The big debate at tonight's utilities committee meeting was definitely alderman McNeil pulling representatives from KBV (the contractors building the new Dallman IV power plant) and a couple of the unions to talk about getting more minority workers out at the power plant. Fierce!
By contrast, the first wind power contract discussion was relatively mild. Aldermans Kunz and Edwards had some aggressive questions, but I think CWLP gave them good answers and seemed to address their concerns. The utilities committee put it on the debate agenda for next week's city council meeting on Tuesday, and (apparently) gave it a "do pass" recommendation.
I'll have more details tomorrow, but I'll hit the highlights now. First, the contract under consideration tonight is for the first 20 MW of the 120 MW CWLP will eventually purchase. CWLP is still hammering out the details for the other 100 MW, and fulfillment of this contract is contingent on that one going through.
Why two contracts? These 20 MW are part of an existing wind farm owned by Florida Power & Light (FPL) in Hancock County, Iowa. The next 100 MW are in a farm under construction is Osceola, Iowa, whose target completion date is January 2008. Under the terms of the contract, CWLP would start purchasing these 20 MW starting July 1 of this year. Both contracts will be 10 years long.
The cost comes in at just under CWLP's anticipated cost of $60 per MWh--over ten years, the average price will be $50.79/MWh. The price is set to start at $41.43 per MWh, and rise at a rate of 4% per year. Assuming that the price of energy on the market rises at 3.5% per year, total cost to Springfield ratepayers will be $2300--basically nothing, according to CWLP.
CWLP described that energy inflation rate as a conservative estimate--over the past 10 years, the price of energy has gone up 9% on average. The more that price goes up, the more revenue CWLP will bring in on this. Finally, it sounded like CWLP said that revenue that the wind power brings in will go toward a negative fuel adjustment charge--i.e., lowering ratepayer's per-kWh cost of electricity.
I'll see how the SJR covers this tomorrow, as well as how comments over there go. In the meantime, anyone with any questions about the contract, or more broadly about the energy plan in general, feel free to post them here or email them to cleanenergyspringfield at gmail, and I'll try to address them from my notes and from the handout that CWLP gave out.