Title
Approval of DOE/LAC Resource Pool Budget for Fiscal Years 2020/2021
Recommended Action
I move that the Board of Public Utilities approve the 2020-2021 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 to the parties 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 $47.24 and $49.77 for fiscal years 2020 and 2021, respectively. Actual costs for fiscal year 2019 through April were $57.50 per MWh compared to budgeted costs of $53.91 per MWh. The significant decrease is due to completion of the SNCR work at Laramie River Station, no planned outages at San Juan, and both Hydro’s are anticipated to be on line with good production numbers.
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 historically 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 will be completed in FY19, the cos...
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