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 Good afternoon. I'm calling to order the Friday, August 22nd, 2025 meeting of the Sustainability

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 Framework Advisory Committee here in the work session room of Stanton City Hall. Our first

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 item on the agenda is considered the approval of July 25th, 2025 minutes. Is there any discussion

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 or any motion? I move to approve. I second. Motion made to approve and seconded. So done.

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 Minutes passed. Okay, next item is to receive a report and hold a discussion regarding updates

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 to the Dent Renewable Resource Plan and the potential acquisition of additional... Sorry,

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 I apologize for interrupting. You need to take a vote. Oh, I'm sorry. We have a vote on the

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 minutes. All in favor? All opposed? Thank you. Are you ready now? Yeah. Tony Puente will make

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 the presentation. Mr. Chair, members of the committee, thank you for having me this afternoon.

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 My name is Tony Puente. I'm the general manager for DME. With me, I also brought Chris Nutrick,

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 who's our executive manager of operations, and Chris has been with DME for a while, and he kind

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 of helped with the construction of the Dent Energy Center, so if there's questions that I can't

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 answer, Chris will help me out. We have Jose Gaitan and Tony Roybal that manage all our power

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 supply processes, all our energy trading, and so if there's questions that come up that I can't

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 answer, they're here as resources as well. So just really quickly, today's presentation is on a

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 recap of what's called the Dent Renewable Resource Plan that was adopted back in 2018. There's a

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 couple of other things that we'll cover here as well. Part two is, we'll talk a little bit about

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 the integrated resource plan, and then part three is acquisition of the special generation. This

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 entire presentation, although I kind of culled some of the slides from what I presented to the

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 council and the PV, but it's still about 15 slides in total, so bear with me as I try to go through

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 all of these. And certainly if there's questions, Mr. Chair, in between, just let me know and happy

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 to pause and try to address those. Thank you. So Dent Renewable Resource Plan, as I mentioned,

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 was adopted back in 2018. That plan called for 100% renewable energy for the city, and when I say

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 the city, that's for just the service territory that's served by Dent Municipal Electric. There

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 are citizens in Dent that are served by Coastal Electric and Encore as well, or TXU. This plan

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 does not apply to those utilities. There was a goal of 100% renewable by 2020 or 2024. There was

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 a variety of strategies within why those dates are there. There was five objectives, the leading

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 being that we would pursue lease cost alternatives or lease cost supplies, and so over the years we've

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 brought forward a number of RFPs and proposals to councils that have not moved forward, primarily

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 because of the cost of those resources. Dent Energy Center, within that plan, was certainly

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 recognized as a cost hedge. I know that certainly since Winter's Farm period there's been a lot of

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 questions about that facility. I will mention to you that facility does not provide power directly

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 to our residents. That is interconnected into ERCOT just like any other facility. All the PPAs that

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 we have with renewable resources are all interconnected into the ERCOT grid as well, and so this facility

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 is no different than any other facility out there that's producing power. Certainly there are some

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 facilities out there that might be interconnected into a distribution system like a community solar

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 or even our rooftop solar stuff, and there's other smaller kind of generators out there,

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 combined heating power plants and various universities that are interconnected kind of

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 behind the meter, and so but here certainly I wanted to just be clear that this facility

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 is interconnected into the grid, and certainly acknowledge that there are some challenges in

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 balancing that portfolio with 100% renewable energy, and certainly that's part of our conversation

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 today. Just as an inventory for you, this is currently what we have by way of resources.

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 Power purchase agreements. The latest one that we executed was Yellow Viking. We executed that

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 last year. That was a solar project at 100 megawatts. That project is still not online.

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 As a matter of fact, and we'll talk a little bit about some of the challenges that we're seeing

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 with some of these PPAs and just the overall market, but you know at this point we're uncertain

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 whether or not that 100 megawatts of capacity will come online. We're kind of working through

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 that process now, and what's that accounted for here is that we currently have an RFP. We issue an

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 RFP for up to 300 megawatts of additional solar, wind, and/or battery storage. I will tell you that

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 we're close to bringing that forward to the council for consideration here in the next couple of weeks

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 for a wind resource and potential battery resource as well, all through a power purchase agreement.

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 But anyway, so that's kind of the inventory of what we have. Just for some context,

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 generally when we look at these resources on the wind side, when you look at that total

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 capacity of 150 megawatts, we're really counting at about 30 percent of that capacity that will

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 actually show up. On the solar side, it's about 40 percent, right? And so while we have here,

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 where we listed 455 megawatts of capacity, actual production is only going to be about 167, right?

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 And so you know, much of the recommendations back in 2018 was that you needed basically twice as

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 much renewable resources to get to the amount of your peak load that you needed, right? And I will

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 tell you Georgetown is an example, or TheExample, that's exactly what they did. And I'll tell you

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 that that became a challenge for them, and they're still unwinding some of those agreements because

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 they ended up in a very long position, right? For D&E, I think as we've been kind of moderately kind

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 of heading in that direction, we're certainly not in that kind of position where we're long on

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 renewables, right? And so certainly if that was the case, we probably wouldn't be issuing

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 another request for proposals. So just the timeline, kind of going back to 2009,

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 you know, D&E had a goal of 40 percent and moved it to 70 percent in 2016. 2018 certainly was 100

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 percent, and certainly we believe that in 2021 we achieved that 100 percent renewable goal based on

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 the parameters established within their renewable resource plan. So in 2021, we served 1.5, almost

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 1.6 million megawatt hours of load. So we, this is the energy that we buy from the market,

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 and then that amount at the end of the year that we account for it, we look and see, well,

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 how much power was generated from the renewables, right? And so that particular year, we had one

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 point three million megawatt hours of actual power that was produced by these PPAs sold into the

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 market. And so when we accounted for those, we were short, right, roughly 30 megawatts,

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 and so what is equivalent of the 262,000 megawatt hours. We had a conversation with the council

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 leading into this discussion. We had a contract called the Whitetail contract that included 30

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 megawatts of energy and included 30 megawatts of renewable energy credits without the energy,

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 and so we advocated or we proposed to the council that we count those 30 megawatts of RECs

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 towards this goal, and that's what represented here, right? And so that particular contract

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 expired in December of 2023, and so in 2022, those 30 megawatts were included in that 353,

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 same thing in 2023, and in 2024, we went out and we actually purchased 400 megawatt hours

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 of renewable energy credits, right, to round out that 100 percent renewable goal. The conversation

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 we had with the council at the time was that in order for us to buy those three years worth of

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 energy equivalent to the 30 megawatts of RECs would have cost D&E an additional five million,

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 almost five and a half million dollars, and so the council's direction was go ahead and count

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 the RECs, do not buy the energy. We recognize that the RECs count towards that goal, and so

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 since that time, yes sir. I'm sorry, I'm just confused. I need to be enlightened here. You've

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 got the renewable energy column and then you've got RECs without energy. What the RECs meaning

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 no direct, that's the energy that goes into the grid, correct? So all the energy goes into the

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 grid. Then what is the renewable energy represent, the specific category before that? So the

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 renewable energy, that is the energy that's produced from contracts that we have with wind

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 and solar producers. For every megawatt of power that they generate through our contract, the city

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 gets one REC, right, and so it's one REC for every one megawatt hour of power that's generated.

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 This additional RECs that we purchased, right, well we had already purchased them through the

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 Whiteside contract. We already owned those, and so that particular company would also deposit into

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 our account an additional 30 megawatts of RECs. The 400,000 were RECs that we went out into the

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 market and we purchased, but again I think it's important to understand that for a REC to be

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 awarded, right, that power has to be generated, right? So for every one megawatt hour of renewable

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 energy, it's awarded one REC, and so even though we didn't own the energy for these RECs,

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 there was energy produced that's validated through those RECs that we purchased.

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 Tell me again what renewable energy represents? This renewable energy is the actual energy

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 that was generated by the contracts that we have, that the city owns, and that's evidence

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 through the RECs that are deposited into the DME's account along with the compensation that

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 we receive for the energy that we purchase. Okay, so that's still RECs energy. There's still RECs.

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 Okay, that's what it is. Anything that's on here, there are RECs associated with it. That's the

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 evidence that the power was produced and that we own it, and that we can designate it towards our

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 goal of a 100% goal. Gotcha. Thank you. Yes sir? That's a good question. My question is how the

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 renewable energy column matches the previous slide because those numbers are a lot bigger than the

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 PPAs. Yes, so this is just in capacity, right, and so what's produced here, right, you know,

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 and you convert it to megawatt hours right in total because the units come up close to,

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 you know, about a million megawatt hours. Gotcha. Gotcha. Thanks.

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 Okay. The other thing that I'll just point out just really quick here, and a couple things that

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 we'll talk about, so when DME gets these RECs, currently we do not retire them. We let them

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 expire, and so each, every REC has a three-year life, right, and so from the year that it's

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 produced, it has two additional years, right, so you can go out in the market and buy a REC that's

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 two years old or three years old, right, and so these RECs currently, we do not retire them.

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 We also don't roll them over to the next year, right. That's why in this particular year, 2021,

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 it shows 101% renewable because that's how the accounting kind of works for us. And we'll talk

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 a little about that, kind of the basis for some of the recommendations that we're making in this

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 particular policy that we have, that we took to the council. So, just to kind of get into that, so,

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 you know, certainly a lot of additional detail. I did reference and I asked that there are

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 additional slides that we presented to the council that I did not include in here,

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 but the recommendation that we made to the council is to create or develop a city renewable energy

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 policy that is very clear about how that goal is calculated, what resources are actually acceptable.

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 Those are all tied to what's called the Texas Renewable Portfolio Standard that identifies

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 only specific types of facilities, solar, wind, geothermal, hydro, wave, tidal, biomass are actually

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 the ones that are considered renewable because through the Texas Portfolio Standard, those are

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 the only types of facilities that are actually awarded renewable energy credits. And so,

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 what is an allowable resource to account towards that? Certainly, we would like to

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 tie that to that standard. And also, how are we going to treat recs, right? And there's also this

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 other kind of nebulous thing called compliance premiums that are awarded in addition to recs to

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 certain types of solar facilities. Now, we'll tell you that those are starting to wind down.

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 And so, within this policy, we would also stipulate how those recs are going to be counted

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 towards that goal and that they must be retired, right? And so, and why are we recommending that?

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 So, you could count a rec today towards your goal, monetize it, and then somebody else counts it

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 towards their goal, and there could be that potential double counting, right? And so, we

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 think that certainly, based on an audit that our internal audit made as well, kind of came to the

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 same conclusions that this policy would require that DME retire those recs if we're going to count

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 towards our goal. And also, that DME be allowed to sell any excess recs. So, if I end up in a situation

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 where I have 101%, 105%, that excess, I can go ahead and monetize it and sell it since I'm going

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 to count towards our goal. We didn't think that recommending that those be rolled over, now you're

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 crossing years. You know, I come from the finance side, you know, where you buy, you can go out to

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 the Fed window and buy a brand new treasury that hasn't been traded before. Kind of looking at it

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 this way is we're going to buy recs that are produced in the same year in which we're going

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 to count them, and therefore, we're not going to roll them over to next year, because I think you

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 kind of get away from kind of what the true nature of those are, plus not only that, if the power is

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 generated in 2024, but you're counting in 2025, now you've got some time difference there. And

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 frankly, the impact that those have. And then also, when needed to meet the 100% goal, so if we are

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 short, that we would go out and we would actually do what we've been doing, and that's to go out and

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 buy these renewable energy credits. Recs on the open market range, and there's certainly a range

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 of costs anywhere from roughly $1.50 to $2.25. And so, when you're talking about buying a rec,

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 right, and the cost of that rec versus the energy, there's a substantial amount of cost difference

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 if you haven't already pre-negotiated that contract to a PPA. And so, now you're basically

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 exposed yourself to a real-time market or, you know, just the normal market conditions.

