GVEA Board Meeting, Jan. 25, 2021
by Jim Schwarber
The January 25, 2021 GVEA open board meeting began with Director John Sloan from Delta Junction presenting a Safety Moment on the topic of avalanche precautions. About 36 people participated in the virtual meeting via Microsoft Teams as the educational presentations began.
GVEA’s MAC Presents On-Bill Financing Pilot Program to Board
House Bill 374 established a legal framework for utilities to adopt On-Bill Financing programs. Last September, Board Chair Tom DeLong tasked the GVEA’s Member Advisory Committee with developing a framework for a $200,000 on-bill financing pilot program. The MAC Task Force met seven times via Teams. This evening Alyssa Norris presented the MAC’s “On-Bill Financing Task Force Report: Financing and Technology Recommendations.”
Their first recommendation is to utilize the ‘tariffed” financing option with the obligation attached to the meter, not the individual. This option allows low income member-owners to participate in the program. The other financing option that was not chosen is the traditional loan, with the obligation attached to the individual.
The task force recommended three technologies for the pilot program that were chosen for having shorter pay-back periods. They selected conversions to LED lighting, building automation systems or ‘Smart Homes,’ and smart head bolt outlets for plugging in vehicles. They also recommended splitting the $200,000 in pilot funds evenly between commercial and residential projects, and capping individual business projects to $50,000 each, and residential projects to $15,000 in size.
One director asked about the apparent disconnect between the limit of $15,000 per household for the OBF pilot and the three designated technologies that typically cost a fraction of that amount. Similarly, another director asked “Why not solar?” Ms. Norris replied that lighting and heating upgrades are less expensive and will have a quicker payback. Plus this is a test case and she said solar seemed less viable for Alaska, so it was not included at this time. Tom DeLong said the next step will be for the Board to review the OBF report. The Board could ask the MAC Task Force to revise or revisit some sections prior to finalizing the pilot program.
Key Ratios
The second presentation was on “Key Ratio Trend Analysis – GVEA 5 Year Trends (2015-2019)” by Kathy Mattila. This report contains 145 ratios plus 16 graphs; it is also included within the Member Book referenced above. Chair DeLong explained that GVEA is fairly unique in having both ‘generation and transmission’ plus ‘distribution’ business components. Despite a decrease in total KWh sold since 2016, during this same period there was a slight growth in the number of total consumers served to 47,000 in 2020. Power service availability averaged 99.96% in 2019; there may be a slight decrease in 2020 to 99.95.
To summarize all this information, GVEA stated, “Our financial outlook is anticipated to be more lean than years’ past. This is putting more pressure on our departments to keep costs as low as possible while maintaining reliability, operating safely, and delivering quality electric service at fair and reasonable prices to our member-owners. All ratios will be provided in a file on the Board Portal, for reference.”
Safety and Right-of-Way Maintenance
Dean Ojala provided information from the ‘2020 Safety Review.’ Safety is a core value of GVEA. Accomplishments by GVEA in 2020 include a 25% reduction in recordable injuries. There were 15 OSHA injuries in 2020 compared to 20 in 2019. GVEA also developed a COVID-19 Response Plan and made many improvements in Healy to reduce lime, chemical exposures, and ash handling issues. The graph on page 98 shows the injury rate by GVEA division: right-of-way clearing has highest injury rate.
The Board heard a lengthy review of the ‘2020 Annual Right-of-Way Maintenance Report’ by Alex Olesen, the GVEA Right-of-Way (ROW) Superintendent. He said the weather is changing. There is now three to four feet of annual growth of saplings. There are many challenges with keeping brush clear in the narrow ROWs on private lands. GVEA is trying to reduce clearing return times to keep brush in check in the ROWs. The goal is to reduce the return time target from seven years to five years for clearing ROWs. Recently it had slipped to about 9.4 years on distribution lines. There are a total of 3,514 miles of GVEA power line ROWs to maintain.
Clearing in 2020 was challenged by COVID. A reduction in experienced crewmembers required more training. The cost of clearing 184 miles of line in 2020 was $14,400 per managed mile!
Board adjourned 8:59 PM.
