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6.1.a-f. ERMUSR 11-15-2016 Elk River Municipal Utilities UTILITIES COMMISSION MEETING TO: FROM: Elk River Municipal Utilities Commission Troy Adams, P.E.— General Manager John Dietz—Chair Al Nadeau—Vice Chair Daryl Thompson—Trustee MEETING DATE: AGENDA ITEM NUMBER: November 15, 2016 6.1a SUBJECT: Staff Updates—General Manager DISCUSSION: • The Board of Directors of the Minnesota Municipal Power Agency(MMPA)met on October 25, 2016 in Shakopee,Minnesota. Construction continues to move ahead on MMPA's 46 MW Shakopee Energy Park project. The project remains on schedule and on budget. The Board received an update on the development of a 46 MW generating facility to be located in Chaska. MMPA representatives met with the Chaska City Council for a work session and a tour of the Shakopee Energy Park construction site. The facility in Chaska is expected to be very similar to Shakopee Energy Park. The Board also discussed the status of MMPA's contract for the output of the 78 MW Black Oak Wind Farm and its contract for the output of the 7 MW Buffalo Solar project. • The Midwest Municipal Transmission Group(MMTG)held their annual meeting at the Minnesota Municipal Utilities Association(MMUA)offices in Plymouth, MN, on November 2. The annual meeting of the membership was followed by a meeting of the board of directors. The primary functions of the annual meeting of the membership are the election of board directors, receiving of the audited annual financial report, adoption of the proposed budget and dues, transmission regulatory update and analysis, and discussion of current and future projects. The primary function of the board meeting is the election of officers and adoption of the proposed budget and dues. I am currently a director on this board. One significant outcome of this meeting related to the 2017 dues and the current general and zonal reserve balances. The membership determined that sufficient balances had been met in the general and zonal reserve buckets. Because of this, no zonal dues need be collected for 2017. Also,because of the level of general reserves,the general membership dues income could be decreased by approximately 35%for 2017. This dues structure is based on multiple criterial including members' peak system demand so the actual individual dues reductions vary from one member to another. For ERMU, our 2017 dues are estimated to be $5,942 which is over a 50% reduction from our 2016 dues at$12,807. rrWE BE0 B 1Page 1 of 2 ATURE Reliable Public Power Provider P o w E a c e To SERVE 164 Another significant outcome of this meeting was the Jack Kegel, Executive Director of the Minnesota Municipal Utilities Association(MMUA),was elected as the 2016-2017 chair of the board of directors. • The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission filing documentation to update the electric service territory boundaries to reflect the transfer of Area 2 has been completed,reviewed by Connexus Energy, and sent to ERMU's legal counsel to file on our behalf. Because it is filed jointly with Connexus Energy this filing should be non-controversial. • On November 7 I met with representatives of Power Systems Engineering(PSE), a national full service electric utility consulting firm with an offices here in Minnesota.As a follow up, ERMU and City staff will be meeting with representatives from the PSE cyber security and IT division later this month. We will be discussion security assessment options to demine budgetary numbers for cyber vulnerability assessment and penetration testing. We also intend to discuss assessment options for the physical security of facilities and assets. • The CEO of Connexus Energy and I have scheduled quarterly meetings to discuss issues and opportunities. The latest meeting was October 31.At that time we discussed electric service territory transfer loss of revenue calculations, renewable and energy storage developments, and other timely and relevant industry issues. • The MMUA Solar/Distributed Generation(DG)Task Force has a meeting scheduled for November 14 at the MMUA offices. I am currently the chair of this task force. The task force meeting agenda includes discussion on cogeneration and small power production tariff design, DG interconnection standards and agreements, community solar,and annual reporting requirements. American Public Power Association(APPA) staff will be attending and presenting at this meeting. • The 2017 APPA Legislative Rally in Washington D.C. is scheduled for February 26—March 1. This conference will likely be highly critical for us because of the anticipated changes coming from the 2016 election. The preliminary travel and training budget