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 And then there's also this other concept of large loads. As you can imagine, you know,

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 large loads are big in the news, certainly here in Denton, but across the state. Across the state,

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 it's projecting, you know, certainly over 80, excuse me, over 80 gigawatts of data center load

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 to come in the DFW area alone. I recently read an article that Encore has over 200 gigawatts of

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 interconnection requests for data center loads across their entire service territory. If you

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 think about that data center load that's coming alive in the total generation capacity of all

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 types, you know, now you're talking about renewable, coal, wind, I mean, natural gas, everything,

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 it just, there's just not enough generation, right. And so, certainly that becomes a need.

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 So, I think addressing how we're going to treat these loads from a risk profile standpoint is

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 important. You know, the other thing too that I'll mention, you know, these renewable PPAs that we do,

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 they're 15 and 20 years long, right. And so, if I have a large load that comes into our system,

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 that's 200 megawatts, that could be gone tomorrow, but yet I've entered into a PPA for 15 or 20 years,

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 and then the load's not there, now I'm in a potential Georgetown long type of position, right. So,

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 and all these, and these loads, they're not all created equal, right. You know, in the oil and gas

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 industry, they call them wall catters, right. So, we're seeing a lot of speculators, speculative

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 developers that are saying, hey, let us interconnect into your system at 300 megawatts, and we're going

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 to build it and they will come. Well, entering into a very long-term contract for something that's

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 speculative, I think puts a lot of risk on our ratepayers. And so, evaluating them, you know,

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 who are the counterparties, who are the financial backings, making sure that we're monitoring them,

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 you know, maybe the strategy, if it is a solid company that has good financials, is maybe we do

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 a short-term type of agreement for a five-year kind of short position on renewable energy. We kind of

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 take a, you know, on the finance side, we call it the prudent investor rule, right. And so, that

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 would be the approach that we would recommend. But certainly, addressing these large loads

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 is something that we would envision putting into this policy. Yes, sir. So, you're saying you could,

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 and I imagine this is competitive with other cities, but you could stipulate in a contract

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 with these large loads that you're paying us for five years of electricity. Is that what you're

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 saying? So that they can't just up and leave a year later. Can that be stipulated in the contract?

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 Yeah, certainly. I mean, it's a negotiation. You know, we can and have asked for the moon

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 in some of these cases. Whether or not there's any takers or not is certainly something that

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 we evaluate as we're negotiating.

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 I was just, I've read where some of the larger data companies are actually

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 building their own on-site generation. Has there been any consideration of making,

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 bringing that into play, assuming that we get more than one center here?

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 So, certainly, SB6 that passed by the legislature and the legislature this year does mandate and

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 require a co-location of backup generation for this facility. I can tell you just purely on a

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 business practice, the data center that we have had already made that decision is already installing

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 backup generation. So, I just think it's a good business practice anyways. I think most of these

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 developers, certainly the AI type of developers that are going to be operational 24/7, you know,

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 they have a lot of counterparty risk with their own customers that they have to have the power.

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 So, if there's outages, particularly for interruption, they're going to have on-site

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 generation. But now through this legislation, it's going to be required.

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 So, do you know what type of generation they're going to have? Is it wind or solar?

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 No, the backup generation that they have is natural gas or diesel. They have generators.

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 They also are looking to do some battery storage as well.

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 I have one more question. Could you clarify, again, in the weeds on this, what is meant by

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 addressing the environmental or offset goal of matching the annual load served with renewable

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 energy and not the resource mix, et cetera? What is the offset goal?

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 Yeah. So, the conversation we have with the council is that there is a renewable kind of environmental

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 impact aspect of the generation that DNE has. And then there's the generation mix in managing

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 our portfolio and ensuring that we have safe, reliable, and affordable power to our customers.

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 And so, this particular policy is only going to address that environmental kind of renewable

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 aspect of our load and how we manage that. The generation mix is what the integrated

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 resource plan will end up eventually vetting out and then coming back and making recommendations

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 to the council on what that generation mix should be for the city long term.

00:21:12.320 --> 00:21:20.880
 If you remember, this 2018 goal mandated that DNE be 100% renewable with just renewable energy.

00:21:21.840 --> 00:21:26.080
 And so, certainly we think that some of the challenges that we'll talk about on the

00:21:26.080 --> 00:21:32.320
 regulatory and market side, that that's continuing to be more and more difficult, right? To say we're

00:21:32.320 --> 00:21:37.360
 going to have nothing but wind and solar generation to meet the needs of our customers and to be able

00:21:37.360 --> 00:21:45.760
 to keep rates affordable and power reliable across the market. As a grid participant, we are as

00:21:45.760 --> 00:21:51.600
 responsible as any other interconnected member of ERCOT to ensure that there's reliability of the

00:21:51.600 --> 00:21:56.800
 grid. Because as you know, during winter storm year eight, there was outages, and so those outages

00:21:56.800 --> 00:22:03.760
 impacted us as well, right? So, that's what I mean by keeping these two things separate.

00:22:03.760 --> 00:22:11.200
 Just to clarify, this policy statement that's presented here, this is our current 2018 policy,

00:22:11.200 --> 00:22:17.680
 this is where you're thinking of taking this renewed, the direction that you received from the

00:22:17.680 --> 00:22:24.160
 June council meeting. Yeah, so what that policy statement eventually is may not necessarily be

00:22:24.160 --> 00:22:29.200
 this. This was just to stipulate to the council that having a policy statement, and certainly we

00:22:29.200 --> 00:22:34.160
 think that something along these lines may be workable, but certainly I think as we continue to

00:22:34.160 --> 00:22:38.240
 go through the process, that may eventually be tweaked a little bit, or a little bit different.

00:22:38.240 --> 00:22:44.080
 So, this is your draft policy statement? Yes, yes. So, I guess I'm just trying to clarify what our

00:22:44.080 --> 00:22:49.360
 function in this discussion is, because you received the direction to begin this planning

00:22:49.360 --> 00:22:55.120
 phase with your renewable energy policy, your integrated resource plan. We have it on our agenda

00:22:55.120 --> 00:22:59.920
 to receive your report and hold your discussion, and you stipulate in your backup that this is

00:22:59.920 --> 00:23:05.680
 going to be a six to nine month process for you guys. Is this the point at which we're providing

00:23:05.680 --> 00:23:10.320
 or you're hearing input from us on that policy statement, or you're just giving us a point in time

00:23:10.320 --> 00:23:15.120
 with where you're at in your thinking? Well, I think it's a dual process, and so certainly

00:23:15.120 --> 00:23:20.080
 you're the first set of community members that we're presenting this to. So, certainly we would

00:23:20.080 --> 00:23:24.320
 welcome your feedback, we'll collect that, eventually we'll incorporate it, or make

00:23:24.320 --> 00:23:28.800
 recommendations to the council, and then outline to the council what that feedback was. Mr. Chair,

00:23:28.800 --> 00:23:32.400
 I would like to come back to this policy statement at the end of the presentation if we could.

00:23:32.400 --> 00:23:35.360
 I have one more question, please. Yes, sir.

00:23:39.840 --> 00:23:44.960
 So, when you say the goal of matching the annual load served with renewable energy,

00:23:44.960 --> 00:23:51.200
 meaning the renewable energy we get with recs through the purchase of recs?

00:23:51.200 --> 00:23:59.120
 So, certainly I think this draft is based on, we will count the recs from the PPAs that we own,

00:23:59.120 --> 00:24:04.160
 and to make up the difference, we will buy recs out of the market. And what will those recs offset?

00:24:04.160 --> 00:24:09.200
 Are they part of that environmental offset goal? Correct, and the load as well.

00:24:10.160 --> 00:24:16.880
 So, whatever amount of load that we serve, I've served 1.6 million megawatt hours of load,

00:24:16.880 --> 00:24:21.680
 I'm going to look at how much did the PPAs produce, and then the difference will be

00:24:21.680 --> 00:24:31.920
 renewable energy credits. So, I'm trying to get my mind around, is this load served with renewable

00:24:31.920 --> 00:24:44.000
 energy also put towards offsetting, say, the emissions of the deck? No. Okay. They're tied

00:24:44.000 --> 00:24:47.920
 directly to the amount of load that we serve. Okay, thank you for the clarification. Yes, sir.

00:24:47.920 --> 00:24:54.640
 In addition to this policy, we would envision that we would have an actual calculation of how we

00:24:54.640 --> 00:25:00.880
 would calculate on an annual basis what that goal is. That was something that was absent from the

00:25:00.880 --> 00:25:05.120
 plan and determined that the internal auditor has advocated for as well, and that there'd be an

00:25:05.120 --> 00:25:10.480
 annual reporting. After the audit, we began to provide a report to the council annually. We do

00:25:10.480 --> 00:25:15.520
 what's called an "interformal staff report," basically an accounting of how much load did

00:25:15.520 --> 00:25:21.680
 we serve, how much power came from these PPAs, and then how much did we buy in renewable energy

00:25:21.680 --> 00:25:27.200
 credits. And then, of course, there would be a glossary of the assortment of acronyms that are

00:25:27.200 --> 00:25:37.440
 out there in the ERCOT market, just the electric industry as a whole. Tony, if I may, we are only

00:25:37.440 --> 00:25:44.800
 posted to receive a report and hold a discussion on this item. And so, as far as like providing

00:25:44.800 --> 00:25:50.480
 direction, we would have to do that under a different posting. I just wanted to put that out

00:25:50.480 --> 00:25:59.280
 there before you're earning your money today. So part two is this concept of an integrated

00:25:59.280 --> 00:26:06.160
 resource plan. I will tell you that DME has not ever had an integrated resource plan. In 2017,

00:26:06.160 --> 00:26:10.960
 the city conducted a management study that's required of all the utilities in 18 years. That

00:26:10.960 --> 00:26:17.920
 was part of the recommendation. Certainly, it's taken us some time to get there. Certainly, we

00:26:17.920 --> 00:26:25.120
 think that the dead renewable resource plan had aspects of an integrated resource plan. But the

00:26:25.120 --> 00:26:31.600
 plan in general is a strategy to meet the kind of future electric demand, both on the supply side,

00:26:31.600 --> 00:26:36.560
 that's on the generation side, and also on the demand side. And so looking at all those

00:26:36.560 --> 00:26:44.320
 within the context of what it's going to take to serve DME's load over 15 to 20 years. I'll tell

00:26:44.320 --> 00:26:49.040
 you, the P&B is thinking that 15 to 20 years is probably not long enough. And so part of their

00:26:49.040 --> 00:26:55.440
 feedback is you really should be looking at at least a 30-year type of plan. What I communicate

00:26:55.440 --> 00:27:01.760
 to them, what I communicate to you, is that whether it's a 15, 20, or 30-year plan, every five years,

00:27:01.760 --> 00:27:07.520
 we need to refresh that. Technology changes, the regulatory environment changes, the market changes,

00:27:07.520 --> 00:27:13.600
 and so making sure that we're staying on top of things. As an example, currently at the

00:27:13.600 --> 00:27:19.520
 federal level, there's movement to streamline the process for nuclear, right? And so that was

00:27:19.520 --> 00:27:23.520
 something that was not there. So if there's types of developments that come forward, if there's

00:27:23.520 --> 00:27:28.640
 additional pipeline networks on hydrogen, you know, an assortment of a variety of things, every five

00:27:28.640 --> 00:27:33.600
 years you want to stay on top of it, but at least you have a plan where you're headed. As an example

00:27:33.600 --> 00:27:39.840
 for nuclear, the permitting process, you're looking at probably at least a decade, the construction

00:27:39.840 --> 00:27:44.720
 process, another decade. So now you're talking 20 years on any type of nuclear development. Certainly

00:27:44.720 --> 00:27:48.640
 the current federal administration is looking at trying to streamline some of those processes.

