Chelan PUD customer-owners recently weighed in on how the Washington State PUD should evaluate requests for large amounts of power.
In July, the Board of Commissioners requested public comment after reviewing a proposed framework that would guide how the utility responds to large-load requests.
Large-load customers include a wide range of industries, including data centers, manufacturing plants, and other power-intensive operations.
The comments expressed a variety of concerns and ideas, but two main themes emerged: Reliability and rate affordability for existing customers in Chelan County, the PUD said on Aug. 6.
“A lot of the issues raised in the comments were issues that the group thought through when we were developing those guiding principles,” said Mike Bradshaw, the PUD’s director of energy structuring and trading.
The guiding principles shape the discussions between Chelan PUD and companies that want to locate in Chelan County.
Those principals are:
- Neutral-to-positive impact on other PUD customers
- Maintain reliability, and stable and predictable rates
- Preserve local control
- Achieve a comprehensive and durable framework that treats large-load customers comparably and consistently
- Protect existing management of hydropower through wholesale energy marketing strategy
Building from the guiding principles, staff recommended a framework that allows Chelan PUD to serve large-load customers while also recovering the cost of power and delivery.
- Short-term supply: Chelan PUD procures wholesale energy from the market and resells to the large-load customer.
- Customer choice: Large-load customer identifies and procures wholesale energy, which Chelan PUD purchases and re-sells to them.
- Negotiated contract: At the Board’s discretion, Chelan PUD negotiates a contract which may include Chelan PUD generation, consistent with the PUD’s wholesale energy marketing strategy.
Under all three options, each arrangement with a large-load customer would be presented to the Board for approval.
Chelan PUD noted it continues to receive more large load requests, consistent with a national trend of significant data center growth.
In September, commissioners will review a proposed way to serve Microsoft, and updates to Chelan PUD’s rate schedule 4 for large loads utilizing the framework.