reflects one manager and one Commissioner attending this conference. We will need to know how many and who are attending as soon as possible. • Similarly,the 2017 MMUA Legislative Rally in St. Paul will be highly critical due to the changes from the 2016 election. This conference will be held January 31 —February 1. It is less urgent to identify who will be attending this event prior to 2017. • John Miner has developed drafts of the first four Governance Manual policies based on the results from the Commissioner survey. These policies are: Commission Purpose; Commission—City Council Relationship and Roles; Commission Authorities and Responsibilities; Governing Style (how the Commission intends to govern). I will have a conference call with John later in November to begin work on the next three policies: Agenda Planning(annual agenda&meeting agendas); Commission Officer Roles, Responsibilities, & Succession; and Commission Committees(principles, structure,roles, and responsibilities). 1 el I I Page 2 of 2 POWERED BY NATURE Reliable Public* Power Provider P o w E a E o T o SE 185 L*- Elk River Municipal Utilities UTILITIES COMMISSION MEETING TO: FROM: Elk River Municipal Utilities Commission Theresa Slominski—Finance and Office Manager John Dietz—Chair Al Nadeau—Vice Chair Daryl Thompson—Trustee MEETING DATE: AGENDA ITEM NUMBER: November 15, 2016 6.1b SUBJECT: Staff Update DISCUSSION: We had a visit from our Regional Business Manager, Lisa Fennell, from NISC on Monday, October 18th. Included in the discussions were Jennie Nelson, Troy Adams, Jenny Biorn, and Melissa Karpinski. We talked about previous issues and some of the resolutions that we have recognized working with our multiple services, some of the items still in progress (fund accounting is the big one), and general assessment of NISC on several levels. We also asked for quotes'on their Mosaic and iVUE Connect products we saw demonstrated at the Member Information Conference in September. Overall, we appreciate their recognition of the differences of municipals versus cooperatives and look forward to further enhancements of the software addressing municipal and multi-service specific needs. John Weber, Product Line Manager for the accounting side at NISC, will be here the last week of November for 2-3 days to review the requirements of implementing the Fund Accounting enhancements we have been requesting. He has offered to come and seek our input on what we see as necessary in this enhancement and how it would affect all the pieces of the financial data. We welcome this opportunity and are really looking forward to his visit! We received our workers' compensation insurance renewal for 2016-2017. For the renewal, we have an increase of$2,000 in wages for staffing, and our experience modification factor increased from .69 to .74. Both items contributed to a premium increase of approximately $4,000. We have 4 individuals who have waived health insurance coverage for next year, one who enrolled in the CMM plan, and the rest are all enrolled in the HSA plan. As mentioned in the Audit RFP memo, we should see an increase in our transmission revenue with our transformers qualifying as MISO assets. Troy Adams and Mike O'Neill worked with MCR Consulting to properly evaluate the transformer assets against MISO criteria to determine P�G EHEB 81 Page 1 of 2 NATURE ble Public' Power Provider P OWE 0.E D To Se 1AA that 50% of our transformers can be recognized as qualifying assets. There is some work to be done in order for this to become final. We will need to reclassify our assets with MISO for our 2016 filing in 2018, along with substantiation for the reclassification. MCR will work with us to ensure a proper reclassification filing and approval. The annual revenue payments subsequent to that filing will reflect the increase that is currently projected to be approximately $150,000 (the preliminary calculation was $154,095.) POWERED BY Page 2 of 2 NATURE Reliable Public Power Provider POWERED To S ERV E 167 Elk River Municipal Utilities UTILITIES COMMISSION MEETING TO: FROM: Elk River Municipal Utilities Commission Mark Fuchs—Electric Superintendent John Dietz—Chair Al Nadeau—Vice Chair Daryl Thompson—Trustee MEETING DATE: AGENDA ITEM NUMBER: November 15, 2016 6.1c SUBJECT: Staff Update DISCUSSION: • Had eleven new services. • Continue working on collecting data with the GPS for our ArcView maps as time permits. • Continue the tear down of old infrastructure in the River Ranch development. • Continue installing a new feeder from the east side of HWY 169 by GRE to the east side of HWY 10 across Nature's Edge Business Center. This feeder will give us a feeder loop under HWY 10 that will be used for the Area 