00:27:48.640 --> 00:27:55.360
 There's the advent of what's called small module nuclear reactors that I think are being very

00:27:55.360 --> 00:28:01.600
 attractive, and that's certainly something that they're trying to pinpoint. One major aspect of

00:28:01.600 --> 00:28:07.840
 this IRP development is that there be a stakeholder involvement. Some of the feedback that we got on

00:28:07.840 --> 00:28:12.400
 the policy is that, well we need to have stakeholder involvement as well on the policy. We're working

00:28:12.400 --> 00:28:16.800
 through that, certainly coming here is part of that aspect as well. But how do we get additional

00:28:16.800 --> 00:28:22.080
 feedback from the community on that policy, just like we're going to do right here with this

00:28:22.080 --> 00:28:28.880
 integrated resource plan. And to be clear, we would anticipate that we would hire an outside firm

00:28:28.880 --> 00:28:32.240
 to do this. We don't think this is something that we can do internally. We just don't have the

00:28:32.240 --> 00:28:39.600
 bandwidth, and so we're going to go out and do a solicitation and look at hiring a firm, or firms,

00:28:39.600 --> 00:28:44.960
 both CPS Energy in San Antonio and Austin Energy, who we're kind of modeling some of these processes

00:28:44.960 --> 00:28:50.720
 to as kind of what they've done. So just kind of going down to a little bit of kind of where our

00:28:50.720 --> 00:28:57.520
 load is, and where we think it's going, and some of the challenges that we have. So today, you know,

00:28:57.520 --> 00:29:03.520
 DME has one dispatchable generation facility. That's the deck, that's about 225 megawatts

00:29:03.520 --> 00:29:10.480
 of power that we can generate. Our peak load, which was set back in the summer of '23, was 408

00:29:10.480 --> 00:29:17.760
 megawatts. And so the shortage that we're seeing here is about 183 megawatts in dispatchable

00:29:17.760 --> 00:29:23.280
 generation. And we'll talk a little bit further along these slides, and how kind of DME works,

00:29:23.280 --> 00:29:29.760
 and how we manage that. But just to be clear, the reason why we've addressed it this way is that in

00:29:29.760 --> 00:29:35.760
 this last legislative session, there was a number of bills that would have required all load-serving

00:29:35.760 --> 00:29:41.600
 entities that include DME, and THU, and all these other facilities, providers out there,

00:29:41.600 --> 00:29:47.120
 to firm their loads, right? To guarantee and back up their load with dispatchable generation.

00:29:47.120 --> 00:29:52.720
 They were very clear that dispatchable generation did not include wind and solar, did not include

00:29:52.720 --> 00:29:58.320
 battery storage, right? Now, that particular bill, as we were drafting this presentation,

00:29:58.320 --> 00:30:03.840
 eventually did not pass, right? Now, we suspect that in the next two years, when the legislature

00:30:03.840 --> 00:30:08.560
 gets back together, there'll probably be an additional effort to do that, right? And all of

00:30:08.560 --> 00:30:14.080
 that is behind, or the reason behind that is to ensure that there's reliability of the grid, right?

00:30:14.080 --> 00:30:20.160
 Renewable resources, you know, you don't really know when they're going to show up. I mean,

00:30:20.160 --> 00:30:26.960
 we have very smart folks in our EMO that have a lot of probabilistic forecasting of when wind's

00:30:26.960 --> 00:30:32.080
 going to show up, when the sun's going to show up. But unlike the deck, where we can push a button

00:30:32.080 --> 00:30:38.240
 and it starts producing power on demand, it's very difficult in managing a grid where there's

00:30:38.240 --> 00:30:44.160
 requirements for reliability through all renewable generation. And so, again, I'm giving you the

00:30:44.160 --> 00:30:49.440
 context of kind of the regulatory legislative environment. So currently, like I said, we're at

00:30:49.440 --> 00:31:00.640
 408. We anticipate that by 2028, our load will be somewhere in the 800 range. By 2036, certainly

00:31:00.640 --> 00:31:08.480
 we'll be almost at 900. And we think by 2044, we will be 900, if not a little bit north of 900.

00:31:08.480 --> 00:31:16.560
 So twice the peak load that we have today. Those forecasts, while they aren't somewhat dated and

00:31:16.560 --> 00:31:25.280
 they've been somewhat impacted, we've had a very mild summer this year. But those forecasts do not

00:31:25.280 --> 00:31:32.400
 assume any additional large loads coming onto the DME's network or system. I'll tell you, we have no

00:31:32.400 --> 00:31:38.720
 less than two to three prospects now that are wanting to locate in our service territory,

00:31:38.720 --> 00:31:43.360
 and they're as big or bigger than the current facility that we've already entered into a deal

00:31:43.360 --> 00:31:50.400
 with. But again, we're refreshing what the forecast would be, and ultimately wherever we'll be within

00:31:50.400 --> 00:31:57.440
 the context of that 15-, 20-, or 30-year horizon is something that we'll be working with with

00:31:57.440 --> 00:32:02.880
 whoever the consultant is on that particular project. May I just interject something? Yes,

00:32:02.880 --> 00:32:10.480
 sir. I'm sure you're aware of this, but for everybody else here, the U.S. Energy Information

00:32:10.480 --> 00:32:18.240
 Administration just earlier this week released a report on new electric generating capacity,

00:32:18.240 --> 00:32:27.600
 and just from a Texas standpoint, it's pretty amazing. About 27%, 3.2 gigawatts of the solar

00:32:27.600 --> 00:32:36.400
 capacity added so far in 2025 is in Texas, and developers plan to bring another 9.7 gigawatts

00:32:36.400 --> 00:32:42.160
 of solar online in Texas in the second half of this year. In the last year, Texas surpassed

00:32:42.160 --> 00:32:49.680
 California as the state with the most utility solar capacity. As for battery storage, it accounted

00:32:49.680 --> 00:32:56.880
 for the second largest share of capacity additions in the first half of the year at 26%, about half

00:32:56.880 --> 00:33:02.880
 of which was in Arizona or California. Developers in Texas are expecting to bring 7 gigawatts of

00:33:02.880 --> 00:33:10.640
 battery storage capacity online this year, with much of that capacity coming online in the second

00:33:10.640 --> 00:33:18.720
 half of the year. So it's really exploding. So certainly Texas leads the nation in both wind and

00:33:18.720 --> 00:33:26.320
 solar production and in small capacity. One thing that's important to also just kind of keep in

00:33:26.320 --> 00:33:34.240
 mind is that in the 88th legislature, the legislature mandated that all renewable energy

00:33:34.240 --> 00:33:44.080
 facilities after January 1st of 2027 install backup generation. And so it's for that firming

00:33:44.080 --> 00:33:48.880
 requirement. If you say you're going to produce a megawatt hour and it doesn't produce because

00:33:48.880 --> 00:33:53.280
 the sun wasn't there, you've got to be able to produce it either yourself or through some kind

00:33:53.280 --> 00:33:58.400
 of contract. And that's already state law. That's already mandated. The 89th legislature actually

00:33:58.400 --> 00:34:04.480
 wanted to expand that and take away basically the grandfathering of existing facilities.

00:34:04.480 --> 00:34:09.520
 Something that we were looking at was our current PPAs. If in fact those PPAs would have been

00:34:09.520 --> 00:34:14.720
 required to install backup generation, then likelihood the price would have escalated

00:34:14.720 --> 00:34:20.240
 in those PPAs and certainly taking them out of the money. They're in the money today, but they'd

00:34:20.240 --> 00:34:24.960
 likely would take them out of the money because the generator is going to pass that cost of that

00:34:24.960 --> 00:34:28.720
 backup generation back to their customers. In this case, it was going to be in need.

00:34:28.720 --> 00:34:34.240
 But that grandfathering is still in place. It was not taken away. But again, any installation after

00:34:34.240 --> 00:34:39.840
 2027 of January has to have backup generation. And so that's why you're seeing some of this kind

00:34:39.840 --> 00:34:45.120
 of rush to install. In addition, the federal government is doing away with a lot of the tax

00:34:45.120 --> 00:34:51.280
 credits and subsidies that both went to solar and battery storage containers. So there there is a

00:34:51.280 --> 00:34:57.040
 rush to try to get those so they can preserve those tax credits because otherwise the economics

00:34:57.040 --> 00:35:04.720
 changes for those types of facilities. Thank you. So within this, so the recommendation that we make

00:35:04.720 --> 00:35:10.720
 to the council was to create this integrated resource plan. Certainly from our position within

00:35:10.720 --> 00:35:18.080
 20 years, is that certainly we've gotten feedback on 15 to as much as 30 years. This particular plan

00:35:18.080 --> 00:35:23.680
 would or the process would evaluate the various types of resources that may be out there. And so

00:35:23.680 --> 00:35:29.440
 for example, if nuclear is something that the city might be interested in that can be justified

00:35:29.440 --> 00:35:34.560
 within the forecasted load, then we need to start that process now. But remember, that's likely a

00:35:34.560 --> 00:35:40.000
 20 year process that many of our ratepayers today that will have to foot a lot of that bill will

00:35:40.000 --> 00:35:45.360
 never see that right. And so so those are some of the challenges, you know, prioritizing and looking

00:35:45.360 --> 00:35:49.920
 at, you know, nuclear, hydrogen, geothermal, battery storage, all different technologies that

00:35:49.920 --> 00:35:55.920
 are out there are certainly something that we think needs to be vetted through through this process,

00:35:55.920 --> 00:36:02.720
 including natural gas. And then consider short term needs to reduce the risk. And so as we continue

00:36:03.520 --> 00:36:10.080
 to serve our load in in the current state that we have in the short position, that certainly poses a

00:36:10.080 --> 00:36:14.960
 lot of risks to our ratepayers and not being able to manage that. We'll talk a little bit about

00:36:14.960 --> 00:36:20.880
 about what happened in August of 2023, where we did not have enough generations to meet that,

00:36:20.880 --> 00:36:27.040
 and when we're exposed to real time prices, and, and then incorporated the local demand side

00:36:27.040 --> 00:36:32.640
 management. That's certainly something that we hear a lot of from our customers. We're certainly

00:36:32.640 --> 00:36:38.880
 interested we're need to assess where our system can and can do to do something like installing the

00:36:38.880 --> 00:36:43.920
 trouble thermostats in people's homes, right, and managing our virtual power plants when it comes to

00:36:43.920 --> 00:36:48.240
 battery storage to somebody may have in the garage or, or their Tesla or whatever the case may be.

00:36:48.240 --> 00:36:52.720
 There's a lot of system improvements that we believe we may have to make it. And we need to

00:36:52.720 --> 00:36:57.760
 get started on that. And having that plan, I think is important. Same thing with community solar.

00:36:57.760 --> 00:37:03.040
 Now we'll mention to you that we we have identified currently two properties that DME already owns,

00:37:03.040 --> 00:37:09.280
 and we're in the process of looking at a potential community solar installation within those, but

00:37:09.280 --> 00:37:16.720
 you're talking about one megawatt each, right. When we're short 183 megawatts, it doesn't make

00:37:16.720 --> 00:37:22.800
 a big splash, but at least it gets us moving in that direction, right. And so while some of these

00:37:22.800 --> 00:37:30.320
 resources may not be economical, they may still make sense from just the diversification standpoint,

00:37:30.320 --> 00:37:34.320
 right. You know, when I look at this plan, I look at almost like a retirement plan, right. You know,

00:37:34.320 --> 00:37:39.680
 you don't put your entire life savings in McDonald's stock, right. You have to have a good diversified

00:37:39.680 --> 00:37:43.840
 mix, right, to be able to give you that kind of long-term protection. And so that's how these

00:37:43.840 --> 00:37:49.760
 integrated resource plans are looked at. And certainly that plan as we develop it in concert

00:37:49.760 --> 00:37:55.520
 with, you know, Catherine and Michael and cognizant of this climate action plan and the goals,

00:37:55.520 --> 00:38:00.240
 is certainly something that needs to be incorporated into the consideration for these various

00:38:00.240 --> 00:38:07.040
 type of resources. And then we would anticipate that that process would likely take us 18 to

00:38:07.040 --> 00:38:13.360
 24 months to complete, and then be able to come back and make those recommendations from that plan

00:38:14.000 --> 00:38:22.400
 to the city council. So with that, I have any questions on the integrated resource plan? Anybody?

