LADWP Board Approves Agreement to Supply Clean Energy for 70,000 Homes

If approved by the Los Angeles City Council, the renewable purchase agreements will go into effect April 1.

“This is an excellent opportunity to immediately increase the amount of clean, renewable energy for the City of Los Angeles,” said H. David Nahai, president of the Board of Water and Power Commissioners. “LADWP is taking a multi-pronged approach to meeting its RPS commitment of 20% by 2010. The agency is utilizing power purchase agreements such as this as a bridge to increasing our supply of renewable energy in the short term, while pursuing plans to build renewable power generation for ownership over the long term,” he said.

The agreements between LADWP and Powerex Corp. (Powerex), which bring LADWP’s renewable energy supply to 8% of its power generation portfolio, provide for the purchase of 50 megawatts, or 438,000 megawatt-hours, of renewable energy annually—enough power to serve approximately 70,000 homes each year. During the first year, LADWP will purchase renewable energy from several small hydro-electric generating facilities in the Pacific Northwest. Over subsequent years LADWP may receive other types of renewable energy—including small hydro, biomass, landfill gas and wind—through the agreement from generating facilities located in the Pacific Northwest.

Through the agreements, LADWP will pay a fixed price, based on a natural gas indexed formula, per megawatt-hour (MWh), for an annualized cost not to exceed $39 million in fiscal years 2006-07 through 2011-12. The energy will be delivered to LADWP at the Nevada-Oregon border and shipped to Los Angeles via the Pacific DC Intertie—a north-south transmission line with capacity owned by LADWP—so that no additional transmission infrastructure or transportation will need to be built.

The Powerex agreements approved today contain revisions to an earlier proposed agreement with Powerex. Primarily, the revisions include shortening the duration of the contracts.

Other recent renewable power acquisitions include the purchase of 82 megawatts—or 234,000 MWh—of wind power annually for 16 years from PPM Energy, Inc. In addition, an agreement with UPC Wind was recently approved by the Southern California Public Power Authority (SCPPA), acting on behalf of LADWP and the cities of Burbank and Pasadena, and is expected to go to the LADWP Board of Commissioners and the Los Angeles City Council for approval in the next two months. LADWP would receive most of the wind energy—92.5%—produced by the new 200-megawatt capacity wind generation facility being developed in Millard County, Utah. The wind project is expected to be ready for commercial operation by Dec. 31, 2008. LADWP has also begun construction of the 120-megawatt Pine Tree Wind project in the Tehachapi mountains, expected to come online in 2009.

LADWP also recently issued a new request for proposals (RFP) seeking 2.2 gigawatts of renewable energy. For more information about the RFP, please contact renewables@ladwp.com. Proposals are due April 10, 2007, at 2 p.m.

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, the nation’s largest municipal utility, provides reliable, low-cost water and power services to the City’s 3.9 million residents in an environmentally responsible manner. For more information, visit www.ladwp.com.

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LADWP,
Carol Tucker, (213) 367-1815