2 acquired from Connexus. • Finished making up River Park Third Addition. • Continue to replace stickers, locks, and add signage to the underground equipment in the newly acquired Connexus Area 2. While doing this, we'll make any necessary changes to the maps and repair any small issues we may encounter. • Replaced a street light pole that was hit at 212th Avenue and Lander Street. • Put in a new service for the sign at Big Tex Trailers. • Finished putting in the underground infrastructure and street lights on Quaday Avenue near P&F Machining in Otsego. • Replaced a secondary pedestal that was hit on Albany Street. • We interviewed four applicants for the Lineworker position on October 26. We extended an offer, which was accepted by Jake Koehler. His tentative start date is November 14. POWERED BY 1 El I Page 1 of 1 NATURE Reliable Public Power Provider POWERED To S E E,E 1 AR Elk River Municipal Utilities UTILITIES COMMISSION MEETING TO: FROM: Elk River Municipal Utilities Commission Mike O'Neill—Technical Services Superintendent John Dietz—Chair Al Nadeau—Vice-Chair Daryl Thompson - Trustee MEETING DATE: AGENDA ITEM NUMBER: November 15th, 2016 6.1d SUBJECT: Staff Update DISCUSSION: • In October, The Locating department had a total of 408 locate tickets; consisting of four emergency tickets, six cancellations, 14 meetings, 332 normal tickets and 46 updated tickets. . • Electric Technicians continue with the meter reading, power bill, substation checks, hanging red-tags, meter read-outs, dealing with meter and off-peak issues, as well as delivering and installing new meters to commercial customers. They continue to change out the three phase meters with meters that will be read by radio ERT. Meter changes for Area 2 are being installed as well as auditing last year's meters acquired from Areas la and lb. • Metering department is working with Itron to acquire and install replacement software for MVRS; the new software will give us greater capabilities in meter reading and data sharing. • The power plant staff did the monthly engine run in October. All engines with the exception of engine 4 ran well. We are currently working on engine 4 to determine why we could not get that one online. • Mapping department is very close to being finished with getting entire service territory map updated to reflect entire system in Esri mapping software. They continue to enter GPS points and attribute points for our systems assets. • The sale of the Security Business line final sales number is in; we received another $31,709.15 for monitoring fees for a final total of$378,961.11. POWERED BY Page 1 of 1 NATURE Reliable Public Power Provider POWERED T o S ERV E 16g Elk River Municipal Utilities UTILITIES COMMISSION MEETING TO: FROM: Elk River Municipal Utilities Commission Eric Volk - Water Superintendent John Dietz—Chair Al Nadeau—Vice Chair Daryl Thompson—Trustee MEETING DATE: AGENDA ITEM NUMBER: November 15, 2016 6.1e SUBJECT: Staff Update DISCUSSION: • Delivered six new water meters. • Sealed the water meter, and took curb stop ties from six water services. • Went on eight service calls. • Completed 25 BACTI/Total Chlorine Residual Samples o All confirmed negative for Coliform Bacteria. • Completed 20 routine fluoride samples o All samples met MDH standards. • There has been a lull in the construction at Well #7 this past month as we wait for the floor drains to be manufactured. During that time period, the exterior grading was completed and the stormwater pond was constructed. Over the next month,we expect that the floor will be poured in the expansion and that the pipe work should commence. The contractor is still on schedule to meet the substantial completion date of February 15, 2017. Attached is a picture of the new stormwater pond. • The infiltration basin at Well #3 has been completed. The basin will facilitate infiltration into the ground of over one million gallons of water that had previously been backwashed into the sanitary sewer each year; the sanitary sewer in the area was not built to be able to accept such a surcharge of water. The total cost of the project was $12,000. As we had been paying the wastewater department roughly $700 per month to discharge into the sanitary sewer, we should recover the cost for the project within18 months. Attached is a picture of the infiltration basin. • We completed the annual dam inspection on October 5. We invited Jason Boyle, the State Dam Safety Officer, to assist us with the inspection. Jason commented on the progressiveness of our dam maintenance program and commended both the utility and city on what a great job we were doing. Everything on the dam checked out fine. There is a small list of things that will