00:38:22.400 --> 00:38:34.320
 Okay, so got a couple graphs here for you. You know, just trying to explain here how DME works.

00:38:34.320 --> 00:38:43.040
 This is probably not necessarily a typical day, but certainly was a day in August, August 25th of 2023.

00:38:44.080 --> 00:38:47.760
 And just kind of walk you through kind of what some of these bars are. So this is,

00:38:47.760 --> 00:38:54.640
 the solid line is our load. This is generally how our load is. It kind of picks up, you know,

00:38:54.640 --> 00:38:59.840
 starts to drop off during the day hours, and it picks up in the afternoon hours. Usually our peak

00:38:59.840 --> 00:39:07.040
 is around the four to five o'clock range, if you're familiar on the transmission side. They talk about

00:39:07.040 --> 00:39:12.080
 this four coincident peaks, right, and that normally happens between four or five o'clock.

00:39:12.080 --> 00:39:16.720
 But really the scarcity periods are in the afternoons, during the summer, roughly between

00:39:16.720 --> 00:39:23.680
 seven o'clock and ten o'clock at night. And so as we go, and we're managing our position,

00:39:23.680 --> 00:39:29.360
 certainly we're looking at, okay, what can we produce? Where are prices? How are we locking

00:39:29.360 --> 00:39:36.080
 in things? Can we expose ourselves, and frankly our ratepayers, to real-time prices? Right now,

00:39:36.080 --> 00:39:41.200
 in many cases during the day, real-time prices, when there's a lot of solar, are down in the

00:39:41.200 --> 00:39:45.760
 five dollar range in some cases, there's been some days that we've seen prices go negative,

00:39:45.760 --> 00:39:51.840
 right? And so if I have a PPA, as an example, and I'm paying forty dollars a megawatt hour,

00:39:51.840 --> 00:39:57.600
 that's when I'm paying the developer, when he sells that into ERCOT, I get back the five dollars,

00:39:57.600 --> 00:40:02.320
 or in some cases, I'm going to pay an additional ten dollars for people to take that power. So now

00:40:02.320 --> 00:40:07.120
 that power hasn't cost me forty dollars, that power is now costing fifty dollars, right? And so those

00:40:07.120 --> 00:40:12.000
 are some of the things that we're managing, right, through these positions. We also use

00:40:12.000 --> 00:40:18.000
 these positions on our renewables, these green bars, in the late afternoon hours. We're looking

00:40:18.000 --> 00:40:22.080
 at, okay, are we certain that they're going to produce? Are we going to have a hedge there to

00:40:22.080 --> 00:40:28.880
 protect us from those price spikes? That's exactly what we do with the deck, right? We use the deck

00:40:28.880 --> 00:40:33.760
 as that hedge, right? We're buying power, so they're buying power two or three days in advance, or

00:40:33.760 --> 00:40:38.880
 some cases even months in advance. I'm using the deck to protect us, right, that if the power,

00:40:38.880 --> 00:40:44.000
 if power that day all of a sudden goes above the thirty-five dollar strike price of the deck,

00:40:44.000 --> 00:40:48.400
 the deck also produces and gives us that protection. It's the same thing that we do

00:40:48.400 --> 00:40:55.600
 with renewable energies, with the renewable energy PPAs as well. Part of the difference here is that

00:40:55.600 --> 00:41:00.080
 we have far more control of the deck, right? Now it is a machine, and there could be mechanical

00:41:00.080 --> 00:41:04.720
 issues, and certainly there could be fuel issues, so we recognize that. But by and large,

00:41:04.720 --> 00:41:11.920
 the deck, we push a button, it starts producing power, we have a lot more certainty. My AMO guys

00:41:11.920 --> 00:41:17.520
 call it doing the average of the average when it comes to how they're forecasting these renewable

00:41:17.520 --> 00:41:24.080
 energy, the renewable energy, and how we're managing our position, right? But anytime that the deck or

00:41:24.080 --> 00:41:31.760
 the renewables do not meet our forecasted load, actually our actual load, then we are then at that

00:41:31.760 --> 00:41:38.480
 point buying power that same day, right? So we are now exposed to real-time prices. And so that's

00:41:38.480 --> 00:41:46.720
 what happened to us in the summer of '23. We incurred, you know, 31 million dollars of cost

00:41:46.720 --> 00:41:55.760
 over a couple of week period, where the temperatures were so high that the demand for power

00:41:55.760 --> 00:42:02.960
 in our community stayed much higher than what we forecasted. And then wind didn't show up until

00:42:02.960 --> 00:42:08.640
 prices spiked up, and I did not have enough dispatchable generation to cover that position,

00:42:08.640 --> 00:42:13.440
 right? And so we ended up with all of these hours, three to four hours, where we were buying

00:42:13.440 --> 00:42:19.280
 power, right, in the market to serve the load, right? Very similar to the challenge that we had

00:42:19.280 --> 00:42:24.960
 during winter storm Uri. Certainly the option could have been just don't buy the power, right? And then

00:42:24.960 --> 00:42:30.880
 we're doing localized outages. We certainly don't think when the temperature is down minus six,

00:42:30.880 --> 00:42:36.160
 or the temperature is up 110, right, that our customers are really going to look at this very

00:42:36.160 --> 00:42:42.320
 favorably, that we didn't go out there and buy the power to serve them. So. Yes, sir?

00:42:43.200 --> 00:42:46.640
 Of course I want to apologize because I have to go, I have to run to another meeting. But before I go,

00:42:46.640 --> 00:42:52.880
 one question. This is really fascinating. I'm hearing two reasons why you want to go out looking

00:42:52.880 --> 00:42:59.520
 for more dispatchable power. The one was that the legislature might require amended that. The other

00:42:59.520 --> 00:43:05.200
 is what you're showing us here, that we get exposed to the retail market sometimes, and we don't have

00:43:05.200 --> 00:43:10.720
 enough with the deck to cover that. Am I understanding this? Yes, sir. Okay. All right, thanks for your

00:43:10.720 --> 00:43:16.960
 presentation. Sorry, I have to go. Could you discuss the role of time arbitrage in this graph

00:43:16.960 --> 00:43:26.000
 scenario? The what? Of energy time arbitrage or time shifting for load. Yeah, so, you know,

00:43:26.000 --> 00:43:32.560
 demand side management, I think, is kind of, you know, kind of what you're addressing. And certainly

00:43:32.560 --> 00:43:38.960
 we try to let our customers know when we anticipate these types of shortages, right, as, you know,

00:43:38.960 --> 00:43:47.040
 we'll issue, you know, conservation notices. Now we don't have the type of programs currently that

00:43:47.040 --> 00:43:53.120
 ERCOT has where we can dial up, you know, a major industrial customer and say, hey, can you shut down

00:43:53.120 --> 00:43:59.200
 and then we'll do some cost sharing with you on that. And so we try to do that. You know, I think

00:43:59.200 --> 00:44:04.400
 battery storage can also kind of provide some of that protection. It's certainly something we're

00:44:04.400 --> 00:44:09.280
 looking at. We have been looking at it. The economics just haven't been there. What I will

00:44:09.280 --> 00:44:15.600
 tell you is that in many cases we're looking at what other partner utilities, other MOUs are doing.

00:44:15.600 --> 00:44:24.560
 No other MOUs currently are buying and building their own wind and solar. They're not investing

00:44:24.560 --> 00:44:29.680
 in their own battery storage. They're capturing those through purchase power agreements. It's

00:44:29.680 --> 00:44:44.160
 kind of what we're moving to as well. So the generation need, as I mentioned earlier,

00:44:44.160 --> 00:44:51.360
 you know, in one of the graphs that I had, today we have a short position of about 183 megawatts.

00:44:51.360 --> 00:44:59.360
 We anticipate that that will continue to grow with our peak load to over 600 megawatts. You know,

00:44:59.360 --> 00:45:06.240
 native load, which is the non-data center load, is what we refer to that. We think that that's

00:45:06.240 --> 00:45:11.520
 going to probably grow about 100 megawatts. That's just normal development, multifamily,

00:45:11.520 --> 00:45:17.440
 you know, commercial, residential. Certainly that 100 megawatts is an estimate. There is a lot of

00:45:17.440 --> 00:45:24.560
 growth happening in Denton that certainly the 100 megawatts by 2036 may be a very conservative

00:45:25.280 --> 00:45:32.560
 number. I will mention to you that as a share of the ERCOT market, we comprise about half a percent,

00:45:32.560 --> 00:45:38.080
 and that continues to decrease. Because believe it or not, as much growth as there is in Denton,

00:45:38.080 --> 00:45:42.480
 there's actually even more growth in other parts of the state, right? That our share of the ERCOT

00:45:42.480 --> 00:45:49.440
 grid continues to actually come down a little bit. The scarcity period, I kind of mentioned the summer,

00:45:50.400 --> 00:45:56.080
 you know, that's usually, you know, six, seven to ten o'clock at night. In the winter, it's actually

00:45:56.080 --> 00:46:04.080
 a two-event situation. During the winter, we actually see scarcity periods in the morning,

00:46:04.080 --> 00:46:09.280
 about seven o'clock to nine o'clock in the morning. As wind starts to die out or sun doesn't show up,

00:46:09.280 --> 00:46:15.040
 you start seeing scarcity there in the winter, and of course then also in the afternoon as well.

00:46:16.800 --> 00:46:24.240
 Power price is something to be aware of, is that the current scarcity cap is $5,000 a megawatt hour.

00:46:24.240 --> 00:46:30.640
 During winter storm year eight, that was $9,000. There's some legislation that was reduced. What I

00:46:30.640 --> 00:46:37.360
 will tell you is that there are folks in the market today that are advocating that that scarcity cap

00:46:37.360 --> 00:46:43.760
 be moved back to $9,000 in order to be able to spur the economic incentive to build additional

00:46:43.760 --> 00:46:49.040
 generation, and there are folks out there that believe that that cap should be completely removed,

00:46:49.040 --> 00:46:55.280
 right? And so if you think about the cost that we incurred during winter storm year eight,

00:46:55.280 --> 00:47:02.320
 you know, $200 million at $9,000 a megawatt hour, right? If there was no cap of that,

00:47:02.320 --> 00:47:06.960
 you know, it would be a pretty devastating situation. But not just, frankly, not just

00:47:06.960 --> 00:47:14.640
 the immediate with the entire market. And so I mentioned already the cost that we had for

00:47:14.640 --> 00:47:22.400
 year eight, summer '23. And so our primary needs as we see them today is that we certainly believe

00:47:22.400 --> 00:47:28.720
 that dispatchable generation is kind of the immediate, you know, thing that would help address

00:47:28.720 --> 00:47:34.880
 some of the challenges that we're seeing from a price risk standpoint. And we're not alone in that.

