IRV for board of directors elections?
Using a ranked choice voting system to elect our board members (in district) might help avoid an issue of concern to the recent District 2 nominating committee, whereby apparently eight candidates for the seat were whittled down to two so that there would be no risk of one candidate not getting the required margin to win (for example, a three- or four-way tie) and then having to go for a whole new shiny expensive runoff election.
Having elections using IRV would make it a lot easier to give us a wide choice of candidates, but it would mean
amending the bylaws. What do you think? Is this something we should do?
Might help avoid
dodgy-appearing problems in the future as well as save money.
Labels: board of directors, bylaws, elections
GVEA and Chugach Electric among top ten CO2 producers in the state
From
Kodiak Konfidential comes this interesting news about our biggest utilities: Chugach Electric is #4 on the list, and GVEA is #6:
4. Chugach Electric Association
1.07 million metric tons CO2
Electricity
...
6. Golden Valley Electric Association
0.69 million metric tons CO2
Electricity
That's a lot of CO2. All the more reason to get off the grid with renewable energy, or
support net metering (as in House Bill 288), or the SNAP program.
Labels: net metering, pollution, renewable energy
Cost of Power Adjustment
Speaking of the Cost of Power Adjustment (COPA), GVEA recently filed its
latest quarterly report for COPA. It might take a while to download. They notice the increase in both oil and anticipated coal increases and having less cheap intertie power available. They see a $5.6mm deficit in collection. Expect our COPA to go up substantively.
They also filed their latest Simplified Rate Filing (SRF), which they can submit, as I recall, every 6 months. It comes with much less notice and filing requirements, but they can only increase rates a small amount with each SRF request. Their
latest SRF tariff requestwas just approved.
Regulatory Commission of Alaska website upgrade
The Regulatory Commission of Alaska (RCA) has upgraded
their website with a lot of fine features for finding out about utilities' issues before the RCA. I urge all those who can take 15-30 minutes to browse a subject or utility and see what goes on and how the process works. Power to the people and hats off to the RCA for making their regulatory of model of openness.
And if you think GVEA has issues
Just to let folks know that, by contrast to Matanuska Electric Association (MEA) and Chugach Electric Association (CEA), GVEA is quite stable as far as board, membership, and executive administration relations.
MEA tried to ram a coal fired power plant down the members' and
communities' throats, but finally
appears to have reconsidered.
CEA has had a running back-and-forth battle between two camps on the board of directors. They recently appointed a new board member to fill a vacancy who I was told really has no idea what a cooperative is and put her on a committee to get the current CEO. This is politics at its base and it hurts the utility. The members get riled up by some factions claiming the IBEW union, who represent the employees, are taking over.
The Chugach board's latest move is a
special board meeting called for this coming Wednesday to
fire General Manager Bill Stewart. No reason given except they want to go in a different direction, with no hint of what that direction might be.
Rebecca Logan (new appointed board member, Uwa Kalenka and Elizabeth Vazquez will comprise the committee to search of a new GM. I'm told that many good employees are bailing out. This sounds to me like a majority of the board is on a political purge. Ray Kreig, former board member, has been most active in
engineering this takeover by avowed anti-union board members. I certainly admire activism and the espoused goal of more openness, but have seen no indications that the recent or future board actions empower the members.
When they aren't fighting internally, they
sue each other. MEA doesn't generate any of its own power, relying on AML&P, Homer Electric, and Chugach for their generation.
Not to say, while all this acrimony goes on, they don't try to get together, with recent reports that Chugach is investigating merger with AEL&P and still working on a joint agency to deal with
upcoming supply issues.
Now if they could only get Fire Island wind project off the table. Non-renewable resource costs aren't getting any cheaper, nor are climate change impacts going away without some serious mitigation.
GVEA transition
GVEA will have a new CEO/president real soon -
Brian Newton. Steve Haagenson has retired, Chief Finance Officer John Grubich is also moving on to other pastures outside Alaska. The new executive team will have their hands full, as the capital spending binge of the new tie line from Healy to Fairbanks, the biggest battery backup in the world "BESS", and two new oil fired generation units in North Pole have pretty much broke the bank. Our board approved all these expenditures and plan on having management to ask for more rate hikes. Expect these increases to be substantial. The assertion will likely include increased fuel costs, but as far as generation goes, we already pay for those increases through the 'cost of power adjustment" or COPA.
Maybe they are going to look at some internal cost cutting that has thus far been sacrosanct. We might even end up with a less glitzy and less costly annual meeting actually focused on real issues and less P.R. Feel free to contribute ideas and suggestions.
500+ conributors to the SNAP purchasers program
The
website says 350, but Tom DeLong tells me that there are now more than 500 SNAP purchasers (people who contribute extra money to pay alternative energy producers in the SNAP program). The site also says that "GVEA is well on its way" to meeting its goal of producing 10 percent of its peak load from alternative sources. However, it doesn't say what that peak load is (anticipated to be 230 MW) or what percentage is actually produced from alternative energy sources. Or at least, I can't find it. Does anyone know what this is, and how close or far GVEA is from meeting its goal?
