Austin Energy Utility Oversight Committee (AEUOC) meeting Transcript – 9/19/2023 Title: ATXN-1 (24hr) Channel: 1 - ATXN-1 Recorded On: 9/19/2023 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 9/19/2023 Transcript Generated by SnapStream ================================== Please note that the following transcript is for reference purposes and does not constitute the official record of actions taken during the meeting. For the official record of actions of the meeting, please refer to the Approved Minutes. [1:03:54 PM] All right. We're looking good. I think I can count to six now, so . So so this is council member Leslie pool. I'm the chair of the Austin energy utility oversight committee and it's Tuesday, September 19th, 2023. It is. 1:03 P.M. And we are convened here at Austin city hall for this oversight committee meeting. I see on the screen council member harper-madison and we have council member Fuentes, vice chair Kelly, mayor pro tem Ellis , council members Ryan alter and Jose Velasquez here today. We may have some other council members joining us. So let's see. We are called to order, shall we do public communication? Call ins first. Thank you. So we have three people and one person on the phone and potentially two. I [1:04:55 PM] phone and potentially two. I know for sure, one in the audience. So Mr. Robbins, you are up first and you will have three minutes. Thanks for being here. Mr. Robbins, are you here ? He is remote. Yes, that's correct. As he. Mr. Robbins, can you hear us? We're ready for you . I'll tell you what. We'll give Paul a little bit of time to get connected and. Mr. Robbins, can you hear us? We're ready for you . >> Hello? This is Paul Robbins. Can you hear me? >> We sure can, Paul. Well and do you have three minutes? >> Is the presentation up? [1:05:56 PM] >> Is the presentation up? >> It is, yes. >> Great. Thank you. Council member, with respect to utility customers, we can't seem to catch a break these days. Fuel increased a year ago. Winter storm Laura knocked people out for as long as two weeks. Then there was a rate increase in March and this was followed by the hottest August in Austin's history. And now we have another fuel increase. Any day now. Slide. Is a slide up with ercot . Yes. You'll note that you year on year there's been an 81% increase in electric consumption at ercot. This is. 18% higher than last year. This is a record [1:07:00 PM] than last year. This is a record slide. And there's been a. 23% higher increase in cooling degree days than last year in Texas. This was only rivaled by the drought of 2011. Slide and in Travis county, this was actually the hottest recorded August in in its history in our history, 20% higher than last year. And if all this were not enough, I've reached calculated that we're losing about $1.4 million a year by paying franchise fees to cities that do not need subsidies as council, we need rate relief. Slide last slide. And to this end, I've four suggestions. One use half [1:08:04 PM] four suggestions. One use half of any summer windfall that we might get as a temporary rate decrease to the extent possible stop franchise people franchise fee payments from general operating revenues as most fees are actually paid by customers, not utilities. Third is ban resisting ice water heating in the energy building code. This was brought up in 2020, but never implement it. And finally build more transmission lines as we need them badly. Thank you. >> Thank you. Mr. Robbins appreciated our next speaker, Al Braden and after him. Kaiba white kaiba. Why don't you come on down and you will each have three minutes. Mr. Braden, welcome. Thank you. >> Chair Rohman pool councilors and Austin energy staff. My name [1:09:05 PM] and Austin energy staff. My name is Al Braden, a district seven voter and Austin energy customer. I'm here to address item three, the update of the generation and resource plan. When I was a member of the working group that wrote the current plan in 2020 and a member of the new working group formed by the this month. So much has changed since 2020. It is critical that we have a new broad policy discussion of our future plans. Your council resolution last December recognized this in detail. The failure to close fayette, the report of the transmission study, with its impacts on current reliability and on the closing of our gas generation units. Major advances in battery and storage, technology and economics, major changes in ercot and PUC regulatory landscape following winter storm uri, the ice storm, the summer's new normal of excessive climate reality temperatures, significant increases in the price of natural gas as a fuel source and president Biden's [1:10:07 PM] source and president Biden's infrastructure investment and jobs act and inflation reduction act. These demand a full community discussion. The past working groups have heard represented lives from residential low income manufacturing, commercial environmental, houses of worship and others to bring a balanced perspective of this year, Austin energy has claimed that they have all the information they need. They offered public engagement as three two hour show and tell presentation sessions at their headquarters in a brief survey, you will see this as powerpoint, this powerpoint as item three. Today it's identical to what they tried in 2013, and that year, council demanded community engagement and formed a task force whose recommendations are the bedrock of our energy policy today. Prioritize wind and solar, eliminate gas and coal and maximize weatherization and demand management. Achieve zero carbon by 2030 or or 2035. If you're at the Austin energy [1:11:10 PM] you're at the Austin energy viewpoint. But with all these challenges and opportunities facing us since 2020, I ask you as council members as Austin energy's board of directors, to really demand, encourage their collaboration with the working group, we must produce the best energy future for Austin. We need their views, expertise, modeling and their participation, of course, and we need a thorough community discussion on the energy landscape has shifted so much since 2020. So I ask you, please support the working group on this generation plan. Update thank you all. >> Thank you so much, Mr. Braden kiba white, welcome, miss white. You have three minutes. Thank you for the opportunity to speak. >> My name is kiba white. I'm here on behalf of public citizen's Texas office and I'll start by saying plus one to everything that at my friend Al just said. This is an important update to the plan, and I'm going to use the word update in [1:12:11 PM] going to use the word update in the same way that it has been used in the past. And that is just to mean that we are building on the past progress that we have made with Austin energy policy. I don't think that that means that this should be a limited scope. Almost everything that almost everything in the plan is affected by the various changes that Al just mentioned and from market changes to new incentives that make it easier and cheaper to do the things that we have. A community have already committed to do. And thanks to those of you all who have participated in that leadership in the past, I do have a suggestion for this body. It's been a while since council has been updated and briefed. As far as I understand , and in executive session on the fayette power plant and retirement of and so some of y'all are new to this body since then. And I know this is on some of y'all's minds. So I'm just I [1:13:11 PM] of y'all's minds. So I'm just I guess reiterating y'all should request just a new update in in that appropriate venue. I understand that we as the public are not going to get that information and not not asking for what we can't have. But you at least as our leader should should have all of the information as we go into this update, because that is an important part of what we're trying to address here. Fire is still our largest source of greenhouse gas emissions as a community and, you know, there are still a number of organizations, including my own, that are focused on this issue here in Austin and are doing what we can to try to kind of poke l-c-r-a as well. So it's not that we think that the Austin is the only, only party that needs to come to the table and address it. But we also know that you all are much more responsive than the lcra and have the ability to do things that they will not because of political kind of direction, I [1:14:12 PM] political kind of direction, I guess, of that body. So I hope that we can have your support for a full and robust update to the plan and that addressing fayette and not just kind of slapping a new date on it or saying we're going to keep running, running it. I don't know what Austin energy has in mind, but I do know that it remains a large and glaring kind of spot on Austin energy's kind of green and sustainable image, and we want to live up to that image. So thank you for the opportunity and I hope this is the start of a few months of good conversation about Austin energy issues. >> Thanks so much for being here , miss white. I will I will let you know that I have talked with the general manager about updating our newest members on fayette and everybody's schedule is really full. And as you have noticed how today went out, in fact, I had asked that we have an executive session today on fayette, but that wasn't possible. So Mr. Khan and I have [1:15:13 PM] possible. So Mr. Khan and I have had a specific conversation about updating the members of the council who already know some background, but also to be sure that the new members are clear on the steps that have been made and where we are. And I feel certain that that is underway. We are on the same wavelength. So thank you for being here. >> I'm so glad to hear that. And maybe more frequent meetings of this body might help to alleviate some of that pressure of time. Thanks >> All right. Thank you all for coming to speak. Our next item is approval of minutes. I will take a motion to approve the minutes of the may 16th, 2023, meeting of the Austin energy utility oversight committee and council member Ryan alter makes that motion and vice chair Kelly seconds it. Are there any amendments or changes as amendments or questions on the minutes hearing? None. Is there any objection to approving the [1:16:15 PM] any objection to approving the minutes they are adopted next we have our lineup of briefings and general manager con welcome. >> Thank you. In response to the to the last speaker, chair pool , we do have some meetings. I think they're scheduled next week to update some of the newer council members on fayette. And then I think as you may know already, we do have an executive session that we're going to schedule in October to bring you up to speed on all of that. Thank you so much. >> Sure. >> Sure. So chair Powell, mayor pro tem Ellis, committee members , thanks for having us here today. I think I've met with most of you, too, but for the ones that I haven't met, I am general manager Bob khan, and this is my third time back here . And after I left and I retired in 2007 from Austin energy, and then I went on, I was the CEO of [1:17:16 PM] then I went on, I was the CEO of ercot, and then I worked at the Texas municipal power agency for about ten years. And that was a kind of a muni like like Austin energy. And we provided generation and transmission services to Brian Denton Garland and Greenville. So I did that for about ten years and prior to I, I was at the PUC and I was in private practice for, for six years, basically represent Singh cities like Austin energy. And then I was a jag in the air force for a few years up in minot, North Dakota. So I do want to take the opportunity to discuss a few things before we get to our presentations today. First off, as you know, we are coming off a historic heat wave by now, you're likely very familiar with ercot. Many weather watchers that we've we've had day after day going on the last couple of months. They call for conservation. We even had an energy emergency alert that brought us very close to some controlled outages a couple of weeks ago. Now, hopefully [1:18:16 PM] of weeks ago. Now, hopefully we're transitioning out of the heat and we aren't under as much pressure. I thought it would be a good time to review ercot energy emergency alert levels. Before I go any further, I'd like to thank the mayor and city manager for helping to amplify our messages about ercot grid challenges. I know the mayor sent out a few press releases as things got very tight. They were really tight for about 45 days. A lot of times we're within a unit or so tripping before we got into real trouble. But luckily that didn't happen. So I bring this up today because just like with the extreme weather we're going to be facing freezing temperatures, which may be welcome again before we know it. So I want to make sure each of you and your constituents understand the terminology and actions for each level. So here we go. So first we have the what I call the pre emergency notices . We have the ercot weather watch, voluntary conservation [1:19:16 PM] watch, voluntary conservation notice and their conservation appeals. And those are mainly where you've seen please