| Lower Valley Energy: Preparing for Tomorrow |
| Featured Spotlights | |||
| Written by Eric Slack | |||
| Wednesday, 31 March 2010 | |||
 Thanks to its long-term vision, this utility is investing in projects designed to keep rates low, improve reliability, and promote conservation and renewable power.
“The area is famous not only for skiing, but the two national parks—Grand Teton and Yellowstone,” said GM Jim Webb. “The peak season is in the summer with people going to the parks, but it is busy year-round between tourism, farming, and mining.”  Jim Webb, GM Lower Valley Energy mainly serves Teton and Lincoln Counties in Wyoming, but it also touches part of Sublette County, Wyo. and Caribou and Bonneville Counties in Idaho. All told, it has 2,612 miles of electrical lines, 26,000 electric meters, 235 miles of pipeline, and 3,600 gas customers. The utility’s electrical operations began in 1937, and it got into natural gas in 1997. It started with LNG, and has branched out to include propane. “Teton Village has three big propane tanks, about 90,000 gallons, and we serve all the big hotels there,” said Webb. When Lower Valley Energy started in natural gas, it built distribution systems in Jackson and Afton, trucking LNG deliveries into the town. Last year, it built a new 50-mile pipeline into Jackson. “Moving gas by pipeline is safer than by truck because it reduces the possibility of accidents, it is cleaner because it reduces truck emissions, it will be more reliable, and over time it will have a positive impact on the price of gas,” Webb said. “However, Afton is 70 miles south of Jackson, and it is too small and costly to get a pipeline in there, so we’ll still truck LNG to Afton.” The pipeline investment is part of a commitment Lower Valley Energy has made to operate in the most efficient manner possible. That is one reason its rates are lower than those of most other utilities. Its average retail rate is slightly more than five cents. For example, its electricity rate has a $15 facility charge, but the actual energy charge is only 4.8 cents. Webb says there are several reasons why the utility has been able to keep rates so low. “First, we’re able to buy from Bonneville Power Administration, which is mostly hydro. But we’re also lower than most of Bonneville’s customers,” he said. “Diversifying into natural gas, spreading our overheads, and investing in efficiencies and technology to keep productivity up are all contributing factors to our low rates.” At the same time, service quality and reliability haven’t been sacrificed. If anything, they’ve been enhanced. Webb said Lower Valley Energy has an aggressive maintenance plan that has improved reliability year after year. It began implementation of an automated meter reading system a few years ago, which makes reading meters easier and more cost effective while also reducing billing problems and line losses. “We’re not quite 100% there with AMR; we’ve got one more summer to complete installation throughout our system,” said Webb. “We’ve seen billing complaints decrease, and line losses decreased more than we thought they would. In addition, we started an aggressive sustainability project with Jackson and Teton County, and these meters will be an important part of our smart grid.” Cleaning up Jackson and Lower Valley Energy are on the cutting edge of the evolution of energy. When Jackson passed its 2008 fiscal year budget, it was able for the first time to announce that all of the town’s operations would be entirely powered by renewable energy. Additionally, the Jackson Hole Energy Sustainability Project will push the envelope when it comes to innovation, sustainability, and conservation. The project will track energy usage, determine ways to save energy and costs, and figure out how to finance the implementation of new energy systems and investments. “The town and the county filed for $5 million grants for seed money to get that project off the ground, and we’ll know in March if they got the grants,” said Webb. Another important investment Lower Valley Energy made recently was to some hydro assets. In the early days of the utility, it inherited the Swift Creek Hydroelectric Plants from the town of Afton. In the late 1960s, the plant was damaged, then abandoned. Over time, ownership of the plants changed hands several times before Afton ended up as the owner again. Beginning in 2008, Lower Valley Energy and Afton came together to work on a project to restore, rebuild, and upgrade the plants. “The upper powerhouse was refurbished, and the generators, lower powerhouse, and penstocks are all brand new. The only things really used from the old projects were the dams,” said Webb. “This summer we have a third project, which will put generation in the town’s culinary water pipe that comes down the same canyon. So there will be three projects in the canyon that may be small, but they are green power, they will be economical over time, and it took something that was dilapidated and turned it into a nice facility that is actually generating power.” Webb knows the cost of power is something Lower Valley Energy must continue to monitor in the next couple of years. In 2011, Bonneville Power Administration is changing the way it does business, and rates will be restructured on a tiered system. The Jackson Hole Energy Sustainability Project will go a long way toward dealing with any cost increases that result from changes to the rate structure, as part of the project is meeting one-third of load growth through conservation and renewables. “Lower Valley Energy was awarded a $1.2 million grant to expand our smart grid capabilities, and the real challenge is to look at conservation as the least cost resource,” Webb said. “The other two-thirds of that load growth will require securing power through new projects or working with other groups, but we think we can reach the lofty goal of one-third load growth through conservation and renewables with community support, technology, and a lot of hard work.” |
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