00:47:35.920 --> 00:47:41.680
 Brownsville, Greenville, even Austin Energy, certainly CPS Energy, all our counterpart

00:47:41.680 --> 00:47:47.760
 MOUs have already kicked off the process to build additional generation. And that generation

00:47:47.760 --> 00:47:54.240
 is quick start generation, very similar to the facility that we own today. Maybe not necessarily

00:47:54.240 --> 00:47:59.920
 a combustion engine, but certainly they're looking at turbines. What I will tell you is that in the

00:47:59.920 --> 00:48:07.440
 market today, delivery of both combustion engines and turbines, if you put the if you put the order

00:48:07.440 --> 00:48:13.680
 today, right, you're probably not going to see those to 2030, 2031 at best, right? And so we're

00:48:13.680 --> 00:48:19.600
 already kind of behind the curve. If ultimately that's where we need to go. Certainly, if you're

00:48:19.600 --> 00:48:25.280
 going to add an additional two years of having to go through the process of creating an IRP. And if

00:48:25.280 --> 00:48:30.320
 in fact, that's what we decide to do, now you have to add an additional two years, if not longer,

00:48:30.320 --> 00:48:34.800
 right? And so, you know, we'll talk a little bit about how we might be able to kind of jump to the

00:48:34.800 --> 00:48:40.560
 front of the line. If that's something that ultimately we get the direction to do. We sort

00:48:40.560 --> 00:48:48.320
 of believe that currently the most viable alternative is a natural gas facility. We think that there's

00:48:48.320 --> 00:48:56.000
 ample fuel out there in supply to meet that. Surely, as we look at where we might acquire a

00:48:56.000 --> 00:49:01.680
 facility or replace a new facility, Denton is certainly not something that we would look at

00:49:01.680 --> 00:49:07.360
 for a number of reasons. One, currently, and I'll mention to you why, but currently Denton is in a

00:49:07.360 --> 00:49:12.400
 non-attainment area. So a facility would be limited in run hours, very similar to the facility that

00:49:12.400 --> 00:49:17.280
 we have today. It's limited through an EPA permit on how many hours it could run, although that

00:49:17.280 --> 00:49:24.800
 facility's never exceeded those requirements. And then also, we really don't need another competing

00:49:24.800 --> 00:49:30.320
 resource right next to our facility. You know, one of the challenges that Wind and Solar has

00:49:30.320 --> 00:49:35.920
 primarily in west Texas is the station of congestion, right? There's just too much power

00:49:35.920 --> 00:49:40.240
 going through very limited transmission lines, and so you see a lot of curtailment. And so we

00:49:40.240 --> 00:49:45.120
 think that certainly the economics of placing something in Denton is certainly problematic.

00:49:45.760 --> 00:49:49.360
 In addition to the fact that I think we've hurt our community, right? I think the community doesn't

00:49:49.360 --> 00:49:56.880
 want another facility in Denton, right? And so I think that would be a mistake to do that. Acquiring

00:49:56.880 --> 00:50:02.240
 an existing facility is certainly something that, at the time that I presented this to the council,

00:50:02.240 --> 00:50:10.000
 might have been viable. It may still be viable. A couple of things that have happened at the federal

00:50:10.000 --> 00:50:14.720
 level, and that's why I mentioned the non-attainment area, is that there's changes happening at the

00:50:14.720 --> 00:50:21.280
 federal level, both at the Department of Energy and also at the EPA, right? And rewriting, right? And

00:50:21.280 --> 00:50:27.840
 recopulating many of the greenhouse gas provisions that have been in place. And so there could be the

00:50:27.840 --> 00:50:34.720
 potential that that non-attainment area designation in the DFW area may just completely go away. And

00:50:34.720 --> 00:50:41.200
 at that point, there wouldn't be any limitations on running hours of our facility or any of the

00:50:41.200 --> 00:50:48.400
 facility within this area. In addition to that, a number of programs have been eliminated.

00:50:48.400 --> 00:51:00.320
 The last one that I read was $3.7 billion, $3.7 billion federal incentives for carbon capture

00:51:00.320 --> 00:51:06.160
 and decarbonization through grants have been eliminated, right? There's also been a lot of

00:51:06.800 --> 00:51:12.640
 previously held Clean Air Act provisions that are now being eliminated that would have,

00:51:12.640 --> 00:51:18.480
 if they had stayed in place, right? Shuttered some coal plants and older gas generation facilities.

00:51:18.480 --> 00:51:24.480
 That may go away. And so then those facilities, the economics of those facilities have now changed.

00:51:24.480 --> 00:51:30.240
 So the possibility of doing something like CPS Energy did, where they acquired two coal plants,

00:51:30.240 --> 00:51:35.440
 right? With the idea that they were going to convert them to natural gas, is likely at this

00:51:35.440 --> 00:51:41.360
 point might be somewhat of a challenge. We have not recommended to the council to go out there

00:51:41.360 --> 00:51:47.280
 and buy a coal plant to convert it, but certainly that's something that may be possible. It certainly

00:51:47.280 --> 00:51:51.600
 has been done, not just here in the state of Texas, but across the country as well.

00:51:51.600 --> 00:52:01.280
 Yes, sir. Did you have a question? Go ahead. On your generation, earlier in the presentation,

00:52:01.280 --> 00:52:07.120
 you were discussing a current RFP for 300 megawatts of solar wind and battery. How does

00:52:07.120 --> 00:52:13.680
 that relate to this slide here? Yeah, so our current mandate is still that we have 100% renewable,

00:52:13.680 --> 00:52:21.440
 right? And so we continue to be good stewards of the mandate that we have. And so certainly

00:52:21.440 --> 00:52:25.120
 we're going to be bringing that forward to council. Ultimately, it's going to be council's decision

00:52:25.120 --> 00:52:30.720
 whether or not to move forward with that. That's no different than how we're managing our power

00:52:30.720 --> 00:52:38.720
 plant today, right? That's owned by the citizens. And so we operate and we manage that facility

00:52:38.720 --> 00:52:44.320
 just like we do anything else at the city level. We have a fiduciary and steward responsibility.

00:52:44.320 --> 00:52:48.560
 And so that's what we do. That's what we're doing here is we're still taking those forward

00:52:48.560 --> 00:52:52.720
 for consideration to the council. Now, within the context of all these discussions,

00:52:52.720 --> 00:52:58.480
 we'll certainly see where the council lands on moving forward with those agreements or not.

00:53:01.200 --> 00:53:14.000
 Yeah, the fact that so many federal regulations are being axed concerns me, and I know it concerns

00:53:14.000 --> 00:53:26.080
 you, especially you, because all those, well, we still have to think about being carbon neutral by

00:53:26.080 --> 00:53:36.960
 2050, correct? That's still the goal. Yeah. And despite what happens in Washington, I would hope

00:53:36.960 --> 00:53:50.160
 that you will still find ways to keep rates low, et cetera, et cetera, without further endangering

00:53:51.120 --> 00:54:01.760
 the future of climate change. Because it's, it's, from my standpoint, when I, when I get a place,

00:54:01.760 --> 00:54:09.520
 a paper like this, a very succinct and great presentation, but in no, no place is climate

00:54:09.520 --> 00:54:16.800
 change mentioned. And I think the more that we bring that into the equation,

00:54:18.800 --> 00:54:24.240
 the better it's going to be for everybody, business-wise and everything. Because the more

00:54:24.240 --> 00:54:30.240
 we can get ahead of the curve now, the better shape will be in when everybody else has decided

00:54:30.240 --> 00:54:39.520
 to jump on the wagon down the road. So I just, I just hope that we keep our goal of 2050 in mind

00:54:39.520 --> 00:54:48.640
 and that the specter of climate change is always there. Because, as you know, as we all know,

00:54:48.640 --> 00:54:57.040
 it is happening and things aren't getting any better. So that's all. Yes, sir. What I'll say

00:54:57.040 --> 00:55:01.760
 is that certainly as a public utility, you know, we want to listen to our customers and certainly

00:55:01.760 --> 00:55:06.880
 many of them have my cell phone number and call me directly. And we're certainly happy to take those

00:55:06.880 --> 00:55:13.280
 calls. What I will tell you, and certainly don't have any documented data to show you, I can just

00:55:13.280 --> 00:55:18.640
 tell you anecdotally, I've gotten more phone calls from more customers about the price increases that

00:55:18.640 --> 00:55:25.840
 we have than about how we're dealing with our renewable goal, right? And so certainly addressing

00:55:25.840 --> 00:55:32.080
 that and making sure that we're doing the best we can. You know, Jose and Tony and their folks

00:55:32.080 --> 00:55:37.280
 are in the market every day and they're working hard to try to make sure that we're doing the best

00:55:37.280 --> 00:55:42.560
 for our customer from a rate standpoint. But at some point, if they don't have the resources

00:55:42.560 --> 00:55:48.480
 that they need to be able to continue doing that, it becomes a very challenging position, right? And

00:55:48.480 --> 00:55:53.040
 so the last thing that we want to do is to have to come back to the council and ask them for another

00:55:53.040 --> 00:55:59.760
 $31 million to finance over five years. Yes, sir. Not to jump ahead too far, but on the mention of

00:55:59.760 --> 00:56:05.680
 keeping prices in focus, I see that even in slide 13, you have discussion about a price increase from

00:56:05.680 --> 00:56:12.000
 14.2 to 14.3 in the anticipation of bringing on additional generation capacity. I'm just curious

00:56:12.000 --> 00:56:17.760
 how we're framing this discussion around what seems to be a pretty prescriptive need for a,

00:56:17.760 --> 00:56:23.760
 what I'm reading as a peaker gas plant, but I'm also hearing discussion of taking on base load.

00:56:23.760 --> 00:56:29.360
 It's confusing to me why we're taking that as the assumption without direction. And I understand

00:56:29.360 --> 00:56:35.840
 this is just a discussion on our agenda, but a future discussion point for council. I guess I've

00:56:35.840 --> 00:56:40.640
 just not seen some of those economics you're discussing about why these alternatives aren't

00:56:40.640 --> 00:56:46.960
 being explored to the degree we seem so certain about acquisitions of existing facilities. I guess

00:56:46.960 --> 00:56:52.880
 that's just a concern of mine that I look forward to hearing more from you about. Yeah, I think

00:56:52.880 --> 00:56:58.160
 principally because of what we're seeing in the market, you know, and what's actually being

00:56:58.160 --> 00:57:04.160
 constructed in the market and what the plans are by, you know, other utilities, very similar to us,

00:57:04.160 --> 00:57:11.040
 right? And so that's certainly grounded in that. Ultimately, that's a decision for the community

00:57:11.040 --> 00:57:16.480
 and a decision for the council on what direction we're going to head, right? As an example,

00:57:16.480 --> 00:57:23.760
 Austin Energy is building a five megawatt hydro, geothermal facility out in Nacogdoches, right?

00:57:23.760 --> 00:57:30.000
 And that's great, right? And certainly we think geothermal might have a place for DME as well.

00:57:30.000 --> 00:57:34.240
 I think it was important to understand that five megawatts for Austin Energy, when they have a peak

00:57:34.240 --> 00:57:41.920
 load of 2,700 megawatts, it's really just a drop, right, in the bucket. And not only that, but, you

00:57:41.920 --> 00:57:47.440
 know, conversations I've had with folks in Austin Energy is that folks in Nacogdoches are concerned

00:57:47.440 --> 00:57:51.200
 that that facility is going to cause earthquakes in Nacogdoches. And so they've not been very

00:57:51.200 --> 00:57:56.480
 supportive of that facility, right? And so again, I think each resource has its challenges, but I

00:57:56.480 --> 00:58:02.560
 think that if we're looking at a diversified portfolio, looking at all of those resources and

00:58:02.560 --> 00:58:07.600
 how they ultimately interplay and how we're managing our energy needs for our community is

00:58:07.600 --> 00:58:13.600
 something that we'll continue to have conversations about. But also kind of based on the availability

00:58:13.600 --> 00:58:20.320
 and what others are doing, I think Quick Start Generation today is likely the best alternative,

00:58:20.320 --> 00:58:24.960
 the most immediate alternative. And we'll talk a little bit about the Texas Energy Fund as well

00:58:24.960 --> 00:58:31.040
 that contains many of those. But a base load unit, you know, kind of the best practice is once you get

00:58:31.040 --> 00:58:38.240
 at about 1,200 megawatts, you know, that's when a base load unit really makes sense, right? Again,

00:58:38.240 --> 00:58:43.920
 2024 will be at 900 megawatts. I don't think a base load unit makes sense, but things can change

00:58:43.920 --> 00:58:48.400
 between now and then, right? And so now if you're talking about nuclear, whether it's a traditional

00:58:48.400 --> 00:58:55.440
 nuclear facility or an SMR, those are base load units, right? And so again, a lot of different

00:58:55.440 --> 00:59:01.280
 numbers here that we're still going to have to go through. And we'll see ultimately where the

