Our ongoing effort to increase reliability in this area includes underground work and improvement of overhead lines.
- EPUD is working with BPA to expand the right-of-way areas/clear danger trees.
- EPUD worked with Lane County to rebuild line from Springfield to Parsons Creek Rd.
- Mohawk Loop facilities are going underground for greater reliability.
- EPUD will rebuild line from Marcola to Johnson Creek in Fall/Winter 2011.
JUNCTION CITY/COBURG:
- Increased capacity along Hwy 99 from Kenady Road South.
- Increasing electrical capacity on lines throughout Junction City.
- Increased and upgraded wire from Coburg Fire Station West to Green Island.
- Continuing to clear right-of-ways and danger trees from area.
COTTAGE GROVE:
- Cottage Grove substation maintenance scheduled for summer 2011.
- Replaced old wire feeding North Cottage Grove area including Bennett Creek, Holly, and River Road.
- Sears Road/Saginaw area – Creating redundancy to decrease outage times in this area.
- Rebuilding line on Delight Valley School Road.
VENETA/ELMIRA:
- Rebuilding line from Veneta to Vaughn to increase reliability to area.
- In process of removing multiple dangers trees in area which have caused many outages.
- Elmira substation is scheduled for upgrade and maintenance in the summer of 2011.
- Rebuilt lines on Clear Lake-Territorial-Fir Grove to increase capacity.
- Moved lines on Lynette & Conrad and on Broadway-McCutcheon from overhead to underground.
CRESWELL/PLEASANT HILL:
- Rebuilt line in NW Creswell in conjunction with Lane Electric.
- Installing new line along Sears Road to provide redundancy/increase reliability for Creswell East of I-5.
- Continuing to clear danger trees and right-of-ways throughout area.
- Working with BPA to increase reliability of service to Creswell substation, serving all Creswell customers.
- This year EPUD will replace an old, undersized transformer in the Pleasant Hill substation. This is a $500,000 piece of equipment. 5 years ago EPUD also installed all new breakers and new equipment in the Pleasant Hill substation.
Rates:
One of EPUD’s priorities is keeping rates as low as possible. EPUD’s original charter back in 1983 was to keep rates below Pacific Power’s by at least 5 percent. This year, EPUD rates are 22.4 percent lower than Pacific Power rates. When comparing EPUD rates to the rates of other local utilities, EPUD is in the middle of the pack. EPUD will never have the lowest rates around for multiple reasons, including territory size/density and utility age. EPUD has a large, rural territory with few customers per mile of wire, which is more expensive to maintain. EPUD is also young and is still working diligently to pay off its original debt issued to fund the purchase of the system from Pacific Power.
36 percent of EPUD expenditures are for Net Power, the power we purchase mainly from Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) to serve you. BPA will be passing an average of 8.3% rate increase on to its customers in October of this year. This will make it difficult for EPUD to avoid increasing rates, considering 36 percent of our total budget will be increasing by 8.3 percent.
46 percent of EPUD expenditures are for Operations & Maintenance and Construction & Capital Expenditures. These expenditures include transformers, poles, meters, labor to install these items, day-to-day expenses to run the utility, our tree trimming program, customer service and billing, and other general maintenance of the system. Costs across the board in this area are up drastically. In 2003, an overhead transformer was $500 and a 40ft pole was $230. In 2010, a transformer was $1,100 and a pole was $400. (Download the handout for more examples of rising costs.)
18 percent of EPUD expenditures are on debt service, which goes to principal and interest payments. We are young utility and still paying off our original debt. We have not borrowed additional money for five years, and will see some relief in 2012 from paying off a portion of our borrowings.
EPUD worked hard to avoid a rate increase in 2011. EPUD has delayed some capital expenditures but the combination of delaying important capital expenditures and not raising rates is not sustainable. There is upward pressure: rising costs for materials and supplies, and the BPA rate increase. Because of these and other factors, EPUD customers should expect a rate increase in 2012.
Current Issues:
EPUD PHONES: The recent storm revealed areas of weakness with the EPUD phone system that are now being remedied. The first day of the storm, EPUD had 30,000 attempted calls into 23 phone lines. This caused jammed lines and frustrated customers. EPUD is looking into a telephone voicemail system to provide updated information to anxious customers on how repairs are progressing.
ANNEXATION: The Emerald PUD Board of Directors has been involved in discussions regarding an annexation process that would directly affect 708 homes in the EPUD District. These 708 homes are located in the EPUD service district, but not within the EPUD political district. This means they receive EPUD electricity and pay EPUD rates, but cannot vote on EPUD ballot issues or serve on the EPUD Board.
Our question was whether or not EPUD should incur the cost of the annexation to bring these homes into our political district. In April, we surveyed the 708 homes affected to see if they preferred to be annexed or not. Results of this survey were shared with the Board during the May 10 meeting. Of the survey results received, approximately 30% were in support of annexation and 70% were against annexation. Based on those results, the Board issued no decisions about moving forward with a bulk annexation. Instead, EPUD staff will continue to look for alternative solutions for those 30% who wish to be annexed. For more information on annexation CLICK HERE.
SLICE: Another change occurring for EPUD in October 2011 involves the move to a new power purchase contract with BPA. This new contract is known as a “Slice of the System” (Slice) agreement, whereby half of EPUD’s low-cost “Tier 1” power supply is tied to a fixed percentage of the actual Federal system output. This is different from the way BPA has historically provided power to EPUD. Throughout our history, BPA has met all of our hourly load needs regardless of how much we were demanding and when we were demanding it.
Going forward under Slice, EPUD will now be responsible for handling hourly gaps between our load and the resources we have available. This additional flexibility and local control should allow us to better integrate conservation and other renewable resources. This aspect of the product was attractive to the EPUD citizen committee that recommended it a number of years ago. However, the Slice contract can also present risk if we are forced to buy power on the open market during times of high prices. In preparation for this, EPUD Staff has been working over the past year to put proper risk management policies and procedures in place, similar to those used at other Northwest public utilities operating under Slice. Examples of other Slice customers include EWEB, Benton County PUD, Franklin County PUD, Clark Public Utilities, Klickitat PUD, and Tacoma Power.
EPUD Quick Facts:
- EPUD is saving our residential Customer-Owners 6.9 million in 2011 over Pacific Power Rates. That is a 22.4% savings.
- EPUD Customer Service now answers 80% of all calls within 30 seconds.
- EPUD has helped our Customer-Owners save 50 million kilowatt hours since our conservation programs began in 1985. Numbers are still strong today. EPUD customers saved 1 million more kilowatt hours in 2010 than in 2009.
- 2010 was a record year for electricity production at Short Mountain methane power plant. We produced enough electricity to power 1,500 homes for a full year. This was 23 percent higher than 2009 levels.
- EPUD completed 328 construction/improvement jobs in 2010, improving 2,000 spans of wire and replacing more than 100 poles.