conserve, please conserve, turn up your air a little, close your blinds, turn the lights down. And these notices are intended to get people to conserve. Next slide. Then if energy reserves get too low, then we activate the EPA or energy emergency alerts, which have three levels one, two, and three. And the first one allows ercot to employ all reserve leaves. And those are things like they're called ancillary services is and Ed. And then we go to level two to where ercot can call on the larger customers to reduce their load and demand response and then at level three, control outages could occur. As you know, a few weeks ago we went we jumped from conservation to iea to right away. So you never know what can happen in an instant if things are going on on the grid [1:20:17 PM] things are going on on the grid that are unexpected. But if we do go to level three and we are going to have controlled outages , we do have a rotation plan in place. We where we rotate through certain feeders in our system that do not have a serve, a critical load for no more than 40 minutes. So if there's a controlled outages, probably the most you'd be out is 40 minutes. And just to give you an idea, if there is a controlled outage, it may be that a unit is tripped at and maybe ercot is looking for 1000mw. So just to give you an idea of the level of outages that could occur, we're about 3.55% of ercot. So that means about 35mw in our area would have to be rotated. Our peak has been 3000. So one person being without power is not good, but it just gives you an idea that it would be a minimal amount of people that would be out for maybe up to 40 minutes as time as we rotate through feeders [1:21:17 PM] as we rotate through feeders that we've already identified. And next slide. What I'd like to do here is give you an update for some of the speakers, an update on where we are on our resource generation plan. Acting vice president of power production Michael anger is going to provide more detail on the factors going into how it will be updating the plan during the presentation shortly, but I wanted to take a moment to let you know where we are currently. So if you recall that we have our city council resolution from December of 22, and since then we've been operating under that resolution guidance every five years or so. We work with the PUC to revise our plan Ann based on new technologies and market changes. We've had market design changes from the PC and ercot and the ledge. We have the inflation reduction act. Costs have gone up. So we're taking a look at all those all those into all those issues. Council approved the 2030 plan just three years ago. Now, after a working group made recommendations on the resource plan's implementation. Ann and [1:22:18 PM] plan's implementation. Ann and the plan was adopted literally the week that we went into lockdown with the pandemic. This time we're doing what I'm calling a midcourse correction of course, we all have the same goal right? Carbon free. That's what we want to do. And we had our transmission plan or update that was presented a month or so ago at the eoc. And now that we have that in our pocket, now we're looking in more detail how our generation resource plan will meld with the transmission plan in. And when we have design and outreach plan that directly engages customers in every customer class by holding public meetings, launching a survey and presenting at the U.S. And Michael, who will get up here in a few minutes. We've already made a presentation to the U.S. And he's made this same presentation on to the we've had four meetings, one live and three virtual. And each one of those meetings, we made a presentation Ann to the participants on what our what [1:23:18 PM] participants on what our what the beginnings of our resource plan are going to look like and what we're looking at. So we have provided council with a memo on the outreach plan. I think we did that in July. I think the first week after I got here, like I said, we posted for public meetings with various customer classes, both virtual and in person. We've launched a customer wide a survey which I think will have been out here for about five weeks and we have presented to the as I said, and we've actually got great responses on the survey. We've had about 2300 responses to date . It builds as time goes by. And just to give you an idea, that's a really good response. CPS did something similar on a similar type issue with the survey, and they had 600 responses. So we're doing pretty good. It's actually going to think I think it's going to be statistically significant. But so that will be a good thing. And going forward, they'll have a chance, they being the customers, they'll [1:24:19 PM] being the customers, they'll have a chance to participate in other meetings. You know, they could always show up at the meetings that we have monthly to give their input. I know that the PUC is working as as the resolution called for working with our members and they're working with other members of the community that the resolution, I think, called out for experts or resource planning and we'll be making presentations to the ec. We'll give them our thoughts, we'll get feedback. And, you know, shame on us if we can't defend what we want to do. And if we hear good ideas, we'll certainly take a good faith. Look at all those, and we'll come up with our plan. And we're planning to come back to you. And I think February is what we're looking at. That's the timeline. The next thing I'd like to talk about is just some other I'll say, odds and ends. These are important things that we've been doing as a team and there we go. So probably about a month ago, hundreds of city of Austin [1:25:20 PM] hundreds of city of Austin utilities customers attended our annual community connections resource fair at del valle high school during the last week in in August. This free event, it assists customers who need help with meeting basic needs, including paying their utility bills, the resource fair gathers support from several civic and nonprofit organizations to share information, offer assistance and answer questions about saving money on utility bills and more. We had about 150 exhibitors. I was kind of blown away. I was there for a few hours. I was kind of blown away with all the exhibits that we had. There are about 150 from the city of Austin as well as county and state agencies and other nonprofit organizations. And thank thank you to those of you that might have attended that that fair. Next slide, please. And the next one is congratulations to our cooling team for winning the system of the year award from the international district energy association or idea the system of the year award is the highest [1:26:20 PM] of the year award is the highest honor idea can bestow on a district energy system. It recognizes an exemplary district energy system providing high level performance and service that further the goals of the district energy industry. And then last slide we had the we participated in the 27th annual Texas lineworkers rodeo this year in Seguin. Our lineworkers, including person teams and apprentices, came out to showcase their skills, competing and training with other utilities across the state. Our crews brought we did pretty good. We brought home 11 awards testing their knowledge and installing maintain Singh and repairing electrical systems. Crews are judged on agility technique, technique, speed and safety. And along with the trophies, we also got $12,200 to go along with help funding a journeyman training and people that are interested in going into the utility industry. So that's all I've had today. I'll [1:27:22 PM] that's all I've had today. I'll be glad to answer any questions that you may have otherwise. Michael anger is ready to just biting at the bit to get up here and make his presentation. >> Thank you. Mr. Khan. Any questions? I know that councilmember Kelly wanted to talk about climbing the poles. >> Yeah. So I've actually had the privilege to go to a lineworker rodeo when it was here, which gave me this crazy fascination of how the work is actually done. Like, how do they do what they do? So I was able to talk your training team into to showing me how to climb an electric pole and let me just say, it could have gone like multiple different directions, right? But your training team is very talented and so I didn't get injured, which is amazing. But I did learn a lot about the work that they do. And I just want to say that it is incredibly challenging work. I was out there on September 7th. It was triple digit heat, but I was able to put on the gaffs and the belt and safely climb ten [1:28:23 PM] the belt and safely climb ten feet in the air on the pole, which is amazing considering that I don't have any experience in that at all. And so that said, I want to encourage people in the community who might want to get into that career but maybe don't know where to start or what to do. They can go to Austin energy.com/about/careers and learn more about that work there I am up on the pole which again is incredible it was great it was a great experience. They made it really easy. And I know right now you have line workers going through that training now and they will graduate soon. So anybody can apply as long as they're able to do the physical portion of that. So thank you very much to your talented team for training me and teaching me so I can go out and advocate more in the community and thank you colleagues for listening to my experience. Again the line workers go through a lot of work that is challenging and extreme weather events and it gave me a real appreciation for what they do. So thank you very much. And we're really glad that you didn't fall. I heard stories. Sometimes they fall on the pole [1:29:24 PM] Sometimes they fall on the pole and get splinters everywhere. It's dangerous. But that didn't happen to me. So yes, councilmember Allison alter, so I'm not sure my question would be that exciting. >> But I'm glad you I'm glad you came down safely. I was wondering and if this may be covered in some of the other presentations. And you can defer to them. I was wondering if you could speak to how Austin energy is approaching the many, many federal grant opportunities that are available at this time? >> Okay. It looks like we'll be speaking to that. Okay great. Thank you. Sure. >> Yeah, that's that's important. And so glad we're going to have a special focus on that. Yes. Councilmember Ryan alter. >> And I'm not sure if this is going to be the prelude to our next presentation, but I was wondering if you could help help me understand when we say we're updating the plan versus, you know, a new plan, does that mean we're are we are we changing any [1:30:25 PM] we're are we are we changing any underlying goals or what does it mean? Just to update rather than to. >> Yeah, so we're not changing our goals and as I said at our public meeting, we all have the same goal to get carbon free. It's how we get there. That's the question. And we have a couple new things that have occurred since 2020 when we first presented this plan to begin with. We have our transmission update that was done at the eoc a month or so ago. And what that looked at is , you know, we have now a lot of wind and solar outside. I'll say our load zone. We have generation inside our load zone , but we're looking at doing some things with that. And that's going to alter what our transmission system looks like because right now we're experiencing a lot of congestion coming in. So we need to look at what do we have to do with our transmission system to meet our goals. So that's something new that we have. We also have inflation reduction act, the psc, ercot, and they've been looking at a market design. So [1:31:26 PM] looking at a market design. So that has impacted how ercot works and it affects how we bring power into our system or how we offer in and so we're looking at all those things and so the answer is yes. Same goals , but operationally, operationally, we're using our expertise to figure out how to get there affordably, you know, in a clean manner reliably. Got it. Thank you. >> Okay. >> I'm really glad that you asked that question because I wanted to make sure that folks could hear us really emphatically publicly saying there is no when we're looking at the update to the generation resource plan, we're not changing our policies. We're not changing our goals. And in fact, those goals are embedded in a number of other documents, like our climate equity plan, for example, also has very similar, if not exactly the same array of goals. And targets. So our aspirations remain. But we have [1:32:26 PM] aspirations remain. But we have seen some changes over the last three years. And by the time we complete this review and then update it, we will still be within that five year cycle. Knell Ann then we'll do it again three to 4 or 5 years down the road from then. So it's an iterative process process that we are entered into. And I do want to make sure that we stay on target and within the cadence that we've laid out. So that we can get this continue this work and move it forward and make the adjustments in the updates as quickly and expeditiously and efficiently as we can. Right >> And you know, with how quickly technology changes, I mean, we might have to come back to you sooner. Again, if something comes up that makes it more affordable, reliable. So we're always watching those things and remember, we added the agenda item on innovation burns to our monthly meeting agendas. >> So when we see some new [1:33:27 PM] >> So when we see some new things on the horizon and as we see staff move forward on new programs and projects, yes, we can get those updates on innovations in a really timely fashion. Okay anything else for the general manager before we move on to the specific briefings? Yes. Mayor pro tem, question, while we've got you up here with the microphone. >> Okay. The state proposition number seven, could you talk a little bit about that energy fund and what if there's any potential projects that Austin energy might be able to use that for or how the process would work should that be approved? >> Are you talking about the 45 million that came in? I'm trying to think is that is that the 45 million? No no. Tammy's going to help you out. >> Good afternoon, council members. Mayor pro tem Tammy cooper. I think what you're referring to is the measure that's going to be on the ballot this November, which is a [1:34:30 PM] this November, which is a certain several billion dollars actually that could be funded as part of some of the legislation that came out. So, again, first of all, I think it has to pass. There's certainly, you know, a question about whether you know, potentially that that will get voter approval. But assuming that it does, the public utility commission has implemented or has instituted a project that they're looking at the various potential ways that that that fund might be distributed and dispersed. It's something we're evaluating and looking at, you know, it's kind of unclear at this point until we get more further confirmation from the PUC and again, ensure that there has been voter approval for that . But we can keep you updated as the project moves forward and let you know as as things may pop up, what opportunities there may be for Austin energy to participate. Great. >> Thank you for that. I've been trying to get myself up to speed on what some of these provisions might hold, and so I look forward to seeing what opportunities might be there should should it pass or what would be the limitation is [1:35:30 PM] would be the limitation is before we we'll make a note to come back and speak with you all on that topic. >> Okay. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. Let's make sure to add that to future agenda items. Maybe in February. When we come back from the break and it will have the election will have been completed. And if it's passed, then we'll have some more information and then and then we can keep track of things. Certainly much. All right. Let's move on to the resource generation plan update Wright. And Mr. Khan, who do we have from your staff? Who's going to make that presentation? >> Michael Langer hi, Mr. Lang hi, Mr. Edgar. >> Thank you for being here today. Does this work? >> Okay. >> Awesome. Well, hey, good afternoon, committee members. My name is Mike Langer. I'm the acting vice president of energy market operations and resource planning. I've been working with Austin energy in the energy market operations group for a little over 22 years. And I'm very fortunate to have a number of people on my team, especially [1:36:30 PM] of people on my team, especially a couple within resource planning that have been working within the industry for about 30 years. So we have quite a bit of experience within energy market operations to get started. I wanted to talk a little bit about Austin energy and how we serve our customers with energy . So Austin energy is a market participant within the ercot wholesale market participation is mandatory. That's not voluntary. And so while we are vertically integrated, which is unique, not everybody in the state is vertically integrated. Like ourselves. And what I mean by that is we own generation own, we own wires and we have retail load. Many of the other our utilities are outside of municipalities, for example, like Dallas and Houston. When the market deregulated, they were broken up into individual companies. And so they're not vertically integrated anymore, but we are vertically integrated. But despite being vertically integrated, we are not directly serving our load with our own generation. So how ercot works is we're selling all of our generation supply into the market and it is receiving a [1:37:30 PM] the market and it is receiving a price at its location. All that power goes into the market and then all of the demand, the electric load is bought back from ercot at a location in our case, the location is right here in this little circle right here that I have in Austin, Texas. And then ultimately that power is then delivered to our customers through our distribution lines and build through our retail rates. And so ercot is the majority of Texas. It serves about 90% of the load in Texas, there are slight parts of Texas that are outside of ercot, east of east Texas, over near Houston. If you get a little further east, is actually in energy. But you can see that , like I said, like I was mentioning before, and I'll use to maybe try to use the point here, it's not going to work. That little kind of magenta pink dot where the circle is. That's where we're buying all of our load. But when we look at our our supply portfolio, which we've we've done here, you'll notice it's very spread out. So there's two things to note about our supply portfolio. One, we have a very diversified portfolio in the generation [1:38:30 PM] portfolio in the generation resources we use the different types of fuel types. So you'll notice that we have almost 1800 megawatts of wind and that is mostly up in the panhandle, down through the north as well as down along the coast where we get good profiles in the afternoons in the summer as well, into south Texas, you can see we have almost 1000mw of solar. A lot of that's in west Texas. But some of the more recent solar we've done has been right here outside of Austin, Texas. We have about 800mw of natural gas that's largely right here in the in the city of Austin. We have about 600mw of coal as the fayette power project that's out in fayette county, just east of here, we have the nacogdoches biomass plant at 105mw. That's in east Texas, in nacogdoches, Texas. And we also are a part owner or we own one sixth of the nuclear power plant down in bay city, the south Texas nuclear power plant. When you total all of our generation capacity up, you'll see that it's close to 4700mw. If you look over to the right, I have our all time peak demand in both the summer and the winter. What we are starting to see is [1:39:32 PM] What we are starting to see is we have more and more electrification and we're moving away from natural gas for heating homes, moving more to electrifying heat is we're starting to see our winter peak demand and our summer peak demand getting closer and closer than what we saw maybe five, even ten years ago. But you'll notice our peak demand for the summer is closer to about 3000mw and in the winter is closer to 2600mw. So significantly less than our total generation capacity. However, about 2800mw of that is intermittent resource , both wind and solar. And so there will only be a percentage of that at any time producing. So we're never going to get up to that full capacity. But we do oftentimes see supply in our portfolio of 3400mw or greater. The other thing you'll notice is that we are spread out throughout the state. I like to call that geographic diversification, and we do that intentionally. And so this next graphic talks about that a little bit more. So when we look at different renewable generation profiles, wind and solar in different parts of the state have different output profiles. On average, you know, there's about 45 to 52 minutes in the in the difference between [1:40:33 PM] in the in the difference between the sun rising in far east Texas and in far west Texas. We're a very big state. And so by having solar east as well as solar west, we're able to kind of change that slower ramp down a little bit and spread it out and then we look at different wind profiles. And so as we kind of stack these together, so if you look at the left side, those are individual generation profiles from different types of renewable resources throughout the state. If you look over on the right side, if we stack those all together, you get that blue shaded shape, which is much more closely resembles what our load shape looks like, especially in the summer here in Austin, Texas. And so while we're not directly serving our load, it is advantageous for us to have each generation producing at the same time or concurrently with our load so that the revenues that we receive from that generation help offset the costs that we are incurring for buying our load. So just really quickly, I wanted to show you how Austin energy supply portfolio compares to the state of Texas as a whole, or ercot. So 90% of the state of Texas. And so our [1:41:33 PM] state of Texas. And so our supply portfolio is over. On the left, you notice that we're a little bit different than the state, which is over on the right and which you'll see the big differences there is you'll see we have a little bit more wind generation, a little bit higher percentage of solar generation Ann and we have a little bit less gas generation. You know, we have retired two large gas plants over the last three years, which has reduced that that slice of that pie for us. And we have been adding wind and solar over the past pretty aggressively over the past five years, which have increased that. But I think we're just a little bit further ahead of ercot. If you look out at their their supply queue or the queue for new generation looking to tie in, what you'll notice is there's about 31,000mw of additional solar looking to tie into the state. That would be on top of the 17,700mw we have today. There's about another 5000mw of wind looking to tie in and go commercial. That's on top of about the 39,000mw we have today. And on top of that, there's a lot of battery storage as well, but only 1200 megawatts of new gas generation in ercot. So you'll start to see those pie [1:42:33 PM] So you'll start to see those pie slices changing for the state, maybe a little bit more like what you see here in Austin. Energy I will you will notice that we don't have that that large wedge for storage that you're seeing in the state right now. A lot of that storage is getting built. Merchant right now, which means they are taking on market risk. We are currently evaluating a utility scale battery storage. We have been over the last 8 to 10 years, but we have a couple of proposals in front of us right now that that we're looking at in pretty great detail as we have seen costs come down a little bit in reference to some of the inflation reduction act and a few of the other pieces of legislation that have passed. And so we're looking to see how economic that would be and how it might benefit our customers. So the resource generation and climate protection plan of 2030 was designed to commit Austin energy to continue to safely deliver our clean, affordable and reliable energy sufficient to meet customer demands while pursuing the city of Austin's climate protection and sustainability goals and so when we were doing this back in 2019, which was passed at the city [1:43:34 PM] which was passed at the city council in 2020, it became very, very clear that it was very important to our community and to our customers that we have carbon reduction. What was also very clear and apparent was that our customers wanted affordability as well. And we could see a lot of things changing in the market at that time. So it was very important that we maintain flexibility within this resource plan. So we were able to adjust to the dynamically changing environment that we're in. And over on the right is just a blurb from the actual resource plan that speaks to that, that we are looking to respond to changing circumstances, including customer electric load, economic conditions, energy price and technological development, while strictly committing to carbon reduction. Ann so, so from that whole planning process, we've kind of derived what we would call a kind of four main values or priorities for our customers and our community. That's environmental sustainability, reliability, affordability and then cost stability rates that don't increase drastically year over year. And out of those objectives, we came up with a [1:44:35 PM] objectives, we came up with a number of goals. Many of them are listed here. I won't mention all of them, but the decker creek power station, we have retired decker units one and two, so about 750mw of natural gas steam generation was retired with the last unit retiring in March of 2022. We have added additional renewable generation facilities. Many of those ppas were negotiated ahead of this resource plan being voted and approved, but they came online in in the 2019 to 2021 time frame that was an additional for renewable resource wise. And then the transmission