00:59:01.280 --> 00:59:07.120
 community stands on this integrated resource plan. Does DME have any concern about the availability

00:59:07.120 --> 00:59:13.440
 of natural gas for power generation? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think, you know, Winter Storm

00:59:13.440 --> 00:59:20.160
 URI is kind of one big example. I read an article the other day that some of the winterization that

00:59:20.160 --> 00:59:25.760
 that the oil and gas industry was supposed to do, you know, they may not have completely done,

00:59:25.760 --> 00:59:30.080
 right? And so certainly it's something that's on our mind constantly as we're managing that

00:59:30.080 --> 00:59:36.960
 facility. What I can tell you is that since URI, we've not seen any drop in that fuel to that

00:59:36.960 --> 00:59:42.560
 facility. Now we're still exposed that we have one gas pipeline. We only have one source. We don't

00:59:42.560 --> 00:59:48.800
 have gas storage on site. And so there's still some level of risk. But what I'll tell you is

00:59:48.800 --> 00:59:56.480
 that natural gas currently is the leading fuel mix out in the market. And those that are looking to

00:59:56.480 --> 01:00:08.560
 build additional generation, which only dispatchable, is natural gas. So this is just some of the power

01:00:08.560 --> 01:00:14.640
 trends, kind of what we see. Again, this is just a data that I picked, just to give you some context

01:00:14.640 --> 01:00:20.640
 of where we are. So in the morning hours, you know, certainly at seven o'clock, you have very little

01:00:20.640 --> 01:00:25.440
 wind that's kind of depicted here in this graph. There's very little solar. There's no solar that

01:00:25.440 --> 01:00:30.160
 starts to pick up around seven o'clock, right? You know, wind at that time is pretty good, and it

01:00:30.160 --> 01:00:35.520
 starts to die down. Solar starts to pick up during the day, right? And then it dies out in the

01:00:35.520 --> 01:00:42.080
 afternoon. You know, and in the afternoon, wind picks up, right? And it's in these periods here,

01:00:42.080 --> 01:00:48.320
 in the morning and in the afternoon, when the sun's coming down and the wind starts to pick up,

01:00:48.320 --> 01:00:52.720
 that if one or the other fails, then all of a sudden you start to see scarcity prices. Same thing

01:00:52.720 --> 01:00:58.240
 during the day, right? If there is issues that happen on the transmission side, or certainly

01:00:58.240 --> 01:01:03.440
 if solar doesn't begin, isn't producing, or there's an issue that happens, then you can have some

01:01:03.440 --> 01:01:10.320
 scarcity during the day. And in this particular slide, you have, you know, some hydro, just to

01:01:10.320 --> 01:01:15.120
 give you some context of how much hydro is out there. You know, also power storage. These are

01:01:15.120 --> 01:01:20.320
 batteries, right? Now that continues to grow, and we anticipate that there will continue to be

01:01:20.320 --> 01:01:26.400
 additional resources, a battery storage, excuse me. But the natural gas continues to certainly

01:01:26.400 --> 01:01:31.920
 still make up kind of the lion's share of the power that's there. And then you have, you know,

01:01:31.920 --> 01:01:37.520
 some coal. I'll show you another graph with coal that has actually started to come down. Again,

01:01:37.520 --> 01:01:44.000
 we'll see what happens with some of the plants that had been scheduled to be shuttered kind of

01:01:44.000 --> 01:01:49.360
 in this new environment. And then you have your two nuclear facilities here in the state of Texas.

01:01:49.360 --> 01:01:55.280
 And so generally this is kind of a day in the life of kind of what we see. And, I mean, these

01:01:55.280 --> 01:02:01.360
 charts and this information you can find on the ERCOT website that's there, and it's updated

01:02:01.360 --> 01:02:08.160
 every five minutes. And then for the prices standpoint, you know, these are also directly

01:02:08.160 --> 01:02:15.440
 from the ERCOT grid, right, after the ERCOT website. This dotted line that you can see here,

01:02:15.440 --> 01:02:22.720
 this is kind of the forecast of where prices ERCOT believes will be in the next day, right? Same

01:02:22.720 --> 01:02:27.920
 thing in this slide here. It's a dotted line. And then the solid line is actually what happened,

01:02:27.920 --> 01:02:33.600
 right? And so many cases, you know, ERCOT's actually pretty good, right? And so the actual

01:02:33.600 --> 01:02:38.640
 real-time prices match up pretty well to their forecast. But if there's some type of interruption,

01:02:38.640 --> 01:02:43.280
 if there's some type of issue, if there's more demand, all of a sudden you start seeing those

01:02:43.280 --> 01:02:48.320
 prices go up. In this particular case, prices, we're going to forecast it to be a little bit

01:02:48.320 --> 01:02:55.120
 over $100. Before a very short period of time, they actually spiked up to over $150. It's during

01:02:55.120 --> 01:02:59.280
 those spikes, right, that many of these resources that are out there that are sitting on the

01:02:59.280 --> 01:03:04.560
 sidelines that aren't producing like the deck, right, once they get those price signals, right,

01:03:04.560 --> 01:03:10.400
 that's when they start producing. For the deck, it's about $35. So at $35, when prices go above

01:03:10.400 --> 01:03:17.200
 $35, the deck's producing power at whatever time of day or night that may happen. And so this is

01:03:17.200 --> 01:03:23.280
 kind of the normal type of picture that we see during the summer. This particular day, you know,

01:03:23.280 --> 01:03:27.760
 we don't know what happened other than there was some type of interruption. There was either a

01:03:27.760 --> 01:03:34.800
 downage or at some facility or there was some type of transmission issue that during that early morning

01:03:34.800 --> 01:03:43.760
 hours, all of a sudden prices peaked, right, or increased from where they were projected to be.

01:03:43.760 --> 01:03:50.480
 And these are the types of data and types of things that our energy management organization

01:03:50.480 --> 01:03:56.800
 is constantly looking at and monitoring to make sure that we're staying on top of

01:03:56.800 --> 01:04:06.240
 what the ultimate cost to our rents is. So this is Mr. Richter, the slide that you were referring to.

01:04:06.240 --> 01:04:14.880
 So currently, our summer price, so D&E has a winter and summer rate structure for residential.

01:04:14.880 --> 01:04:22.000
 So this is the summer schedule. So at 1,000 kilowatt hours, which is what in the market

01:04:22.000 --> 01:04:28.800
 is an average residential customer, you know, they're paying about $122 per month. That's about,

01:04:28.800 --> 01:04:34.880
 you know, that's 14.2 cents per kilowatt hour. We certainly think that that rate's still very

01:04:34.880 --> 01:04:41.760
 competitive. Certainly, you know, when we compare ourselves to the deregulating market, we're still

01:04:41.760 --> 01:04:48.240
 below what is being offered at 12 in the 24-month contract. Certainly, we believe that without the

01:04:48.240 --> 01:04:55.680
 deck, if the deck wasn't there, that cost to our ratepayers would increase by $96. Again,

01:04:55.680 --> 01:05:00.160
 these are estimates, right? They are a little bit dated from when I put this presentation together.

01:05:00.160 --> 01:05:06.480
 With additional generation, if we were to build additional generation or acquire additional

01:05:06.480 --> 01:05:11.200
 generation today, we certainly think that that would help us continue to moderate and keep those

01:05:11.200 --> 01:05:19.360
 rates pretty stable over the next several years. Without additional generation, and certainly we're

01:05:19.360 --> 01:05:25.280
 seeing that now, is we continue to see the price of power increasing as we're buying power. Whether

01:05:25.280 --> 01:05:30.800
 we're buying power to the foreign market or we're buying it the next day or real time, we continue

01:05:30.800 --> 01:05:38.160
 to see the cost of power continue to increase, right? And now for next year, you may have seen

01:05:38.160 --> 01:05:44.560
 in our budget presentation, we are recommending no base rate increase to our customers for the

01:05:44.560 --> 01:05:50.160
 next fiscal year. We are already ready to come to the PUB and the Council, and our recommendation

01:05:50.160 --> 01:05:55.200
 on the ECA, which is how we pass through our cost to our customers, is to maintain it at where we

01:05:55.200 --> 01:06:02.000
 are. So we're not projecting an increase to the ECA either. So this power to choose, these are the,

01:06:02.640 --> 01:06:08.160
 at the time when I looked at this, on a 12-month contract, if you were in an unregulated area,

01:06:08.160 --> 01:06:14.080
 you could pick your own provider. You'd be looking at a little bit over 15 cents a kilowatt hour

01:06:14.080 --> 01:06:20.160
 compared to our 14 cents. A 24-month contract would be a little bit more expensive at 15.8.

01:06:20.160 --> 01:06:26.880
 And something that many of our customers just don't know, right, is when you're in a deregulated

01:06:26.880 --> 01:06:34.960
 market, if your provider goes out of business, or if you are outside of your contract, you go

01:06:34.960 --> 01:06:39.760
 to their highest tiered rate, right? In this particular case, it's called the polymer rate,

01:06:39.760 --> 01:06:45.280
 the provider of last resort. That rate at the time when I looked at it was almost 20 cents, right?

01:06:45.280 --> 01:06:48.800
 And so if you're a customer and you're not constantly managing your contract and you're

01:06:48.800 --> 01:06:54.800
 on a contract, you're going to go to their most expensive rate, right? So for many customers in

01:06:54.800 --> 01:07:02.720
 those situations, they may go a couple of months not realizing until they get that bill, right? Oh,

01:07:02.720 --> 01:07:06.560
 I should have renewed that contract, right? So with DME, there is no contract, right? With DME,

01:07:06.560 --> 01:07:11.520
 everybody gets the same rate across all the rate classes. And then for our commercial customers,

01:07:11.520 --> 01:07:19.600
 this is what they would actually pay with, without the additional generation and with

01:07:20.560 --> 01:07:27.040
 additional generation. So certainly, we have two types, three types of customers, currently small,

01:07:27.040 --> 01:07:30.640
 and they use about a thousand, a little bit over a thousand kilowatt hours on average,

01:07:30.640 --> 01:07:36.800
 general service medium. You know, once you get to the medium and large, you're not only playing

01:07:36.800 --> 01:07:41.840
 a usage rate, you're also playing a demand rate, right? So, but for them, again, you see here kind

01:07:41.840 --> 01:07:48.080
 of what the cost would be for a large average customer without generation, you're looking at

01:07:48.080 --> 01:07:54.720
 over $46,000 additional cost. So we have four total rate tiers, if we're including residential

01:07:54.720 --> 01:08:00.400
 and the three commercial? Yes. Do you see a role at all for, I guess, broadening the amount of

01:08:00.400 --> 01:08:05.600
 buckets that we have in rate tiers? I'm thinking of water, for example, having over six tiers for

01:08:05.600 --> 01:08:13.360
 different uses, right? Do you see a function there for kind of helping even out what people are paying?

01:08:13.360 --> 01:08:18.560
 So we're working on what's called a cost of service study now, and we're planning to bring that forward

01:08:18.560 --> 01:08:24.480
 to the PV and the council towards the end of this year to talk about where our rate structure is,

01:08:24.480 --> 01:08:30.080
 our design, and then we've hired a consultant to do that, and we'll be making some recommendations

01:08:30.080 --> 01:08:37.200
 based on what's out there in the market and what may be right for this community. And then certainly,

01:08:37.200 --> 01:08:41.120
 if council wants us to look at a different type of rate structure, they also want to be their

01:08:41.120 --> 01:08:46.320
 prerogative, and we'll be looking for that direction to do that. So the PV's rate structure has been in

01:08:46.320 --> 01:08:54.400
 place for many, many years, and it's probably more along the traditional lines of what a utility

01:08:54.400 --> 01:08:59.360
 rate structure is, but you find differences throughout the country and certainly across the state of Texas as well.

01:08:59.360 --> 01:09:06.160
 Like a data center is paying the same rate as any other commercial customer?

