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News and Updates from Seattle City Light

Seattle City Light Offers 2015 Excess Transmission Capacity for Resale

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Seattle City Light is offering for resale excess capacity that it controls on the Bonneville Power Administration’s transmission system.

City Light does not currently need this portion of the transmission capacity it has the rights to on BPA’s system. Transmission needs can change over time, however. The one-year sale is designed to maximize the value of this transmission resource for the utility and its customer-owners while protecting access to that resource in the future.

The product being offered is BPA firm network point-to-point transmission for 2015. Responses to City Light’s request for proposals are due Friday, Dec. 12 by 4 p.m.

Bidders are subject to credit approval by the utility’s Risk Oversight Division. Bids of longer tenors will be given priority. City Light reserves the right to accept or reject any and/or all bids and to modify this offer.

All bidders must be registered BPA customers and provide their BPA customer number. Participants have to bid flat, meaning they have to be willing to buy on peak and off peak transmission bundled together. We do this to protect the long-term nature of our transmission. 

Details of the offering can be found here.

Seattle City Light Seeks Conservation Innovation from Commercial Building Owners

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Seattle City Light is looking for three commercial office buildings to test an innovative energy conservation concept known as “pay-for-performance” in a three-year pilot program the utility believes will be the only one of its kind in the country.

“This approach gives businesses flexibility to pursue electricity savings opportunities that will be of most benefit to their businesses,” Superintendent Jorge Carrasco said. “It also reduces risk for the utility, since we only will be paying for actual conservation savings realized, and all of our customers benefit from the lowest cost energy available – conservation.”

“By saving energy today, we reduce our need to seek new, more expensive energy sources,” Carrasco said. “We are looking for businesses to be innovative and successful in creating even greater energy savings than with traditional conservation incentive programs.”

City Light will pay participants in the pilot program 3 cents for every kilowatt-hour of energy savings they achieve each year. In its traditional energy conservation programs, the utility makes a one-time payment up front for expected energy savings using prescribed energy efficiency enhancements. The request for proposals encourages innovation and tailored energy efficiency approaches that will be the most effective for the business.

City Light invites competitive proposals for the pilot program. A copy of City Light’s request for proposals is available online at  https://www.ebidexchange.com/seattle/ . Click “Solicitations” and look for the Pay for Performance file. Proposals are due by Jan. 15, 2013, at 5 p.m.

Proposers can combine capital, operations and maintenance, and behavioral change activities in their responses. The utility will be reviewing the modeling tools used by customers or their partners to estimate energy savings. Customer participants will be responsible for documenting their energy-saving actions and reporting on a monthly basis with a detailed annual report summarizing key initiatives and results.

Business leaders and energy efficiency specialists have told City Light they believe they can identify equipment, facilities and operational changes that will achieve significantly more energy savings than are estimated in the utility’s current up-front incentive programs. That opportunity for bigger rebates based on actual performance increases the businesses’ willingness to make energy efficiency investments.

Seattle City Light has a 35-year history of innovation in energy conservation programs and was the first utility in the country to include conservation as an energy resource. Since the mid-1970s, City Light has saved more than 17 million megawatt-hours of energy – enough electricity to power the households of five cities the size of Seattle for a year.

In 2011, City Light conservation programs helped customers reduce their energy consumption by 1.1 million megawatt-hours. That’s enough electricity to power 124,000 Seattle homes – one third of the utility’s residential service. Customers who participated in conservation programs reduced their City Light bills by a combined $797 million.

City Light programs also avoided the release of more than 663,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in 2011. That’s the equivalent of taking 146,000 cars off the road for a year.

Seattle City Light is the 10th largest public electric utility in the United States.  It has some of the lowest cost customer rates of any urban utility, providing reliable, renewable and environmentally responsible power to nearly 1 million Seattle area residents.  City Light has been greenhouse gas neutral since 2005, the first electric utility in the nation to achieve that distinction.

Seattle City Light Seeks Proposals on Renewable Energy

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Seattle City Light issued a request for proposals today for up to 150,000 megawatt-hours of renewable energy or renewable energy credits per year, beginning in 2020.

Source projects must qualify as eligible according to Washington State’s renewable portfolio standard, approved by voters in 2006 as Initiative 937.  City Light will require a minimum output guarantee and credit assurances. The utility will consider proposals for equity ownership.

Under the request for proposals, City Light will consider a broad range of proposals, technologies, and contractual arrangements. The utility will require potential providers to demonstrate they have the creditworthiness to develop the project(s) offered and deliver the electrical energy and/or renewable energy credits over the indicated contract length.

Any party submitting a proposal must be the owner of the eligible resource or renewable energy credits, or have written authorization from the owner to submit a proposal.

City Light prefers baseload or dispatchable resources to complement the existing supply resources that are predominately hydroelectric.

Seattle City Light is the 10th largest public electric utility in the United States.  It has some of the lowest cost customer rates of any urban utility, providing reliable, renewable and environmentally responsible power to nearly 1 million Seattle area residents. City Light has been greenhouse gas neutral since 2005, the first electric utility in the nation to achieve that distinction.

For more information on submitting a proposal, contact Robert W. Cromwell, Jr., director of power contracts and resource acquisition, at robert.cromwell@seattle.gov, by phone at (206) 684-3856 or by FAX at (206) 386-4555.

 

Seattle City Light Seeks New Renewable Energy Resources

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Seattle City Light is actively pursuing opportunities to purchase up to 50 Megawatts of new renewable energy.

If successful, such purchases will help City Light on its way to meeting the new, renewable energy requirements of voter-approved Initiative 937. The initiative requires large utilities in Washington to have renewable energy resources developed after 1997 make up at least 15 percent of their energy portfolios by 2020.

Such purchases also support the city’s Climate Action Now Initiative, which seeks to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions tied to climate change.

“Seattle City Light is committed to providing low-cost, reliable, environmentally responsible electricity to meet the needs of our customers,” Superintendent Jorge Carrasco said. “We look forward to hearing from the generators of new renewable energy resources who can help us continue to achieve that goal and hit the targets set by I-937.”

The 50 Megawatts of renewable energy City Light is targeting could come from one large project, several smaller projects or from a purchase of renewable energy credits.

City Light’s preference is to acquire new renewable energy resources that meet the baseload needs of our commercial, industrial and residential customers. This search will be by competitive bid, not least cost, which means the shape, capacity, seasonality and other factors associated with the energy resources will be considered. A request for proposals released this month outlines the municipally owned utility’s specifications and acquisition process. It is available at http://www.seattle.gov/light/News/RFI_RFP/rfp_ra.asp and on the city’s e-bid Web site at https://www.ebidexchange.com/Default.aspx?cid=eb31bf6e-250d-4d1d-abfb-37cb20108045 .

City Light already contracts for renewable energy with several providers, including wind energy, biomass and landfill gas.

In 2005, City Light became the first large utility in the United States to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions. It remains the only large utility in the country to reach that status.

Seattle City Light is the ninth largest public electric utility in the United States.  It has the lowest cost customer rates of any urban utility, providing reliable, renewable and environmentally responsible power to nearly 1 million Seattle-area residents.