Title
Approval of DOE/LAC Resource Pool Budget for Fiscal Years 2022 & 2023
Recommended Action
I move that the Board of Public Utilities approve the 2022-2023 Resource Pool budget as presented and forward to the County Council with a recommendation for approval.
Staff Recommendation
Staff recommends approval of this 2022-2023 Resource Pool Budget as presented.
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 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 $53.83 and $51.63 for fiscal years 2022 and 2023, respectively. Actual costs for fiscal year 2021 through April were $64.17 per MWh compared to budgeted costs of $51.77 per MWh, due in large part to the August price peak that has been discussed previously. The significant increase from FY2021 budget to FY2022 is due to the lingering impacts to purchased power price projections resulting from that August event. These are somewhat offset by reduction in debt service due to payoff of the 2014 refinanced bonds in FY21. These bonds were for the environmental upgrades at San Juan and the El Vado Rewind.
The ten-year historical average cost per MWh for the fiscal years 2011 through 2020 was $60.88. Beginning in FY2017 we began seeing the benefit of the lower coal price and a lower capital budget at San Juan, and retirement of the debt ...
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