01:09:07.440 --> 01:09:14.960
 No. So we have two data centers. Both data centers are covered under a power purchase agreement,

01:09:14.960 --> 01:09:25.840
 and so their rates on what we call the base rate side are confidential, so they don't pay a tariff

01:09:25.840 --> 01:09:31.520
 rate. Part of this process of doing a rate study is ultimately we're going to recommend

01:09:31.520 --> 01:09:37.920
 a actual tariff rate that will be a separate, so instead of having three general service commercial

01:09:37.920 --> 01:09:44.640
 rates, we'll have a fourth one that'll be for all data centers. Now the data centers will also pay

01:09:44.640 --> 01:09:52.240
 an ECA, and we've now created what's called large load ECA. So we have a native ECA, so all our other

01:09:52.240 --> 01:10:00.320
 customers pay a 462 is what they're paying per kilowatt hour on ECA. The data center currently

01:10:00.320 --> 01:10:06.480
 is paying a little bit over five cents, and so we're managing those separately, but those are

01:10:06.480 --> 01:10:15.040
 published rates. And then there's also this other rate called the transmission cost recovery factor

01:10:15.040 --> 01:10:19.920
 that does apply to the data centers as well, and all our customers. And that's how we pass

01:10:19.920 --> 01:10:23.120
 through cost for transmission across our system. Thank you.

01:10:27.360 --> 01:10:33.200
 So the conversations we have with the council and in the possibility of acquiring an existing

01:10:33.200 --> 01:10:38.960
 facility, again I already mentioned to you based on some of the federal initiatives, some of the

01:10:38.960 --> 01:10:46.240
 economics on that may have changed. I will tell you that I've had probably no less than five or

01:10:46.240 --> 01:10:52.320
 seven phone calls from folks that are willing to enter into conversations about us acquiring their

01:10:52.320 --> 01:10:57.760
 facility. I think we've lost a little bit of our initiative, right, and because now I'm getting

01:10:57.760 --> 01:11:03.600
 solicited instead of me calling out there and looking for a deal. But certainly keeping,

01:11:03.600 --> 01:11:08.480
 looking at facility within ERCOT, right, there's actually areas in the state of Texas that are not

01:11:08.480 --> 01:11:12.800
 in the ERCOT region, so we would not be looking at that. Certainly we wouldn't be looking for

01:11:12.800 --> 01:11:19.680
 something out of the state. So certainly in the ERCOT grid within the North Load Zone, so

01:11:19.680 --> 01:11:23.680
 so ERCOT is broken out of the various load zones. We think that certainly keeping it within our

01:11:23.680 --> 01:11:29.200
 load zone would be preferable, but certainly not, we wouldn't necessarily limit ourselves to

01:11:29.200 --> 01:11:34.960
 a deal if there is a deal to be made outside of that zone. And then I already mentioned

01:11:34.960 --> 01:11:40.240
 that we would not be looking at something within the City of Dent. Nuclear, I mentioned from a

01:11:40.240 --> 01:11:47.280
 generation type, very unlikely, right, that those two facilities would be sold. I think they'll be

01:11:47.280 --> 01:11:53.600
 certainly cost prohibitive. Coal and lignite, well I think, you know, I mentioned CPS Energy did that.

01:11:53.600 --> 01:11:58.960
 You know, there might be some attraction to saying we're going to buy a coal plant and then we're

01:11:58.960 --> 01:12:05.040
 going to convert it to natural gas, right, and so now you take a very dirty type of facility and

01:12:05.040 --> 01:12:08.880
 you're going to convert it to something that's not, and you kind of take that credit, right, but

01:12:08.880 --> 01:12:15.360
 certainly we understand, I mean, D&E through TNPA shut down Givens Creek, right, so I think

01:12:15.360 --> 01:12:20.800
 going and purchasing another coal plant is, you know, probably unlikely. Again, maybe now

01:12:20.800 --> 01:12:26.160
 uneconomical based on some of the provisions in the federal level. And in natural gas there are

01:12:26.160 --> 01:12:32.320
 existing about 100 generators out there today that are already in existence. I'll talk a little bit

01:12:32.320 --> 01:12:39.040
 about the Texas Energy Fund and some potential projects there as well that might be acquired,

01:12:39.040 --> 01:12:44.160
 right. And then from a design standpoint, surely some of these facilities might be baseloads,

01:12:44.160 --> 01:12:48.880
 some may be quick start generation. You can still take a baseload unit and convert it to,

01:12:48.880 --> 01:12:53.440
 you know, to a quick start generation if that, if the investment to keep it at a baseload level

01:12:53.440 --> 01:12:59.920
 might be too expensive, be cost prohibitive. There is another facility in Denton that I office right

01:12:59.920 --> 01:13:06.320
 next to on Spencer that's owned by Garland. That is a baseload unit, but again that's certainly well,

01:13:06.320 --> 01:13:12.240
 D&E, the city used to own that, right. We likely wouldn't be looking to acquire that type of

01:13:12.240 --> 01:13:17.680
 facility. I think from a capacity standpoint, in light of the fact that we believe we need 600

01:13:17.680 --> 01:13:22.560
 megawatts, I think anything less than 100 megawatts is probably not something we're going to look at.

01:13:22.560 --> 01:13:26.480
 So I think kind of setting that threshold. But then at that point you're looking at multiple

01:13:26.480 --> 01:13:33.600
 type of facilities to get you that 600. And then, or if it's a single hundred that you can expand,

01:13:33.600 --> 01:13:39.360
 that might be something that might be attractive as well. And so this is just kind of what the

01:13:39.360 --> 01:13:47.040
 generation mix has been, you know, over the last, you know, 24, 25 years. And you can see here on

01:13:47.040 --> 01:13:52.240
 the straight line, you know, this is coal, right. So coal has steadily decreased over the years.

01:13:52.240 --> 01:13:58.640
 We'll see what the next few years kind of has in store for that. Then you have your nuclear

01:13:58.640 --> 01:14:05.280
 nuclear bomb. There's been two for a very long time. You have now natural gas that kind of has

01:14:05.280 --> 01:14:11.680
 wavered. If you start looking here in these outer years, or the more current years, the spikes here

01:14:11.680 --> 01:14:18.400
 are starting to come down as renewables start to come into the market, right. And so as we're

01:14:18.400 --> 01:14:23.280
 looking for opportunities to acquire what makes sense, certainly natural gas continues to be

01:14:23.280 --> 01:14:28.160
 the lion's share of what's out there, certainly as coal continues to come down.

01:14:30.880 --> 01:14:36.320
 And it's just a recap of what's out there again. In megawatts, two nuclear facilities over 400

01:14:36.320 --> 01:14:43.760
 megawatts, leg-mounted coal still over 16,000 megawatts, natural gas over 65,000 megawatts

01:14:43.760 --> 01:14:51.600
 that comprise that hundred generators of which the deck is one. I have a question. Yes, sir. Just a

01:14:51.600 --> 01:14:58.560
 matter of diminishing, is battery storage considered dispatchable? No, it's not. Why is that?

01:15:00.880 --> 01:15:06.960
 Because the regulators decided that it's not dispatchable. Even though you can get it like that.

01:15:06.960 --> 01:15:19.360
 Huh. Thanks. So in November of '23, there was a statewide election. There was a proposition

01:15:19.360 --> 01:15:26.880
 to adopt what's called the Texan Energy Fund. That was approved. I would say overwhelmingly across

01:15:26.880 --> 01:15:33.200
 the state, in the city of Denton, it was approved by over 60 percent of voters that voted in the

01:15:33.200 --> 01:15:40.560
 election. So about 15,000 voters that that particular proposition, over 60 percent of them

01:15:40.560 --> 01:15:49.600
 voted in favor. What that proposition did is added $10 billion over two biennium. Of that $10 billion,

01:15:49.600 --> 01:15:56.480
 $7 billion was to build additional dispatchable generation up to 10,000 megawatts of additional

01:15:56.480 --> 01:16:03.840
 dispatchable generation. And so the application process opened. There have been a number of

01:16:03.840 --> 01:16:10.640
 facilities that are proposals that have been made. This is kind of where things stand today

01:16:10.640 --> 01:16:17.360
 of what's being considered. There's been a number of facilities that were proposed that have now

01:16:17.360 --> 01:16:24.880
 dropped out. Two provisions or two requirements in applying for this particular funding was that you

01:16:24.880 --> 01:16:30.960
 had to have land and or control of land and that you have to have a facility that was designed.

01:16:30.960 --> 01:16:36.240
 And so DME did not have land. We didn't have a design and we didn't have a direction to apply

01:16:36.240 --> 01:16:41.840
 for this funding. So DME did not provide for this funding. But in looking at what may be out there

01:16:41.840 --> 01:16:48.080
 from an opportunity standpoint to acquire, these are some facilities that we might look at to acquire.

01:16:48.080 --> 01:16:53.920
 Right? There's already land that they've acquired or have rights to and there's already a design.

01:16:53.920 --> 01:17:00.560
 Right? So, and likelihood, they've already placed orders for their types of engines or turbines

01:17:00.560 --> 01:17:07.360
 or combined cycle, whatever that may be. And so these will also be some potential facilities

01:17:07.360 --> 01:17:13.200
 that we could look at to try to acquire. In this particular case, in order to do that,

01:17:13.200 --> 01:17:18.400
 it would likely come with some of that Texas Energy Fund funding as well. So, but again,

01:17:19.200 --> 01:17:24.000
 just trying to give the council and certainly, you know, here at the committee kind of what the breadth of all

01:17:24.000 --> 01:17:27.600
 the possibilities might be. Again, there's not anything out there that we have in the works

01:17:27.600 --> 01:17:33.760
 or that we've talked to. Just kind of what is the realm of possibilities that exist today.

01:17:33.760 --> 01:17:41.120
 So with that, that concludes my presentation. Certainly, if you have any additional questions,

01:17:41.120 --> 01:17:52.000
 happy to try to address them. Anyone? Well, I have a question. In the future, you're interested in

01:17:52.000 --> 01:18:01.040
 storage batteries, as you said, at one point. So my comment is, thank you very much for a very

01:18:01.040 --> 01:18:09.760
 well-documented and thorough presentation. And I really appreciate that you look at a diversified

01:18:11.120 --> 01:18:18.400
 acquisition portfolio. Thank you, sir. Yeah, thanks very much. And I know we all look forward

01:18:18.400 --> 01:18:26.640
 to getting the presentation on the renewable resource or the integrated resource plan.

01:18:26.640 --> 01:18:31.440
 Yes, sir. When it's ready. This was good luck with that. Thank you. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

01:18:31.440 --> 01:18:36.560
 Thank you for me, too. You guys have a difficult job and we appreciate everything you do for the

01:18:36.560 --> 01:18:52.080
 community. It's actually a lot of fun. So thank you. All right. Are we still in session? We are.

01:18:52.080 --> 01:19:05.760
 Our next report is CIVA report. Hold discussion and give staff direction on the new public

01:19:05.760 --> 01:19:22.000
 facing city of Denton air quality dashboard. Good afternoon, community. Caitlin Davis,

01:19:22.000 --> 01:19:27.360
 I'm one of the conservation program coordinators in the environmental services and sustainability

01:19:27.360 --> 01:19:31.200
 department. And today I'm just going to talk to you guys about our new city of Denton

01:19:31.200 --> 01:19:37.040
 public facing air quality dashboard. So I'm going to outline what I'm going to be speaking

01:19:37.040 --> 01:19:41.520
 to you all about today. First, I'm going to give a brief background over the city of Denton air

01:19:41.520 --> 01:19:48.400
 quality monitoring in the area. And I'm going to give an overview of the dashboard as it resides

01:19:48.400 --> 01:19:55.200
 on our sustainable Denton website. Throughout the presentation, I'm going to give time for questions

01:19:55.200 --> 01:19:59.360
 and feedback from the committee. And then I'll talk about some next steps for the dashboard.