need to get accomplished in the next few months. Attached is a picture of the dam after the drawdown was completed. PONE 8 E 0 8 Y Page 1 of 2 NATURE 1111 Reliable ProviderPowP-P OWERED To S EkvE 17n • Hosted an intern from the St. Cloud Technical & Community College WETT (Water Environmental Technology) Program. We annually support this program by allowing an intern to shadow our water operators during their daily activities for one week. • The water operators have begun to prep the filter at Well #4 for sandblasting and painting which is scheduled to begin around February 1, 2017. • We received our EH Wachs Valve Exercising Machine; this machine is the replacement for the old Spin Doctor Valve Exercising Machine. In 2017 we will begin a valve exercising program similar to the hydrant program. Our goal will be to exercise 200 valves per year, but that will be dependent on how many valves require excavation for repairs. Attached are two pictures of the new valve exercising equipment. ATTACHMENTS: • October 2016 Pumping by Well • October 2016 Accumulated Precipitation Graph • October 2016 Daily Temperature Graph • Picture -New Stormwater Pond at Well #7 • Picture - Well #7 Site Grading • Picture - Well#3 Infiltration Basin • Picture - Annual Inspection of Orono Dam • Picture - EH Wachs Valve Exercising Machine POWERED BY Page 2 of 2 tf NATURE Reliable Public Power r POWERED To SEE 171 0 O O u cu 410i .N °c° 0 a. Q� Mak cu cram — c Q U > v CO o N Lf (15 l r C E Cl. o ,. = O a. a o — � O o C C M o G CZ • 0 N o o C'SI rZ � o n - N 2 -a m c 4-1 O �, o lc CD N lG � ›.- as Ti. ^ _ vi Cr) E 0 r Q v R_ LnLn > U .1 cri •ef, . . . • — . , o ai 1 N 41 III ai ri. ......, 4a in II -• '..t4. 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Municipal Utilities UTILITIES COMMISSION MEETING TO: FROM: Elk River Municipal Utilities Commission Tom Sagstetter - Conservation and Key Accounts John Dietz—Chair Manager Al Nadeau—Vice Chair Daryl Thompson—Trustee MEETING DATE: AGENDA ITEM NUMBER: November 15, 2016 6.1f SUBJECT: Staff Update DISCUSSION: • The Cost of Service and Rate Design Study has been finalized. Dave Berg will present the report verbally to the Commission at the November 15 meeting. • Energy City continues to collaborate with University of St. Thomas Sustainable Communities Partnership on local project initiatives in Elk River. Some of the initiatives include: Climate Adaptation; Decreasing Use of Polystyrene; Evaluating Current Solid Waste Rate Structure; Examining the Effects of Climate Change on Tree Species; Fostering Sustainable Behaviors for City Employees; and Modeling Pollutant Levels in Lake Orono after Rainfall Events. The Youth committee is active and had two meetings. The committee has undergone a name change to SustainER and is working on a project called iMatter. This is a report card that grades the city on how it has done in sustainability measures thus far. The iMatter group started in St. Louis Park and is now branching out nationally. As the Energy City Commissioner I will be traveling to Germany June 17th through June 25th as part of the Climate Smart Municipals Program. Energy City budgeted $4,000 for travel expenses for two representatives. Kristin Mroz is the other Energy City representative scheduled to travel. • Participated in the Data Center Energy Summit Educational Conference at Golden Valley County Club with the Elk River EDA. There were approximately 50 people in attendance and there were a couple of good contacts made. I spoke about energy efficiency in data centers and everything Elk River has to offer to these types of customers. The trend in the market currently is large data centers that have multiple organizations in the single building compared to the two enterprises ERMU currently serves. • ERMU received formal verbal confirmation that we were awarded a$40,000 grant from American Public Power Association Demonstration of Energy & Efficiency Developments Program (APPA DEED Grant). The bulk of the grant will be used to pay for a fleet vehicle assessment and marketing of the electric vehicle charging program and the installation of a DC Fast Charger at the corner of Joplin and Hwy 10. The grant can POWERED S T Page 1 of 2 NATURE Reliable vo Pider POWERED To S ERV E 17R be used for studies, marketing, promotions, and staff time. We are not allowed to use grant dollars to purchase equipment(DC Fast Charger or Level Two). • Holiday lighting contest applications and coupons were mailed out. We have received 6 applications for the contest so far. Signs will be printed and placed in the front yards to easily identify the contestants. El POWERED BY Page 2 of 2 NATURE Rewer liablProvider Plblic P OWE 0.E D To S E 0.v E Po 17A