study has recently been completed. And to understand as we continue to retire resources within our within our city, in in our our local area here, how that affects reliability and that's really what's spurring the update here. Now that we have that information. So just looking high level, how are we doing over on the left? Is your carbon free generation as a percentage of load on a rolling 12 month average, you will notice that most recently we are [1:45:37 PM] notice that most recently we are about 71, offsetting our load with carbon free generation. You've also noticed this down a little bit from where we were back in may of 2022, which was closer to 78, 79, part of the reason for that is we had a very unseasonal early low, windy period in April and may and early parts of June here in Texas. So the whole state of Texas had much less wind generation than the years before , despite more capacity. We are also seeing increasing curtailments for wind and solar generation has more and more of it comes online as it is going to produce as the wind and sun is available, not necessarily as load as high or load is low. Over on the right, I have Austin energy's power plant emissions and this is carbon emissions. So our co two emissions in terms of millions of tons. So in 2018, before we started working on this plan, Austin energy was emitting about 5.3 million tons of CO2 from our power plants. If you fast forward to 2022, you'll see that that's closer to 3.5 million tons. So we've reduced that by almost 2 million tons per year since we passed this resource plan. And I'll talk a [1:46:38 PM] resource plan. And I'll talk a little bit about how we're doing. That is what we call a reach, which is reduce emissions affordably for climate health. And so this is a market based solution as opposed to a mandate that will reduce the amount of generation when prices are low and revenue is much lower, but would still allow for that generation to ramp up when prices are very high during those conservation days, for example, when we see $5,000 market prices to then produce revenue to help offset the cost to our customers. So since we have enacted reach, which actually we put into effect the day that we passed this resource plan was passed at city council back in March of 2020, I believe it was the first city council meeting that was all remote. So it was right as we hit the pandemic. We enacted it that evening and to date we have reduced over 4.12 million tons of CO2 through the reach program. And so to look a little bit deeper at that, on the benefits and the performance so we have that 4.12 million tons repeated here. Again but what we look at because part of that reach was affordable, right? We [1:47:38 PM] reach was affordable, right? We like to look at what is our cost to reduce CO2 relative to some of the other markets here in the United States. And so we have been able to reduce that 4.12 million tons at about $12.45 per ton. When we compare that to California, the credits are trading there at about $36 per ton. And if we look at the northeast, which is the Reggie market, the regional greenhouse gas initiative market, those are closer to 14, sometimes up to $16 a ton. So we feel that we're able to do that fairly affordable relative to some of the other markets we see here in the United States. If you look over on the right, this does speak to the affordability aspect as well for our customers . This is the actual day of August 17th. This was one of the days that we had a call for conservation Ann. We had lower wind. We had higher prices. You can see our load zone went up over $5,000 a ton on that particular day. The fayette power project made $11 million to help offset the cost to our load. That wasn't the only call for conservation we had there in August and then into early September. So if you take the three, the three biggest days [1:48:39 PM] three, the three biggest days there, I believe it's August 17th, August 25th and September 5th, those units were able to produce $30 million of revenue to help offset cost to our customers. So if you think about just $11 million on a single day , that makes up about 2% of the net cost we're passing through to our customers through the psa. So if that unit is there for five or maybe ten, ten days throughout the year for events like this, that helps reduce the pressure on our psa by 10 to 20. So resource planning is a process. We've talked a little bit about this already, but there's many different inputs that we have. We're looking at the customers, the customer needs. We are, you know, community focused and customer driven. We're looking at load load growth, how that is changing. I don't have a graphic in here, but I can tell you that back in 2020, our first year of this plan, we had about 49 intervals where we exceeded 2700mw load here in the city of Austin. And this last August, we exceeded or this last summer, we have exceeded that 900 times. So [1:49:41 PM] have exceeded that 900 times. So our load is growing significantly here in Austin, Texas, especially on those hotter days. We need to look at our customer programs and how those fit into the resource plan. Our supply portfolio, the current environment, as well as the regulatory environment, reliable quality and then the financial impacts on our customers as well as on our utility. And so we are in the process right now of running various scenarios, as you know, setting scopes, objectives is collecting the different inputs and assumptions, Luz running scenarios, doing financial and risk analysis, and then ultimately selecting a preferred strategy that will be bringing back to the city council either in February or March. Along the way, we will be bringing back draft strategies to the U.S. To get input and feedback so that we can take their input and feedback into account as well and address any of their concerns that they may have. So as it's been mentioned, a couple of times already since we approved this plan in March of 2020, there have been a lot has changed. We had the pandemic. That was something I don't think [1:50:41 PM] That was something I don't think a lot of people saw coming. It was certainly a lot different than I had experienced in my lifetime. We've seen some extreme weather events due to some of those extreme weather events. We've seen regulatory and ercot market changes and we are seeing increased market volatility within our load zone as well as the market in general as well. So just to touch a little bit on extreme weather events, I have a couple graphics here on the left that is an actual graphic from Yuri winter storm uri saw temperatures that were 30 to 50 degrees below normal. And not only was it very cold, but it was cold for a sustainable period of time, which is a little bit rare for this part of Texas. Looking over at the right, I have the statewide temperature average is for last year, which was the second hottest summer on record when you look at June through August and this year, it looks like we have beat that. So we did it. We have set yet another record. And so that has led to just more extreme weather events. And from those extreme weather events, ercot has really started to look at the market rules and look at some market rule changes. And so maybe a way to kind of at a high level [1:51:42 PM] to kind of at a high level describe it is previously while ercot is responsibility to always maintain reliability, they had more of a focus on optimizing lowest cost to meet load while still maintaining reliability. And I think given some of those events, there's been a little step back and there's maybe a little bit bigger focus on on reliable Katy and a little bit smaller focus on the least cost solution. Part of that would come through additional ancillary services that we now have and we are obligated to procure as a load and so that is holding additional generation on the sidelines to be available in ready when needed. When you hold additional generation on the sidelines, that leaves less generation to produce energy, which can lead to higher overall average costs within the system . And some of these other market rules have of either benefited or adversely impacted different generation types. So there has been a desire for more firming around renewables, for example, which would increase costs there some of these new ancillary service products are only really provided by dispatchable or [1:52:42 PM] provided by dispatchable or thermal generation, so it's added more revenue for those those type of generation assets. Looking at increased market volatility, I have a graphic here of June through August 2020 is in black and 2023. This most recent June through August is in Orange and what you'll notice very quickly is that there are quite a few more Orange price spikes than what we saw in 2020. The black line as well as the magnitude is much, much larger. So we're seeing an increased frequency in price or price spikes as well as a greater magnitude of those price spikes . Talking about market congestion. So we talked about we're selling all of our generation at those locations from that that map that spread out throughout Texas. And we're buying all our load in that one location right here in the city of Austin. So you can look at these kind of like a temperature heat map, if you will. So instead of red being much higher than normal temperatures, red in this case would be higher prices and the darker blue would be the lower prices as opposed to lower temperatures. And what I wanted to show here is that the top three graphics that are all in [1:53:43 PM] three graphics that are all in the same day, so congestion is not something that is easily predictable. It can change quickly, it can change throughout the day, and it can change for a number of reasons. It has to do with the power flow within the system so it can change depending on how wind or solar is producing. It can also change depending on how a power plant is producing or if a power plant trips offline, as well as if there's transmission elements that go into outage Paige and down below is just yet another day in August where you can see how that that pattern can change pretty drastically. So what is congestion? I think I've spoken to you all a little bit about this before, but I'll just try to go through this briefly. So if we look at transmission lines as roads and we look at electrons as cars. So I have a picture up here of I-35. If we had somebody in Austin monitoring all of the roads with the idea that if there was a wreck or one road closed, we could divert all the traffic without any gridlock. That is essentially what ercot is trying to do on the lines on the transmission lines. If you have gridlock, we would liken that to a to a blackout. So when you have gridlock with cars, it's [1:54:44 PM] have gridlock with cars, it's very unsafe. Ambulances can't get to where they need to go. Fire trucks can't get to can't get to where they need to go. If you have a blackout, it's very unsafe as well. We don't have the electricity that we depend on for license reporting services as well as security. And so ercot is constantly monitoring these transmission lines in what we call an N minus one contingency with the idea that if any of these lines go down at any time, can we divert all of the energy and continue to have electrons flow zo so that we can avoid that blackout? And they do that through price signals that the congestion maps I showed you before, when it looks like there's too many cars on one road or too many electrons on one transmission line, they're going to give that a much lower price, indicating that we want less load in this area. Or conversely, you might get an idea from another area that could provide counter flow. If you will, where we want more generation in this area. So the generation we get a higher price depending on on which side of the constraint you're on. But Austin energy also has an additional nuance or challenge that we're dealing with, and [1:55:45 PM] that we're dealing with, and that is local congestion or load zone price separation. And this is something we've really started to see become much more apparent with the retired, the final retirement of the of the decker to unit and having less less local generation as well as when our load continues to grow. When I mentioned earlier the number of times we got above 2700mw in 2020 versus 2023. So we're on the left. This is an actual day in the ercot market. It was June 15th and you can see that blue line right there. That is the price we are paying for wholesale energy. That's what we're paying to buy the power. So it's a little bit under $1,000 there, maybe about $900 per megawatt hour. And that lasted for a good number of hours, about six hours. If you look down there and you see that Orange line, that is the hub average for generators, that's what the average generators receiving. So there'll be slightly different depending on where they're at. But this is just a good kind of rule of thumb. What is generation receiving versus what is load paying? So in this situation, [1:56:45 PM] paying? So in this situation, we're paying almost $900 per megawatt for our load, but we're only getting paid $5,050 to maybe $75 for our generation. And that can create a significant