For quite some time, Ed McKnight has been tracking the cost of power between what Northwestern Energy charges and SME. It's my understanding he sent this information to the City Manager who forwarded it to the Commissioners.
If you have any questions, you're welcome to post them here and Ed will answer them.
I address two issues:
1. The wholesale cost of power from SME. Colleen constantly claims the cost is the generation contract price of $46.44 per MWh averaged from the three blocks. I received a spreadsheet from the city for all payments to SME by month for Generation, Transmission, Imbalances and administration. In other words the real cost of power. The spreadsheet also contains the monthly totals of KWh's so it's simply a matter of dividing the two.
I then took NWE's GS-1 (comercial General Service) non-demand, and residential rates, included all charges plus transmission because SME includes transmission, to set an upper and lower bounds of how the costs would compare.
I used $1,000,000 a year as an estimate because I know that is close enough to get an idea for the amounts of money involved for the city. These are the un-accounted for losses.
2. Selling at a loss. To distinguish from un-accounted losses I made a graph showing the real wholesale cost vs various ECP customer contract prices to show the accounted for losses on the sheet titled customer price accounted losses.
7 comments:
Don't try to confuse the city commission with figures. They just know it's going work out.
Well not Mary. She read things and asks questions, so she is hopeless.
Good work Ed, just in time for the retiring ECP board members to examine at their last board meeting.
For people without spreadsheet software, Open Office productivity suite is available for free from http://www.openoffice.org/
What I am hoping for is that several people will examine the sheets and try to find errors. I am totally capable of mistakes like anyone else. By having the information in the open and verified by several people we can avoid arguments based on perception or second guessing what a persons motives are and make a rational decision based purely of facts.
Thank you GFGirl for providing this conduit for discussion.
Ed, I would love to comment, but it is impossible to do so intelligently when I don't know what this stuff means.
Greg, The main point is that just as I suspected but had no definitive proof until now, is that power from SME actually does cost more than Northwestern Energy.
We are in a small window right now where the prices are almost the same or SME is a tiny bit less expensive, but in January the water credits stop which means higher cash payments, and a more expensive SME contract starts so the power will be around 8% more expensive.
I have asked for the individual meter readings so an exact amount can be calculated and not create a "window of what it might be", the reason for using the two rates.
If we can't get power less expensive than Northwestern energy, how in the world will we ever sell at a price that can cover costs?
If there is anything about the charts or numbers I could explain in a bite-sized chunk ask away.
P.S. I noticed in excel the 3-D chart for customer prices vs wholesale cost did not turn out right, the chart to the right is the same thing 2-D.
Mr McKnight,
Please accept my appologies. I spoke very poorley of you during your campain. I was an ECP supporter and I really thought you were a shill and would say anything to derail the project. My son-in-law is an accountant and has informed me that although some of the equations are inconsistant, they are correct. If the source numbers are accurate then everything is correct. Now I understand you are an educated and talented individual who has donated countless hours in an attempt to make the people who claim to represent us, be honest with us.
You have my undying support. Thank you.
Thank you Robert,
I will have to admit my campaign was amateurish because I was an amateur. I get a much better sense of accomplishment from changing perception or the way people think through facts, logic and reason rather than liking or disliking the way I sound, which seems to be a big factor in a campaign.
I believe it was Ludwig Wittgenstein the Austrian philosopher, in pondering perception and judgment asked an associate:
"Tell me, why do people always say it was natural for man to assume that the sun went round the Earth rather than that the Earth was rotating?"
His friend replied, “Well, obviously because it just looks as though the Sun is going round the Earth.”
Wittgenstein replied, “Well, what would it have looked like, if it had looked as though the Earth was rotating?"
Post a Comment