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Home My WebLink About20070718PAC to Staff 1-3.pdf~\t~OUNTAIN 20 I South Main, Suite 2300 Salt lake City, Utah 84111 \D ~;\i. :' ,.'. ' i , July 17 2007 Scott Woodbury Deputy Attorney General Idaho Public Utilities Commission 472 West Washington Street Boise, ID 83702-5983 RE:ID PAC-07- IPUC Staff Production Data Requests 1- Please find enclosed Rocky Mountain Power s Response to IPUC Staff Production Data Request 1 - 3. If you have any questions, please call Barry Bell at (801) 220-4985. Sincerely, ~i~ck~/p. J\ Brian Dickman, Manager Regulation Enclosures cc. Jean Jewell/IPUC P AC- E-07 -07 /Rocky Mountain Power July 17 2007 IPUC Production Data Request IPUC Production Data Request 1 Please provide an estimate of the cost to purchase state-of-the-art wind forecasting services as referenced in the Company s Petition. Please provide a detailed description of how each QF's share of the on-going cost of the wind forecasting services will be determined. For what length of time would QFs be required to make a contribution for the cost of forecasting services? How would costs be allocated amongst QFs that are built in at different points in time? Response to IPUC Production Data Request 1 a. Estimate of cost Under its current contract the company can add incremental sites to its forecasting service on a flat per site basis plus set up fees. PacifiCorp proposes to use the contractual costs per month (see table below) to add an incremental wind site to PacifiCorp s wind forecasting service. aMW MWh per $ per MWh at Month $490 per Month 744 2232 3720 5208 10.7440 b. Determination of QF' s share of costs The QF would pay 100 percent of its incremental site cost of being added to PacifiCorp s wind forecasting service contract. c. Length oftime that QF must pay for cost of forecasting The QF will be required to pay its share of the cost of forecasting for the term of the QF power purchase agreement. d. Allocation of costs at different caDs Each QF would be assessed the current incremental cost of adding a site at the time of the QF's commercial operation. Each QF would be responsible for the actual monthly fee to be part ofPacifiCorp s wind forecasting agreement. In the event PacifiCorp s monthly fee for each site changes in its wind forecast service agreement, the new fee would be passed through to the QF. P AC- E-07 -07 /Rocky Mountain Power July 17 2007 IPUC Production Data Request 2 IPUC Production Data Request 2 Among other things, the Company s Petition seeks a Commission order Clarifying that the cap on entitlement to published avoided cost rates shall be restored to 10aMW only until PacifiCorp s renewable targets for each calendar year in the most recently acknowledged Integrated Resource Plan are met." Please clarify whether the Company s proposal as stated in its Petition is intended to mean that the Company will recomputed its wind integration cost when its IRP renewable targets are met or whether it is intended to mean that a new cap on entitlement to published avoided cost rates would be restored at that time. Response to IPUC Production Data Request 2 PacifiCorp s proposal is to re-evaluate its wind integration cost under three conditions; (1) at such time that the company meets its latest acknowledged IRP targets for system-wide wind resources each calendar year, (2) as the published Idaho avoided costs are changed, or (3) PacifiCorp prepares a new wind integration cost study based on additional industry experience. P AC- E-07 -07 /Rocky Mountain Power July 17, 2007 IPUC Production Data Request 3 IPUC Production Data Request 3 Please explain how the proposed "mechanical availability guarantee" will be computed during periods of time when there is not enough wind blowing for wind turbines to generate. Response to IPUC Production Data Request 3 Downtime due to lack of wind is excluded from the calculation of mechanical availability. PacifiCorp would calculate availability as shown in the example below for a contract year. Availability" means the percentage of time that the Facility is available to produce Net Energy compared to the total amount of time in a given period. The percentage of time during a contract year that the Facility is available to produce power, calculated as follows: Availability fl(H x N)-(Sum 0/ Downtime Hours/or N Turbines)J/(H x N)J x 100% where H is the number of hours in the contract year and N is the number of turbines comprising the Facility. Downtime Hours (calculated in 10 minute increments), for each individual unit includes minutes in which the turbine is not in "run " status, or is in "run " status but faulted (including any delay in resetting a fault). Notwithstanding the previous sentence, Downtime Hours does not include minutes that a unit is unavailable due to (i) an event of Force Majeure (ii) a default by PacifiCorp under this Agreement; (ia) inadequate or excessive wind speed at times when the wind turbine would otherwise be available (including the normal amount of time required by the generating equipment to resume operations following an event of inadequate or excessive wind); (iv) a curtailment due to System Emergency; or (v) outages scheduled at least XX days in advance with PacifiCorp s written consent, up to XXX hours per unit per year.