financial imbalance on the day and put pressure on our rates. And so just a little graphic on why that occurs. So think about we have all these roads coming to Austin, but you might have some some power plants with roads that are putting cars out right in Austin . So you have kind of lines coming in and lines going out. So while we're not physically serving our own load, we are offsetting the physics of import constraints. And so as we retire units, it just requires more of those electrons to flow into the city of Austin to serve our load. So we're more dependent on those roads from outside of the city. And we don't have a lot of control over what happens to those roads is a little bit further out of our city. So we're a little bit more dependent on other market participants to avoid situations like June 15th. So there have been a quite a few new and emerging opportunities as well, not just challenges that's been mentioned earlier. The [1:57:46 PM] mentioned earlier. The infrastructure investment and jobs act has a lot of benefits and grants available to help move forward with some of the clean technologies. We would like to do the inflation reduction act is very exciting to me personally. You know, in the past we've done a lot of purchase power agreements for renewables because we were unable to take advantage of production tax credits or investment tax credits. The inflation reduction act allows us to take a direct pay of a similar benefit that a private developer could could take making owning renewables more affordable, affordable for Austin energy. And there's also carve outs in there that make owning and building local solar in the right locations of Austin much more affordable and closer to the cost that we see for utility scale solar. On the new emerging technology side, we are seeing some technologies mature a bit faster than we anticipated back in 2019. I've listed a few up here green hydrogen with the oversupply of or the overbuild of wind and solar in the state that is not there all of the time, but is there quite a bit at a time? There is a lot of curtailed energy. I mentioned that earlier that might be prime [1:58:47 PM] that earlier that might be prime to run electrolyzers in certain areas to create green hydrogen. We are seeing longer duration storage. A lot of the storage you see built in Texas is typically from 40 minutes to 2 hours long. There is some new storage technologies that are looking to commercialize here this year that are 100 hour storage devices. So which help much, much better during a uri type event. We're seeing advancements in advanced nuclear reactors and resurgence there. And we're also starting to see more carbon capture and sequestration. I'm aware of a particular power plant in California that has recently we went with a carbon capture and sequestration device. There's also one up in west Texas that they're looking to build out a combined cycle right now. So what's next is we have been soliciting feedback from our customers. Bob mentioned the good response we've had for our survey that is a statistical statistically significant number given the population size. We are evaluating those existing and emerging technologies that we talked about and seeing how those fit into carbon reduction, affordability, reliability and rate stability. And then [1:59:47 PM] rate stability. And then ultimately we will be bringing back draft updated plans to the U.S. For feedback and input. And then we're bringing back a final plan for approval to the city council in February or March of next year. So that's all I've have for prepared slides, but I'm happy to answer any questions anybody may have. >> That's great. Thank you so much. We've been waiting to have the update on on the plan for a while. And I'm sure my colleagues have some questions. I'm going to kick it off to talk to ask you a little bit about we've had two winter storms and a record heat wave since and record heat since we did the last generation resource plan. How are you factoring these extreme temperatures and circumstance pieces into your planning? >> Sure. >> So we do planning in our group. We typically have 3 to 5 different forecasts. We're looking at we have a base forecast which is based on the forecasted weather that we're getting from all the meteorologists out there. On top [2:00:47 PM] meteorologists out there. On top of that, we have an extreme forecast, a mild forecast, and then we have some additional forecasts where we stress it a little bit further out. And we take that into account as we're planning and putting positions on in the market. I will tell you that weather forecasts have been quite a bit off here recently. And if you ever go out and look@ercot.com and look at their their day ahead load projection versus the actual load projection projection, you will see that sometimes it varies by as much as 7000mw, which is significant. And so typically we demand forecasts are only as good as the weather. I can also tell you that our extreme weather forecast for our load, we exceeded that load by over 50mw. So it's an ongoing challenge and something that we're all trying to catch up with and looking for better forecasts. But we have seen forecasts for weather which are the driver for a lot of these other forecasts, not as accurate over the last 3 to 5 years. So it's certainly something we look at and we try to cast a wide net, but we can't manage always to the most extreme outcome because that increases costs and hurts affordability. [2:01:48 PM] hurts affordability. >> So have those extremes had some impacts on the calculation options that you have for what you expect for the forecast? >> Well, certainly and I will say those extreme weather events were not in our models. We set our resource plan in 2020. And so part of what we're going to be looking at in this resource plan is we have seen some of these weather events materialize. We've seen that risk materialize, and we understand what happened to different generation assets throughout the state when particular wind farms froze up, when solar was producing and not producing. And so ultimately, we want to take this resource plan that we're going to come back to you all with and make sure it survives something like a winter storm. Uri, because we can't meet any of these goals out in 2035 if we're unable to weather some of these very significant, extreme weather events. >> So what about dispatchable generation Ann? Will having more dispatchable generation help us in future winter storms? >> It certainly is very beneficial. It was very beneficial to us during the winter storm. Uri, as you are well aware, the city of Austin, [2:02:48 PM] well aware, the city of Austin, Austin energy had a different outcome than many in the state where we did not incur significant financial loss during winter storm uri. We had additional excess generation. It allowed us to produce extra revenue to offset that cost and a little bit more revenue than actual costs. So it did benefit our customers. One of the things we did see during winter storm uri is there were periods when some of the resources in our portfolio were not producing and that's where that N minus one contingency or dispatchable generation can kind of come in and be that that real time physical call option, if you will, to help protect our customers. >> Would more local solar would have helped us with transmission congestion and cost challenges. >> It can at times. But but it's certainly not a full comprehensive solution. So at times, yes, it can help help reduce the amount of sorry, it can help reduce the amount of electricity we're importing so we don't put as much strain and stress. And we may not separate as quickly, but there are times, depending on what's going on [2:03:49 PM] depending on what's going on within the system, where it may not be as beneficial or help, certainly when the sun is not shining, but also during one of these most recent events, we had a period where one of the solar generators within our service territory actually went to -$350. When my loads that went to $900. So that congestion can hit in multiple areas for multiple reasons. So it's certainly not it helps, but it's not a comprehensive solution. Right. >> All right. Questions council member Alison alter. >> Thank you. I appreciate the presentation. It's the second time I heard it. I went to the public meeting and I think this is a really very important exercise that we're going through. And I was pleased to author the resolution calling for it last December. I have a question that I can try to articulate. It might be helpful if you could put up slide number nine for me, please. So as we've tried to work with Austin energy [2:04:53 PM] tried to work with Austin energy and some of the advocates and the members of the eoc and the RNC who who are eager to participate in this process and in this update, who, in fact worked with me to call for the update in the first place. One of the things that comes up is this notion of we're not changing our goal, but we seem to use that term in multiple senses. So I wanted to get a little bit of clarity. When I've been saying and thinking about our goals are not changing. I've been thinking about these Orange shapes of environmental sustainability, reliability, affordability and cost stability. Is that what you mean when you say our goals are not changing? Or are you saying, you know, our goal of 200mw of this kind of local solar or is our goal so that's not changing. Yeah. So what level is right? >> So I would call these more values and priorities of our community with some of the goals of being carbon free emissions [2:05:54 PM] of being carbon free emissions by 2035, 65% renewable by 2027, I believe it's 55% renewable by 2025. I believe there's a local solar goal on there might mess this up, but I think it's 375mw with 200mw. Customer cited. So there's a number of goals and resource plans. So we're not we're not necessarily looking to change those goals, but we will be evaluating some of those goals in the near term versus the longer term and how affordable it is for us to get there, as well as the impacts on reliable city. >> Okay. So there's quite a bit of difference between some of those kind of goals that you've mentioned at the level, you know , of analysis. So it seems to me we might want to increase our local solar if we're trying to deal with load separation as one of the strategies and that we have, we can we can take that into account. >> When we come back. There may be some tweaks to some of those goals. It's not the intent from the outset to change those goals. It's try to maintain those goals and look for the best generation mix to achieve [2:06:55 PM] best generation mix to achieve those goals. But as we're going through the process, there may be some tweaks to some of those goals that may benefit us that we would want to bring back and discuss. >> Okay. I think that there's some language shifting that's going on between what Austin energy is talking about and what the advocates are. And I'm not going to resolve it today on the dais, but I think that it would be useful to think that through a little bit more clearly as to what is movable and what is not movable. Because at some level, if we're not moving any of these things, then the update has no value and we clearly all agree that there's value in need for this update given the market conditions and the other the other the other pieces. So I think there's some miscommunication or some differences in approach that if we could iron out what that would be, it would be extremely helpful to get the community on board more fully with this process. Yes. And for there to [2:07:56 PM] process. Yes. And for there to be greater understanding of the goals of the of the update, I also wanted to invite miss white. If you wanted to come up as a member of the to respond to the presentation briefly. >> Thank you. Council member yeah, I'm a member of the U.S. And I've been helping to stand up the resource planning working group that Al mentioned earlier. And I agree this issue of what is up for consideration in this update is I think, something that we definitely could use additional clarity on and frankly, we could use clarity from from you all. What is it that you all want? And I hear you saying that perhaps local solar goals are something that should be considered. I would also just highlight there are [2:08:56 PM] also just highlight there are other goals in the plan, including energy efficiency goals that are now, I think, definitely affected by new federal incentives. That's a great thing that we have outside money to draw on to boost energy efficiency in our community. The same thing goes for solar and local solar in particular. Another item that I think should be on the table for I guess, changing goals would be that carbon free date. One of the reason burns for doing a transmission study at the time that it was initiated or committing to it. And it was just one reason I realized the study would have been needed either way. But we were in a community conversation with Austin energy and with with the members of council at that time about should carbon free be a 20, 30 or 2035. And one of the big kind of question marks that Austin energy