It would be helpful,
on this page, to have contact e-mails or links to the members of the Green Power Advisory Committee. I know several of these people, so I have that info, but others may not.
Labels: communication, renewable energy
The new bills
It's been a few months now since the new-format bills came out, so I've had time to get used to them. Guess what?
I still don't like them.
The little bar graph is nice and all, but I don't know exactly HOW much electricity I used each month in the last year. A close approximation, yes, and a nice visual quickie look-see, yes, but exact amounts? No. I have to go to my old bills and look 'em up.
Not so convenient.
Okay, done now.
Labels: billing, communication
Schedule set for GVEA distribution tariff request
While the tariff filing is confidential,
here's a look at the sense of what was filed back in August 2007. All the other documents relating to this case can be found on the RCA website under
U-07-08There is reference to a summer 2008 cost study, in which the balance/allocation of costs between commercial and residential could impact the rates.
Alaska Utility Plans in need of full environmental considerations
It's nice to know that GVEA isn't the only utility with challenges.
Chugach Electric has had ongoing controversy surrounding a board that either is or isn't supportive of its union employees and their labor representative IBEW.
Matanuska Electric Association is now going out to members to ask about siting for a coal fired power plant, justified by a new state prison to be built. This was recently reported in the
Anchorage Daily News. There are a number of members who believe a coal plant has environmental concerns that have not been taken into account. The CH2M Hill
Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) commissioned by MEA is not available to the members, so they have no way to review it. I'm happy that GVEA hasn't been so secretive with their IRP and having it available to members for review can lead to a better report. Members don't charge for their input.
In a recent study commissioned by the University of Alaska Fairbanks to look at meeting future power needs, they also came out with a recommendation to build (another) coal fired power plant on campus. Having access to the report helped point out that the economic analysis didn't include any carbon cost analysis, no substantive consideration of alternatives and a near-total wash on further conservation/demand side reductions. You can
download the Utility Development Plan at the bottom of the linked page in 3 different sections.
When GVEA performed an Integrated Resource Plan in order to justify the experimental coal plant in Healy in the 1990s, the study found that conservation would cost 1.5 - 2 cents/kwh vs. 3.5 -4.5 cents for a new plant. What the MEA IRP found is anyone's guess. The irony of UAF's plan to add a coal plant is that a coal plant is either on full time or it isn't. There is no load balancing one can do without hours or days for starting a plant. If one builds a 20 mw plant, the most efficient use of that plant is to use 20 mw, not less. This is actually a disincentive for conservation.
I also notice that Governor Palin just awarded Usibelli Coal an award for exporting large quantities of coal to Korea. Rewarding a company for exporting a product that creates pollution that alters our environment? This is the same governor who just created a sub-cabinet level group to find ways that the state can reduce its "contribution" toward climate change.
With all the recent ramp up in discussion over climate change and the added CO2 that coal puts out, it seems like the discussion and research being performed demonstrating all the hazards aren't being translated into action.
Perhaps others would like to add their info about GVEA's Green Power goals?
I ran into Dan Osborne the other day
and he told me that yes, in fact, the margin required on the G&T was not the 1.25 minimum required by the Regulatory Commission, it was higher, as they had presented, because of GVEA's own requirements. He thinks the membership made an error in voting the G&T down; I disagree--there were other things about the proposal that I didn't like, aside from the margin weirdness. My question to him was, if there was a requirement within GVEA to keep the margin higher, then why didn't anybody tell me this when I asked them, or explain the seeming discrepancy by telling me where the requirement came from? He wasn't able to explain that, but then, we only discussed it briefly and in passing.
Anyway, we are going to get together and he'll tell me all about it then. I'm hoping he can explain this business here, too. Even though the whole thing was rejected by the membership, I think it's important to know what happened and why, because a lot of people I've talked to feel like the board was attempting to get one over on the membership. That's not a good thing.
Labels: board of directors, communication
GVEA Districts 5 & 6 Elections
I'm inviting all GVEA Districts 5 & 6 candidates to be blog contributors themselves. To invite them, If they don't want or aren't able to do so, they are welcome to offer comments to this posting or any other.
My invitation to all current GVEA Board directors to become blog contributors remains.
News-Miner interviews of District 5 candidates
The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner has
interviews with the candidates, too, asking them about upcoming priorities. According to the article, the priorities break down like so:
•Bartos - taking greater advantage of alternatives to petrochemical power generation: alternative fuels, using state and federal programs that encourage alternative fuels
•Berg (the incumbent) - hiring a new manager, improving communications
•Pieczynski - maintaining infrastructure (looking at renewables on the way, even if not currently cost-effective), working on easements, adding more members to the grid (through greater transparency)
But read the full article.
Labels: board of directors, renewable energy
Interviews complete
Jeanne Laurencelle interviewed all six candidates for the two open seats on the GVEA board of directors at the annual meeting, and the article will appear in the May
Republic. The questions she asked (on the G&T issue and how it was handled; renewable energy; and domestic partner benefits) and the answers they supplied will supplement those found at the
GVEA website.
Labels: board of directors, personnel issues, renewable energy
