The following is a transcript of the Dec. 9, 2024, episode of Public Power Now. Learn more about subscribing to Public Power Now at Publicpower.org/Podcasts. Some quotes may have been edited for clarity.
Paul Ciampoli
Welcome to the latest episode of Public Power Now. I'm Paul Ciampoli, APPA’s news director.
Our guest on this episode is Brian Wright, general manager for California public power utility Truckee Donner Public Utility District.
He previously held the positions of assistant general manager and water utility director at the utility.
Brian, thanks for joining us on the podcast.
Brian Wright
Good morning. Thank you for having me.
Paul Ciampoli
Brian, just to get our conversation started, I wanted to know if you could tell our listeners about your career at Truckee Donner PUD leading up to your current position.
Could you also provide an overview of the PUD and the customers it serves?
Brian Wright
As an overview of my career here with the Truckee Donner PUD, I began in May of 2013. I was brought into the PUD as a water utility director, water utility superintendent.
I have a little over 30 years of experience working with public utilities, either in construction, operations or management.
I began my career, cut my teeth, so to speak, on the water side of the utility world and arrived in Truckee here in 2013 as the water utility director.
I served for a couple of years as assistant general manager -- was brought in as an interim general manager with the retirement of our previous GM and then in July of 2021, I was hired as the district's general manager and have been enjoying it ever since.
In terms of the Truckee Donner PUD and our service territory, we're located generally in alignment with the town of Truckee’s border – kind of our town outskirts here.
We're in predominantly Nevada County, a little bit of Placer County, again Northeastern California, about 13 miles from the Nevada border on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada mountain range.
We serve approximately 15,000 customers, both electric and water.
We are a locally governed not-for-profit, community owned utility under the California governance structure.
We are a special district, so we're not associated with a municipality, but we have a lot of common governance that other local utilities and town governance has.
From a regulatory standpoint, we're a California utility. We're subject to all the California compliance.
But in terms of our resources, we're transmission dependent from...UAMPS -- that's the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems and NV Energy from the east of us, so we're within California from a regulatory standpoint, but most of our energy and economy is to the east of us.
Paul Ciampoli
That's a nice segue with respect to your mentioning resources into my next question and this is actually something we covered in our newsletter.
As you know, in early November, the PUD’s Board of Directors approved the submission of the utility’s 2023 Power Source Disclosure Report and Power Content Label to the California Energy Commission.
The report notes that in 2023, Truckee Donner PUD reported its power came from 47.3 percent eligible renewable resources and 60.3 percent carbon-free resources.
Can you provide details on the utility’s plan to add additional renewable energy and carbon-free resources to its overall resource mix in the years ahead?
Brian Wright
At Truckee Donner PUD, we've been proud of our efforts to date achieving a nearly 60% renewable carbon free portfolio.
There's a lot of challenges ahead of us in the future, so we're pretty well positioned for California's 2030 mandate.
Our challenge is...going to be in hitting that 100% carbon free mandate for 2045.
I think a lot of our public utility partners in the West in particular are faced with a lot of the same challenges. Some of the keys to our success are going to be balancing some of these renewable and carbon free mandates with affordability and reliability.
Our plan moving forward is working closely with our partners at UAMPS and NCPA, CMUA --our advocacy groups in California to really establish a plan and follow those metrics.
We're pursuing, to the extent we can, a lot of renewable carbon free projects through the UAMPS pool -- new projects there.
It's just that -- as I think what everyone's seen in the Western region -- there's a little bit of a traffic jam there in terms of interest and some of the construction delays, some of the transmission requirements, are really putting a lot of delays in those procurements.
What we're happy about in terms of long-term planning is as you mentioned, our board... approved our first integrated resource plan.
It's the first time the district's taken on a long-term planning effort in this and addressing some of the pressures that we see in the future.
Our key partners again will be UAMPS because we have a lot more buying power as a pooled entity, as opposed to being an individual utility seeking some of these generation sources.
We're going to continue to pursue geothermal, solar plus storage, wind and continue to pursue those in alignment with our integrated resource plan.
Paul Ciampoli
A quick follow up if I could with respect to the integrated resource plan.
You noted this is your first IRP for the utility. Any lessons learned from that process?
Brian Wright
What we've seen is I think historically, we're a relatively small utility, particularly from a California perspective. We’re not so small compared to our partners in UAMPS and maybe in the Midwest.