staff brought up was what transmit Ann upgrades would be needed and how long would they take? And this study [2:09:57 PM] would they take? And this study was intended to answer that question, and I think that it did. And that's great work that has been done. So my hope and expectation and I think this goes for the others who are participating in the process, is that that goal is open for discussion. Should it be moved forward to be earlier than 2035. So that's just to highlight three goals, I guess another one that I would highlight there is energy storage. There is no commitment to battery storage in the existing plan. Austin energy I think, has acknowledged that the ercot market is actually moving forward quicker than they have on battery storage, and certainly that indicates that the not only the technology but the economics of that have changed. And so that also seems like something that should be updated in the plan. There's probably other nuances in there as well, but those are a few of the goals that I think we would see should be on the table for discussion, but be helpful to [2:10:58 PM] discussion, but be helpful to know what you'll think about it . >> Thank you. Miss white. You can respond to this. >> So we do do the transmission study. And if miss white went through it, she would see that it was it looked almost impossible for us to get to that carbon free goal earlier and maintain reliability. There's a number of investments that needed to be made. It will take longer than seven years to do on the affordability of battery storage. I will say during winter storm uri, quite a few battery companies went bankrupt and out of business. So I'm not sure if the economics are quite there. And a lot of the economics that other battery developers get when they get these financed is to carry responsive reserve services for 24 hours on a battery, even though it cannot actually physically do that. Austin energy tries to be a good market participant, but and we only convey what we can do to the ercot market. We don't try to play financial games and operate within the gray areas of the protocols. >> Thank you. I think these are the part of the kinds of conversations that I hope will be taking place with the working group, with the so that when you come back to council, we have addressed some of these things [2:11:59 PM] addressed some of these things and challenges to assertions or on either side can be addressed and discussed out. I did want to ask, I understand that the U.S. Has set up a working group that includes AMC and some other folks, and I understand that there's that Austin energy is working with them to provide answers. I did just want to express that as my hope. And I'd like to encourage you to respond in a timely fashion to those and maybe aim for a week or ten days as your response. And then if you're not going to be able to meet that because sometimes there'll be questions that take longer, that you can be upfront and open about. This is a question that's going to take longer because we have to do X, Y and Z. And this is when we think we can get it. I know we had a series of questions that were asked by the U.S. And it took quite a while to get answers and they weren't necessarily as substantive as they would like. If this is going to work and we're not [2:12:00 PM] going to work and we're not going to end up with council having folks coming and asking us to change a lot of things that dynamic and those that work has to take place before it comes to us. And I think that having been at the community meeting, there is a group of people for whom the survey work and perhaps just the conversation that you see is not sufficient for them to have input. They have proven over the years that they can provide and add value. I believe that the reach program, in conjunction with some smart staff, came out of conversations that were from the gen plan, and I think that's leading the nation. I think we can do that again as long as we are approaching this in a very constructive and collaborative way. And the right information is being shared in the right way. So we don't have to rehash everything. Again that certainly is our goal. I think that's the intention and the goal. I just want to restate that that is our goal and that is our intent. >> And we have spent a lot of time pulling together [2:13:02 PM] time pulling together information for some of the questions that have been asked from the U.S. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Councilmember Ryan alter. Have we done looking at that, the congestion issue? >> Have we or do you all do any kind of analysis of the. Dollars that we're generating from local or semi local solar versus west Texas solar, given that the west Texas, the sun might shine a little longer, but here we might get more dollars when the sun is shining. Have you all done any kind of analysis on that? >> Yeah, we track that. We track the benefit in the market that we get from all of our different assets. And it can vary, but certainly local generation, when the load zone price separates typically at a higher price. Not that one instance I mentioned earlier, but for example recently when our load zone went to $900 per megawatt hour, our gas generators were getting paid $1,200 per megawatt hour, [2:14:03 PM] $1,200 per megawatt hour, sending that price signal that we need more generation in this area. So local solar sited in the right area would receive that as well, assuming it's there to generate when the prices are high. >> And conversely, I would assume in our market, we're never seeing negative pricing. >> So we do certainly see negative pricing really. In fact, it's been a little rarer this summer that we haven't seen as much negative pricing. We saw two 15 minute intervals that were negative in August despite how hot it was. But as we get into September, October, November and the lows start getting lower with that oversupply of renewables will get back into seeing potentially 100, 150 intervals where the price actually goes negative. But that's a that's a double edged sword. So while we are getting paid to take load, we're also zo paying them to take generation on well and on that exact point, I'm looking at ercot's August eight, interconnection in queue as it relates to storage. >> And there's. 71,000mw plus planned and I don't won't all [2:15:07 PM] planned and I don't won't all get built but plus planned for stand alone battery another 28,000 co locating it where there is solar so that you can hold on to that not sell it to the market and then reap those benefits to councilor Allison altars kind of point in question. What how are we thinking about storing ridge in this update and where that fits in, whether it be co-located at a generation site or just within? Sure >> We're looking at a couple of different ways even before this update, we've been looking at utility scale solar. We have proposals sorry, storage. We have proposals in front of us. We're looking at that more as some way to help mitigate that price risk during the ramp down. When the sun goes down within our load zone. So having that local storage right here, we're also looking at combining storage with community solar at a particular site. We have an rfp out for today that I'm kind of excited about with the idea that if we could look at one of those 100 hour type storage [2:16:08 PM] those 100 hour type storage devices, we might be able to provide or create a seven by 24 green product for customers interested in that, where it's all self contained right there in this area, just southeast Austin. And then we are having to look at storage with some of our renewables because there's likely a firming requirement coming up starting in 2027 where you will have to have some type of storage either at that renewable facility or within your portfolio to create a firm profile. >> So what would you say would be more beneficial oil for us if you could put 100mw of local solar or wind or pick your generation source or or 100mw of battery, also locally so that it would be available, what what would yield? >> So the more flexible and more dispatchable an asset, the more risk mitigation is going to provide within our portfolio. I think one of the challenges around solar and wind is the amount of land that is required to have anything of size. And so that is something we need to [2:17:09 PM] that is something we need to take into account when we're talking about within the city that is fairly dense already. You know, a battery has a lot of value and how quickly it can move, but they typically have very short durations, as I mentioned, a lot of battery companies went bankrupt or battery project went bankrupt during Yuri because after their first kind of discharge of batteries, they were kind of out of luck. And if they had done anything like provide as they had to buy that back at $12,000 a megawatt hour and so to be honest with you, something that that uses stored energy such as natural gas has a bit more value within the city of Austin. That does not help us meet our goals, though, so that we're looking at other alternatives to have some of those same characteristics and attributes, but in a carbon free way. Okay >> Thank you very much. Sure >> Anybody else. So I just had one last question for you. Can you tell us how new rules or constraints from ercot and the legislature affect our planning goals? Well we need to take them into account and we need to [2:18:10 PM] into account and we need to understand how it will impact our portfolio and plan for assets to help mitigate or offset some of those challenges or risks. >> So yeah, we'll be looking at those different regulatory rule changes. We'll look at the requirements that we have as a load because we do have obligations as a load providing. As for example, and then understand which type of assets help defer some of that cost. Allow us to benefit from those rule changes versus which assets are harmed by it. That's great. >> Thank you so much. >> Is oh, sorry. Ancillary services. Yes, sorry. That's a reliability product. So there's a number of different ancillary services to help provide reliability. There's 6 or 7 of them now, something as simple as regulation up or regulation down as you're as you may be aware, you need to maintain 60hz frequency and people use power differently, not just consistently. So there's generators that can just kind of move up and down a little bit to help provide that that frequency . We there's something called non-spin. So that is generation [2:19:31 PM] non-spin. So that is generation that is not not generating right now, but it's on the sidelines that can come up and be at full load within 30 minutes. So if there is, we look out an hour and see that there's a deficiency in the market, there's not enough generation. They can call on that responsive reserve services is a product design that if the largest unit in Texas goes into outage, they have reserve generation just waiting. That can get up in ten minutes to make up that difference, to maintain voltage and frequency so we don't lose the grid. There's something called Akers now, which is a energy contingent, reserve services, which has really been designed to help with the solar ramp down. So when we lose 13, 14,000mw within an hour period of time, there is megawatts that can to discharge to then help offset some of that decline. And there's a new one called dress. But I'll have to I'll have to look up what that stands for. Exactly. Again but there are a number of just reliability services to help maintain [2:20:42 PM] services to help maintain reliability in the system. Great >> So both nimble and redundant . >> I'm sorry. Both nimble? Yes. Both. >> Yes. Redundant. >> Yes. Yeah. >> Okay. Great. Thank you very much. And we would like to continue to have this conversation. So when we put our agenda together for next month, we'll probably be talking with you more. >> All right. Thank you. >> Thank you, Mr. Chacon, who do we have for item number four, which is our solar battery storage? Is that Mr. Genesee great. This is a briefing on council resolution that related to solar battery storage, microgrids and load shaping technology energy. Welcome, Mr. Genesee. Good to see you. >> Yes, good afternoon. Chair and council members I'm Richard Genesee. I'm Vice President of customer energy solutions, all i'll be providing the briefing on battery and storage. So this is actually a briefing based on the resolution and so there are five components of the resolution. We'll be speaking to all five of them today. Then, I'll be handling any questions that you have. So we are considering our approach to battery to a battery storage program. We want to incentivize our residential customers to operate efficiently using a rate or combination of rates and incentives. This program will incentivize customers to leverage their batteries and for those batteries to benefit Austin Energy and all of our customers. [2:21:40 PM] Another approach to leveraging batteries is through aggregation in similar to our thermostat demand response programs. Austin energy would contract with a third party who works with manufacturers to establish control of the customer owned device. The customer would enter the program and allow