Cost of Service Analysis & Grayson Repowering

Glenoaks Canyon Homeowners Association Landfill Committee Chair  / GEC member Jackie Gish sent the following email on February 16, 2022, to City Council members about Glendale Water and Power’s 2022 Electric Cost of Service Analysis (COSA):

“I listened to the COSA discussion last week (and part of the Sunrun discussion) and listened last night to the Grayson discussion.  In last night’s meeting, it was brought up that Grayson wasn’t going to increase our electrical rates.  This is NOT true.

The COSA baseline is very misleading.  Why are Scholl and Grayson in the baseline and previously approved Eland, Starpeak, Whitegrass, Franklin and Lime are not?  All increases in the COSA are blamed on the clean energy portfolio.  This is blatantly wrong.

Let’s look at a simple situation which we might encounter in our own lives.  Suppose we have a budget of $100 for gifts for friends and we have 3 friends (A, B and C), and we want to buy each a $50 gift.  So we will run over our budget.  Can we attribute this budget problem to friend A?  Or B?  Or C?  Which 2 of our friends are in the baseline?  The answer is, of course, we can’t tell.  The sum of the three is the problem.

In the same way as the simple gift budget example, Grayson is as much at fault at increasing our rates as any of the other projects.  In fact, Grayson is more responsible for raising rates because it is such an expensive project.  But presenting it the way that GWP is doing with Grayson in the baseline gives the impression that all increases to electrical rates are due to the clean energy projects (Eland, Starpeak, Whitegrass, Franklin, Lime and Sunrun).  This is NOT true.  The sum of all the projects will increase our rates and eliminating or reducing any of them (whether they are in the “baseline” or not) will reduce the increase.  The same holds true for Scholl.  GWP/City Council can choose to allocate the cash towards any of the projects, just as we can choose not to buy one of our friends a gift.

As far as cost/MWh for the various projects – they are difficult to compare.  Some run full time and some are only there for peak needs.  Grayson is in the latter category.  If we never have an N-1-1 situation, we may never or only rarely use Grayson and the cost/MWh would be extremely high!

I urge City Council to look at ways to minimize the Grayson costs and instead use that money for more clean energy.  And, I urge GWP and City Council to not present the COSA such that it appears that the rate hike is due to the clean energy projects.  This is terribly misleading.”