Title
Approval of Department of Energy (DOE) - Los Alamos County (LAC) Resource Pool Budget for Fiscal Years 2019/2020
Recommended Action
I move that the Board of Public Utilities approve the 2019-2020 Resource Pool budget as presented and forward to the County Council for its approval.
Staff Recommendation
Staff recommends approval of this 2019-2020 Resource Pool Budget
Body
The Electric Energy and Power Coordination Agreement (ECA) between the County of Los Alamos and the Department of Energy requires that a 24-month budget be approved each year. The budget process begins with both parties preparing a load projection by month for the budget period. From these load projections the Power Supply division prepares a Resource Supply Projection that matches the available resources to the projected loads, and also estimates the variable costs for both our owned resources and for purchased power. Finally, costs for projected generation, purchases, and transmission are allocated based on the terms of the ECA. This is normally accomplished in April or May of the preceding year.
This budget projects total costs per MWh of $53.91 and $50.37 for fiscal years 2019 and 2020, respectively. Actual costs for fiscal year 2018 through April were $49.19 per MWh compared to a budgeted cost of $49.29 per MWh.
The ten-year historical average cost per MWh for the fiscal years 2008 through 2017 was $67.25. Beginning in FY2017 we are seeing the benefit of the lower coal price and a lower capital budget at San Juan, and retirement of the debt at LRS, which was passed through to the Pool through LRS direct charges. Note, the last round of environmental upgrades anticipated for San Juan were completed in FY16 with the SNCR project. Similar upgrades at Laramie River are underway and are included in the budget presented here.
Costs to the participants vary due to each party’s load factors. The projected costs to the County per MWh are $55.59 and $51.95 for fiscal years 2019 an...
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