Austin energy through an aggregator to have a limited amount of control of the battery in exchange for financial benefit to that customer. The customer would always have override capability and special considerations could be made for edge of event charging. We are discovering that the communication and control for batteries can be expensive and time consuming. Austin energy currently enables behind the meter microgrids. So I want to be very clear on that. We do we do enable microgrids and allow micro grids today in this case, when the grid goes down, the isolation device opens so that energy from the battery feeds [2:22:42 PM] energy from the battery feeds the customer loads but is not capable of feeding back onto the grid. This ensures that line workers do not interact with energized lines. When the grid comes back online, the isolation device automatically synchronizes and switches back to grid power to Austin energy is ready to explore the front of the meter. Micro grid configurations and billing solutions. We currently do not have examples of this in our territory. Battery systems that serve multiple customers would necessitate a utility side interconnection as well as isolation functionality that would sexualize the battery backed up area from the rest of the grid. Enabling this requires the establishment of interconnection policies and requirements, functional procedures to enable isolation and reconnection and maintenance policies and procedures was the work. Here is technically detailed and procedurally complex, so it will take time. [2:23:42 PM] complex, so it will take time. Austin energy is committed to working with our customers, contractors, line workers and first responders. Additionally Austin energy would need to explore rates and billing functionality to credit customers for battery operations and identify solutions that would allow for allocations to customer accounts as a result of strategically discharging the battery into the system for market benefit. We anticipate that this to be a multiple year effort at before Austin energy develops an upfront incentive or rebate for battery adoption. We must identify the best approach to provide customers with ongoing benefits for deploying the stored energy at peak times for example, with respect to battery benefits, a one time incentive may not be as effective of as an ongoing pay for performance benefit. This work and analysis is ongoing. Count council's direction to us [2:24:45 PM] Count council's direction to us was to explore a rate structure that rewards storage customers for contributing to the grid approximately half of the capacity associated with residential customers is used is only used for 20% of the time based on load duration data. The total capacity cost for the residential class is approximately $300 million $150. Million of that total is utilized infrequently in addition to the base rate design. The regulatory charge proposal may allow the solar plus storage customer to actually reduce their bill. Even receiving a credit by powering their home with the storage while discharging their pv onto the grid. We also recognize that there is an energy based component related to the time of market purchases. We are still investigating this issue and working to develop an appropriate option. Large we are working on battery end of life [2:25:48 PM] working on battery end of life solutions with Austin resource recovery. We as you know, batteries as you know, is important that we have solutions that will end up you know, ensuring that batteries are disposed of properly, that large , large, large lithium ion batteries can have 60 to 70% of their total capacity remaining after ten years. Batteries contain cobalt, nickel, copper or manganese and lithium. On the subject of pilot load shaping technologies, as we do this currently and are looking to expand our demand response capabilities, Austin energy's existing customer demand response programs use internet and wi-fi radio frequency and cellular signals to communicate with residential, commercial and multifamily customers to encourage shifting of electricity use these signals can communicate with multiple customer devices and equipment. Austin energy uses existing [2:26:50 PM] Austin energy uses existing smart meter infrastructure to help measure and quantify electricity use and savings to issue customer participation incentives. Austin energy is also currently expanding and increasing our customer facing incentives that encourage shifting of energy. And we're open to discussions with stakeholder tirz on defining the problem statement and ways in which to address this issue, while ensuring the integrity of the metering network. Currently, Austin energy does not allow third party traffic on our propriety Kerri secure advanced metering infrastructure network . With respect to convening a public stakeholder process, we have had to stakeholder meetings to date with good participation and plan multiple additional ones through this multiple year effort. That concludes the briefing and I'll take any questions at this time. >> Great council member Velasquez did you have a question? I saw you reaching for your microphone. Okay. All [2:27:52 PM] your microphone. Okay. All right. Any questions? Down this way? Yes. Mayor pro tem, maybe this is something you're already more familiar with because I know you led on this conversation. >> But if we have homeowners here in the city and in the Austin energy market, that are collecting solar power, does it go back on to an Austin energy grid at some point? Does it end up in the ercot market? Like, how does it work with the isolation infrastructure that you put at this point? >> You know, we have solar in a way where we incentivize customers all the solar that they generate. They get incentivized for just as all the usage that a customer has for their home. So they get charged for so that's the kind of structure that we have regarding the solar. >> Okay. And can the actual energy that's collected, should the homeowner not need it? Could it go the other direction where it comes back into the local grid? [2:28:53 PM] grid? >> I think those are some of the things that we're exploring. We got to make sure that that's done in a safe way and with the multiple isolation configurations that we can have both the simple one that we support today and the more complex one that we're exploring safety is our primary concern in terms of making sure that that can be done safely. >> Okay. Okay. Thank you. Are there any other storage program models statewide or nationally that are similar to what the resolution requests? >> Yeah. On that point, there are I mean, certainly we're aware of virtual power plants and we are working to explore those. I'm not aware besides virtual power plants of any other successful storage Paige configurations in the state nationally, there are a few other storage programs that we're studying for potential adoption into our program and will residential demand charges for storage customers hinder uptake of other electric Ann [2:29:53 PM] uptake of other electric Ann technologies like electric heat or hot water heaters, electric vehicles is my simple answer to that is no, because they have not hindered adoption of those technologies to date. So far. I do think that one of the things that is a challenge for us is how much we are marketing and communicating, communicating to customers about those technologies. But I don't think their their adoption has been hindered. >> So great. Thank you. >> And I think you have the next item and this is on the another resolution. This one relating to fast charging stations for electric vehicles. Yes yes. And then I'm going to ask the general manager if we might be able to consolidate third quarter financial highlights and operations highlights into maybe a either a real quick update or a memo. Yeah, I just agreed to do a memo very, very good, because we're running pretty long and we definitely wanted to get these briefings in. So [2:30:56 PM] get these briefings in. So please proceed. Thank here. >> I do have a quick question on the financials before we break. >> You bet. We'll definitely do that. We'll let Mr. Genesee finish now with evs. >> Okay. Thank you. Okay. On the resolution that you all received, my understanding is earlier today. Okay, so the resolution is three directives. First, developing a vision plan for equitable distribution of public charging stations throughout the city, including both DC fast and level two chargers in addition, the resolution calls for establishing priorities for an initial three year implementation phase of the vision with an actionable funding options that include federal incentives and grant opportunities. So we will talk about that. Second, the resolution calls for coordinated with local and regional partners to develop a charging resource model for their fleets and lastly, the resolution calls for the preparation on the uptime and reliability of the plug-in everywhere network over the past [2:31:57 PM] everywhere network over the past year, as well as time to repair data and ongoing a levels of effort and budget for preventative maintenance of the system. So I'm sure it's no surprise to you we have a record ev registrations in the city of Austin. There are more evs being driven than ever before. Shaw in fact, at 12% of all new vehicle registrations in Austin being evs, we are now greater than heavy duty vehicles in terms of total vehicle registered Ann. So the growth is there and this list is not even exhaustive. There are new models that are coming out literally every day from manufacturers. And as I'm sure you know, every manufacturer is committed to an ev future. The first part of the strategy or the vision for the charging infrastructure involves establishing how big is the breadbox, so to speak. So we have quantified 226 mega megawatts in terms of this goal from supporting the climate [2:32:59 PM] from supporting the climate equity plan with 40% vehicle miles traveled and being electric, that translates to 460,000 evs on the road. It also translates to 37,000 charging ports. But that's a very loose number depending on the configuration of those chargers specifically. Now very importantly, this goal of 226mw is not only includes public facing, but also the support of fleet electrification. The charging infrastructure will be a combination of the efforts of the city of Austin and local fleets as well as enabling private sector growth of ev, charging to support multiple use cases as the. After we've established the 266mw, we got to scale properly and we have to ensure an equitable distribution . Justice 40 I wanted to explain what that is. Justice 40 initiative is a federal effort to deliver at least 40% of the [2:34:01 PM] to deliver at least 40% of the overall benefits from certain federal investments to disadvantaged communities. So we are we justice 40 is a way in which we will ensure adherence to making sure that our benefits go to disadvantaged communities. And there's a map that we will be able to overlay on our service territory, which will provide guidance for us on the future of where are both DC fast and level two charging stations would ideally be placed now on the scalable growth part. We are we are exploring solutions through both industry and academia for how we scale appropriately. We have also proposed connected ev growth scenarios and we are participating with epri, which is the electric power research institute in a evs to scale project which has over 500 partners across industry, other utilities. Et cetera, that are really addressing this problem of how do we scale and how do we [2:35:02 PM] of how do we scale and how do we do that in an equitable fashion . Austin energy will continue to offer incentives through our plug in program, plug in Austin program to increase public charging. It's these rebates that have built the current 6300 level two, charging ports and 30 DC fast chargers in the city of Austin. Additionally, Austin energy city of Austin fleet services and public works have been actively deploying dedicated charging infrastructure to support city of Austin fleet services transit in to evs at city of Austin properties. We are also going to leverage federal funding to expand DC fast charging in Austin, Austin energy has a capital budget over the next five years to support, support, support, deployment and match needed for federal fund grant opportunities. So I said I would cover the charging and fueling infrastructure grant. The us department of transportation Ann [2:36:03 PM] department of transportation Ann grant program is aimed to support greater access to public charging infrastructure, with an emphasis on supporting low moderate income communities, multifamily and fleet and rideshare applications $700 million was was authorized under this funding round with an anticipated $1.8 billion over the next for fiscal years. Our application, which was submitted in June, is for the maximum of $15 million. We are still awaiting status on the application in the application city of Austin and Travis counties were prioritized so that we could minimize land acquisition costs and spend the most on the actual expansion of the infrastructure itself. If this