What we've learned through the IRP process is we've seen steady load growth -- kind of that 1 1/2 to 2% year over year for the better part of the last couple of decades.
And so our energy procurement plans have been relatively consistent. What we're seeing now is new challenges with electric vehicle charging stations, electrification, and then the challenges in securing long term procurement contracts with carbon free energy.
&So the IRP really revealed that we have some particular challenges over the next three to six years and then try to find out what opportunities we have for that 10-to-15-year planning period.
Paul Ciampoli
In November 2023, Truckee Donner PUD’s board awarded a contract to NV5 for a Battery Energy Storage System assessment, which the PUD said is a key first step to designing, locating and constructing a battery energy storage system project in Truckee.
If successful, the project would be located at one of the PUD’s substations.
Can you provide an update on this assessment?
Brian Wright
Like you said, this is a new approach -- in terms of the technology, we're not the tip of the spear here but...our community battery project or energy storage project is something new. It's a new approach for us.
We've seen across the utility sector that these types of infrastructures are typically utilized for peak shaving, load peak shaving or managing some of that load that you see in other service territories.
Our particular use on this is really going to be about maximizing our generation sources. It's really more of an economic endeavor to mitigate some of the cost that we'll see.
For example, this battery project will likely be installed at one of our...larger centralized substations and used in terms of the concept of bringing in carbon free energy, whether it's wind or solar, storing that and banking it to extend out that shoulder during the day, that generation profile, extending solar further into the evening where it's not available.
This does a couple of things for us. It helps us also reduce our transmission costs through NV Energy, so we're not procuring and transmitting energy during peak pricing times.
And so we're looking at it as somewhat of a pilot project. Our community has an appetite, our board has an appetite for local community solar projects.
And I think solar plus storage in conjunction with or an additive to some of the behind the meter programs that we can offer is a long-term strategy for us, so we're excited about this.
We've done the initial engineering study. We're out for procurement for what looks like it'll be a probably a 2.1, 2.2-megawatt storage facility -- I think we looked at about an 8.4 megawatt hour capacity there.
So we're excited about it. It's something that if it works well for us, we would look to expand in the future.
Paul Ciampoli
For my last question, I wanted to give you the opportunity to tell our listeners what your long-term goals are that you'd like to achieve while you are general manager at the PUD.
Brian Wright
That’s something I think in leadership with utilities, especially in public power utilities, we're thinking about all the time.
What do we want to achieve and hand the keys over, so to speak, to the next leadership team or the next succession of staff for the long term future of our community?
At the end of the day, we are a public water and power utility and we're serving as stewards of our community’s interest and just kind of a 30,000 foot level fundamentally...my goals are to put our organization, our public utility district, in the most favorable possible position to address some of the pretty significant challenges and I would add the opportunities over the next 10 to 15 years.
So the long-term goal through our strategic plan and our integrated resource plan is to try to ensure that this district, this community is in the most favorable position possible to address our infrastructure capital replacement plans, reduce, mitigate wildfire risk so that our community is safe.
Ensure that we are on the right path for carbon free clean energy going into the future and meeting that 2045 mandate.
And then something that we don't often talk about in terms of long-term strategic planning is staffing and culture -- really establishing a baseline for staff development, succession planning so that this agency is sustainable into the future.
We here locally have celebrated and continue to celebrate and champion public power, public water.
And I think our key tools here are going to be the strategic plan and the IRP combined with our financial master plans.
Public power is one of the pathways for success for our community in terms of reliability.
We use the three-legged stool term a lot – rates, reliability and renewables -- we changed that to kind of carbon free and environmental stewardship.
But those are the three-legged stool that we look to carry forward into future.
Paul Ciampoli
Brian, thanks so much for taking the time out of your day to speak with us.
There's obviously a lot of topics ripe for revisiting, so I wanted to extend to you an open invitation to return as a guest on the podcast at some point next year where we could talk about things like resource planning and perhaps an update on that storage assessment.
Brian Wright
I would absolutely love the opportunity. I really appreciate having this discussion this morning and thank you for all the support out there for public power across our country.
Paul Ciampoli
Thanks for listening to this episode of Public Power Now, which is produced by Julio Guerrero, graphic and digital designer at APPA.
I'm Paul Ciampoli and we'll be back next week with more from the world of public power.