would result in a projected increase of about 83 DC fast chargers throughout the city of Austin and that 80 would be incremental to add to our existing 30 DC fast chargers. We are actively working with [2:37:04 PM] are actively working with several partners on their fleet electrification efforts to include city of Austin fleet services capital, metro Austin, independent school district and multiple private sector fleet applications. Each of these applications is going to require different operational needs, such as access and schedule of charging, open charging versus behind the gate. Et cetera. We have already made progress on the cold location at city of Austin properties, where fleet and public charging are co-located. We've also cited DC fast charging at an aisd school and included Travis county properties in our grant application to the department of transportation. We will continue to elevate opportunities that may allow for shared access as over the last decade, the industry focus and our focus has been on growth. That will continue to be a focus, but we want the next ten years to be really focused on reliability and I am happy to share that we are making strides in progress [2:38:04 PM] are making strides in progress in this area, having decay ceased our outage rate from 28% in March, in January to 11% currently. But we are not stopping there. We are going to continue until we actually have every charger across the whole network operating knell. I am a new ev owner myself and so I know firsthand when you need a charger to be available, you need it to be reliable, you need it to be up and working and there are challenges right now in terms of proper representation. Ann on all the aps of are the chargers actually where they say they are listed, are they up and running and do they stay up and running and we're working on that challenge. We also have preventive maintenance. In April 2023, we have a contracted service provider here that's providing preventative maintenance. That includes a dedicated vendor going out to test every charging station in Austin energy's [2:39:04 PM] station in Austin energy's network, both owned and privately owned, clean each station and report back any pending or new service needed. We are currently in the second preventative maintenance run, which launched in August and. Some of the recent activities that I want to just comment on. And as I come to a close, I you approved our five year chargepoint contract in July this approval of this contract does ignatz us with chargepoint as a critical customer designation, although that sounds awful. It's actually actually very good that we're designated a crystal critical customer designation because it gives us a lot more resources and a lot more access with chargepoint, we are having dedicated local organization, support account and technical support, so it is really it really makes a significant difference to be able to pick up the phone, have a chargepoint representative here on know [2:40:05 PM] representative here on know locally that ensures that the network is up and running at all times. Also, the last thing I'll say here is supply, supply chain constraints are subsiding that this has been in the past a real issue with the availability of replacement parts over the last couple of years. But it's really, you know, occurring less and less. We're seeing less and less supply chain constraints and issues. That concludes the briefing questions. >> What a great report. Thank you so much. Especially like seeing the nearly. 30% outages dropping down to almost a little bit more than 10. That's tremendous. It's almost like I mean, if you're driving an ev as you know, and you don't know where your battery is low and you got to go top it off, but you don't know where to find the reliable source, it would be as if those gas stations that are on every corner were all closed or all those pumps were broken [2:41:06 PM] or all those pumps were broken and you couldn't you're driving right by them, but you can't use them. So it's I'm glad that the technology is shifting in this direction. I'm really glad to see that we are stepping up on making sure that we're doing everything we can for predictability and reliability for the charging station. So I especially thank you for that. Yes. Councilmember Allison alter . >> Thank you. I'll be really brief. I just wanted to flag that several of us serve on campo, the metropolitan planning organization. We anticipate about $18 in federal funds that are going to be allocated through the mpo, plus 5 million of o&m for ev charging. I've begun to have some conversations with the leadership of campo on that, but really want to make sure that you're coordinating with transportation and public works and Mr. Good, maybe you can make sure that that's happening so that we can represent well the city's interests through the campo process. When those evs options are ready. You know, there's [2:42:07 PM] are ready. You know, there's other parts of the mpo territory that don't have as much evs, but there will still be some real opportunities, I think, for the Austin area. But we can better advocate for bringing those resources if you guys are in touch with transportation, public works, which I know you are on a fairly regular basis, but just wanted to flag that particular pot of money, that's going to come through the mpo in particular. Yeah, great. >> Any other questions? Yes. Councilmember vela, do. >> Thank you. Just so the. Station, the charging stations that we have been thinking throughout the city, almost all of those are going to be city owned charging minus again, I know that Tesla has a handful of different stations, but you. >> Yeah, I want to clarify the where the market's going and the future as we see it is in really successful public private [2:43:08 PM] successful public private collaboration and partnership. It is not exclusive public owned stations. It's a collaboration. >> But currently around the city for the number of charging stations that we have are we're at 19. So the city owns about 19, the city owns 19% of the 1600, and the rest are privately owned. And the ones and this is in response to a constituent question, there's the H-E-B and Mueller has a number of I think chargepoint stations are those city owned stations? >> Yes. I believe they are. Well, no, they're H-E-B. H-E-B would would be the they would be the owner. >> So in terms of the maintenance and reliability of those stations in particular, H-E-B would be the entity to talk to. >> Yes. But those are prioritized because of their we have a prioritized list that we're maintaining as well. And if you're talking about those four DC fast chargers that are very close to Austin energy headquarters, they are on our [2:44:08 PM] headquarters, they are on our priority list, as are the chargers here at city hall. So we make sure that those chargers receive our top priority in terms of being up all the time. And I'm happy to report those chargers are up right now. >> They are up right now. Okay I just wanted to because I got a communication from a constituent days ago, maybe weeks ago, saying like, how come those are always down? >> Yeah. The other thing I'll sorry, sorry. >> Cameron freiburger, I'm the manager of electric vehicles and emerging technologies and as Richard mentioned. Yes. So of the 1600. Yes we own 19. The private sector owns the rest of those, but we manage and maintain them through partnerships, through incentives and ways that they come into our program. And those for HEB, Mueller as directly to a constituents question. Those were ones that we put in from a Texas commission on environmental quality grant. So we do own and operate those that picks that last picture in Richard's slide deck was actually those getting repaired with all four being used at the time. So those were actually up [2:45:08 PM] time. So those were actually up and running. Now thanks to our critical designation with chargepoint, so great. >> And just out of curiosity, I mean, how often do they go down and how much repair and whatnot is necessary? I mean, again, I'm thinking about like I can't tell you how many times I've seen someone drive off with a with the handle and, you know, rip the pump off as somebody that's actually done that at a gas pump . >> Very embarrassing. So the frequency of them going down, it's actually not that frequent. It's things like the duration with parts availability and getting them back up blind has been an issue. There's certain things that will cause more frequency outage, like things related to like communication signals in radio signals and wi-fi accessibility that will actually trigger them, trigger that more often in terms of hardware that seems to be less frequent, especially in level two stations in DC stations, you're seeing some hardware malfunctions and that's one of the areas where we were really hurt by supply chain issues. That's now been resolved. But from a hardware perspective, it's a lot less often than [2:46:10 PM] it's a lot less often than things like software communications. >> Got it. Appreciate the clarification. Thank you very much. Absolutely. I'll pass that along to the constituent to. >> Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you. I think those are all the questions. So general manager con, what shall we do? We've got a question on a on the financial update. >> Yeah. Stephanie we'll send you a memo. >> We'll send you a memo on financial and operations. And then I think I heard there was a question, a financial question. >> Councilmember Fuentes, over here to your right. >> Oh, perfect. So my question is, you know, from my understanding, Austin energy plans to raise the rate again. Is that correct? >> Hi, good afternoon, Stephanie . I'm the director of finance. Are you referring to the power supply adjustment? Yes so, yes, we incur some pretty material costs, as you heard Michael speak to congestion and extreme heat, putting pressure on the market. So we incurred quite a bit of cost in August and we under recovered 49 million just [2:47:10 PM] under recovered 49 million just to the month of August. So as we saw that coming, we decided to use our administrative authority to increase the psa rate by 5. And that's effective October 1st. And but that's still well, is that within in like in the last few months? >> Is it still within the approved authorization of the increase that we did at the last review, we reviewed an increase it as part of our pass through budget process last November. >> And this is the first time that we have utilized the 5% up to 5% administrative adjustment rate. >> Okay. And for ratepayers. So they would feel this impact on their October bill? That's correct. >> And it's about $1.80 for the customer impact. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Okay. All right. >> Thank you, mayor pro tem. >> Yes. Oh, you've got a future item. I think we're done with [2:48:11 PM] item. I think we're done with this and look forward to the memo. And thank you for accommodating that. She's going to talk about a future agenda item. Do you want to make a comment generally about one of the items? Okay, go ahead. >> Me I'm sorry. I looked away. I just wanted to call to your attention. We had a conversation a while back about solar shade and partnership with the parks on parks and recreation department. And we recently just passed an item last week. I'm sure you all saw we added an element to have you all coordinate with them about options on where instead of having the sale shades, maybe we put a solar shade and accomplish two birds with one stone. So I just wanted to throw that out there. Make sure I'm sure you're on top of it. But double check. >> Yes, I am told we are on top of it. >> Yes. Mayor pro tem, you want to talk about maybe an item for a future agenda? [2:49 :12 PM] a future agenda? >> And I say potential because I'm not sure if this is the appropriate venue considering the timing. But I have an inkling that the e-bike rebates that went up in the past year have been utilized a lot more than previously was. The case. And so I'm not sure if we want to bring that to Austin energy oversight. Just for an update or we can bring it to mobility committee because we meet more often. So I just wanted to flag that we are very curious to see how that's going and if it's being utilized and we're getting one less car on the road for a couple trips here and there, if that's what is actually happening. I know there's been hundreds of e-bikes purchased through a good sale that happened at one of our local providers. And so I'm just very curious about seeing how that's going. >> I think I think it combination between the two departments is really the way to go because both mobility is involved. But also the rebates would be coming from Austin energy. So we can get an update, I guess from both to both committees. [2:50:13 PM] committees. >> Happy to happy to see that. >> Okay, great. >> Is there anything else, anything for the good of the cause? Mr. Con knell. >> You're good. We're good. >> All right. Thank you all. Staff for being here today and giving us really good information there being no additional items on the dais. I will call us adjourned at 250. Thank you, everybody.