01:20:01.760 --> 01:20:08.000
 All right. So a bit of a background as Mr. Fuente stated in his presentation that the Denton is in

01:20:08.000 --> 01:20:14.400
 DFW and DFW is a non-attainment for ground level ozone. This means an area is considered

01:20:14.400 --> 01:20:19.600
 non-attainment when it has ozone levels that exceed limits set by the national ambient air

01:20:19.600 --> 01:20:26.160
 quality standards or NAQS. It's looking like we may be a non-attainment for particulate matter as well.

01:20:28.160 --> 01:20:33.280
 And the Clear Air Act establishes NAQS for criteria pollutants or common air quality

01:20:33.280 --> 01:20:39.520
 pollutants that can be harmful to the environment. This includes ground level ozone, particulate

01:20:39.520 --> 01:20:46.560
 matter, carbon monoxide, lead, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen dioxide. And the Texas Commission

01:20:46.560 --> 01:20:54.400
 on Environmental Quality or TCEQ has 46 regulatory monitors in DFW alone. And there is one TCEQ

01:20:54.400 --> 01:21:00.880
 air quality site in Northwest Denton near the airport. This site measures ambient weather,

01:21:00.880 --> 01:21:08.000
 so wind data, so wind speed and wind direction, precipitation, solar radiation. It also measures

01:21:08.000 --> 01:21:15.680
 nitric oxide, nitrogen dioxide, oxides and nitrogen, and particulate matter, specifically PM2.5. So

01:21:15.680 --> 01:21:21.520
 this is particulate matter that is 2.5 microns or less in diameter, so very small particles.

01:21:21.520 --> 01:21:30.160
 It also measures total volatile organic compounds or TBOC. However, this air quality monitor does

01:21:30.160 --> 01:21:35.120
 not provide a wider look or even a closer look at the neighborhood level throughout the city.

01:21:35.120 --> 01:21:42.880
 So in 2023, City of Denton Environmental Services and Sustainability began the process of acquiring

01:21:42.880 --> 01:21:49.520
 and installing several AQ mesh sensors throughout the city. These sensors were chosen because they

01:21:49.520 --> 01:21:55.360
 are small and they are easy to install. They are a little bit cheaper to install and acquire.

01:21:55.360 --> 01:22:00.720
 They are customizable, so you can pick and choose which sensors you want to include and

01:22:00.720 --> 01:22:07.520
 which pollutants to measure. They are extremely accurate, and data is provided in near real time.

01:22:07.520 --> 01:22:13.760
 So these sensors, they collect air quality data every 15 minutes, and at the top of every hour,

01:22:13.760 --> 01:22:21.440
 it'll average that data and then record that average every hour. So in collaboration with

01:22:21.440 --> 01:22:29.120
 Denton Municipal Electric, staff installed these sensors, 12 sensors, in two different phases.

01:22:29.120 --> 01:22:35.600
 Phase two was completed in February 2023, and we installed six different sensors at electric

01:22:35.600 --> 01:22:41.840
 substations. These were a little bit more difficult to install, just the connections were difficult

01:22:41.840 --> 01:22:45.520
 and a little bit more difficult to access by staff. We have to coordinate with DME when we

01:22:45.520 --> 01:22:53.040
 come out and do any sort of maintenance on these. So in phase two, we decided to install an additional

01:22:53.040 --> 01:22:58.560
 six sensors at these light poles, which are a little bit easier to access. They're right off

01:22:58.560 --> 01:23:04.640
 of the roads, and site locations for the sensors were chosen based on several criteria, including

01:23:04.640 --> 01:23:10.560
 sufficient spatial distribution throughout the city, as well as DC power availability, minimal tree

01:23:10.560 --> 01:23:16.320
 canopy cover, which can impact the readings here, and distance from roadways. So keeping them out of

01:23:16.320 --> 01:23:20.960
 access by the public, but still easy to access by staff.

01:23:20.960 --> 01:23:27.760
 So like I said, these sensors were chosen because they're extremely accurate, and they have a low

01:23:27.760 --> 01:23:33.360
 detection limit, which means they can pick up relatively low levels of different pollutants.

01:23:33.360 --> 01:23:40.000
 And these are configured to measure ozone particulate matter, PM2.5 and PM10 specifically,

01:23:40.560 --> 01:23:45.760
 nitrogen dioxide, total volatile organic compounds, or TVOC, and sulfur dioxide.

01:23:45.760 --> 01:23:53.200
 And ozone and particulate matter are especially a primary concern in North Texas. That is the

01:23:53.200 --> 01:24:01.520
 AQI, or air quality index. That's ozone and PM. Particulate matter is included in that AQI,

01:24:01.520 --> 01:24:08.400
 NCTCOG. They report on ozone particulate matter through AQI. However, we also included these other

01:24:08.400 --> 01:24:14.880
 pollutants because they also present health concerns of their own, and they lead to ozone formation.

01:24:14.880 --> 01:24:22.640
 So here is an overview of what the air quality dashboard currently looks like on our Sustainable

01:24:22.640 --> 01:24:30.080
 Denton website. Residents, they can go to www.cityofdenton.com/airquality, and they can

01:24:30.080 --> 01:24:36.480
 view this dashboard. And this dashboard is comprised of five different maps. Our GIS team

01:24:36.480 --> 01:24:41.360
 was great, and they helped build out this map for us. And whenever they first log on to the dashboard,

01:24:41.360 --> 01:24:46.640
 they will come to this homepage, or this landing page, which will show the distribution of all of

01:24:46.640 --> 01:24:52.560
 the different air quality sensors throughout the City of Denton. The green circles and the red squares

01:24:52.560 --> 01:25:00.240
 denote the City of Denton monitors. So the four red squares are sensors that also include wind

01:25:00.240 --> 01:25:05.760
 and wind data, so wind speed and wind direction. Only four of them are configured with that currently.

01:25:06.560 --> 01:25:14.880
 And we also have that Navy triangle is the TCEQ site, and residents can toggle and they can click

01:25:14.880 --> 01:25:21.040
 between these different sites. And if they click on any of the City of Denton locations, that it

01:25:21.040 --> 01:25:28.640
 will provide an average reading of ozone PM2.5, PM10, and wind data for the sensors that record them.

01:25:28.640 --> 01:25:36.240
 And these are weekly averages. Currently, this data is not automated, so we have to do a

01:25:36.240 --> 01:25:42.640
 manual upload of the data. So due to staff time, we are currently reporting weekly averages. I will

01:25:42.640 --> 01:25:47.520
 talk about it in the next few slides, but we will eventually move towards an automated data poll,

01:25:47.520 --> 01:25:54.240
 where it'll be reporting every hour. But that's where we're at right now. And so anyone can click

01:25:54.240 --> 01:25:58.240
 on the City of Denton monitor. They can look at the weekly averages of the previous week.

01:25:58.240 --> 01:26:03.120
 They can also click on the sites for the TCEQ monitor, and that will direct them away from the

01:26:03.120 --> 01:26:08.160
 City of Denton dashboard into the TCEQ website. And they can delve into the data there, and they

01:26:08.160 --> 01:26:15.520
 can compare between TCEQ and Denton if they wish. And then at the top from there, they can look,

01:26:15.520 --> 01:26:19.200
 if they wanted to delve into that data even further, if they wanted to look at the hourly

01:26:19.200 --> 01:26:23.760
 readings for any of our pollutants, they can go along the top and click on any of the tabs.

01:26:23.760 --> 01:26:29.200
 For instance, if they click on ozone, it'll take them to another map where, again, it shows the

01:26:29.200 --> 01:26:34.240
 distribution of the City of Denton monitors, and it'll show a list of our active monitors,

01:26:34.240 --> 01:26:41.280
 including the pod name. Again, that weekly average reading for ozone, in this case,

01:26:41.280 --> 01:26:47.840
 in parts per billion. It'll also show an hourly log of those readings. And this is historical data.

01:26:47.840 --> 01:26:55.360
 Currently, this is displaying data all the way from October, whenever we had all 12 sensors online,

01:26:55.360 --> 01:27:01.120
 just so it could be a bit more comparable when there's gaps in the data. Additionally, we have

01:27:01.120 --> 01:27:09.840
 configured some functionality where at each of the sites along the map, we have included that air

01:27:09.840 --> 01:27:18.480
 quality index color. And this is based on the weekly average again. So what that was is the air

01:27:18.480 --> 01:27:25.840
 quality index or the AQI. This is just a way to communicate to the public based on colors,

01:27:25.840 --> 01:27:32.640
 the level of concern to public health based on the air quality in that area. So this is an index,

01:27:32.640 --> 01:27:37.920
 but it's based on EPA breakpoints. So this is based on a range of different concentrations of

01:27:37.920 --> 01:27:46.240
 different pollutants. So as you can see on our dashboard, we are reporting the data as is,

01:27:46.240 --> 01:27:50.960
 as it's pulled. So it's based on concentrations, so in ozone, parts per billion, et cetera.

01:27:50.960 --> 01:27:55.680
 So we just provided these charts here on each of the maps so that our residents,

01:27:55.680 --> 01:27:59.760
 whenever they're looking at these green colors and they see, all right, that color is green,

01:27:59.760 --> 01:28:03.840
 what does that mean? And they can look at the data and get some more information there.

01:28:03.840 --> 01:28:14.800
 All right. And so the next steps, like I said earlier, currently, this is a manual data pull.

01:28:14.800 --> 01:28:20.480
 So I'm pulling this data. Every Monday, I'm pulling the previous week's data and uploading

01:28:20.480 --> 01:28:26.000
 it into the dashboard. We are currently working on migrating to an application programming interface,

01:28:26.000 --> 01:28:34.240
 which is an API, not to be confused with AQI, which I've done. And this will automatically pull

01:28:34.240 --> 01:28:43.040
 that data from the sensors into the dashboard. And it will report a rolling 24 average of the air

01:28:43.040 --> 01:28:47.600
 quality data as well, so that whenever residents are looking and if they've signed up for air

01:28:47.600 --> 01:28:55.040
 quality alerts, they're seeing, okay, so today the forecast, their air quality, the AQI is yellow.

01:28:55.040 --> 01:29:00.240
 What does it look like at city of Denton? Okay, all right. And then you can compare from there.

01:29:00.240 --> 01:29:07.040
 And with that 24 hour average, it's a little more informative and comparable. We're also working

01:29:07.040 --> 01:29:14.320
 towards a, we're not currently working, but we're wanting to also include a mobile configuration of

01:29:14.320 --> 01:29:19.440
 the air quality dashboard. Currently, you can only view this dashboard on the desktop. If you try to

01:29:19.440 --> 01:29:24.960
 look at it on your cell phone, iPad, it doesn't work. So there was interest in moving towards a

01:29:24.960 --> 01:29:30.320
 mobile configuration as well. And we're hearing the same concerns with other cities. They're

01:29:30.320 --> 01:29:36.080
 wanting to move towards a mobile configuration as well. And then finally, we really want to work

01:29:36.080 --> 01:29:40.960
 towards analyzing this air quality data. We have a ton of data. You know, it's only about a year or

01:29:40.960 --> 01:29:46.640
 more, but that's good data. So there's interest in analyzing that from there to where is this meeting.

01:29:46.640 --> 01:29:56.960
 And with that, I'll take any questions. Questions? So you mentioned that you go into analyzing the data.

01:29:58.640 --> 01:30:07.200
 Do you envision making graphs, annual graphs of all these pollutants that you monitor and

01:30:07.200 --> 01:30:16.480
 look into the, maybe the cause of why they are above EPA standards and advise the public or

01:30:16.480 --> 01:30:22.480
 come back and report to us? Absolutely. Absolutely. That's one way you can analyze that data. I,

01:30:22.480 --> 01:30:27.440
 currently, I don't know if that will be us or if we'll partner or collaborate with anyone,

01:30:27.440 --> 01:30:31.200
 but there is interest there. That's something that we could absolutely do. Yeah, because you have,

01:30:31.200 --> 01:30:37.840
 as you said, lots of data and that, you know, all this analysis will be very informative for the public.

01:30:37.840 --> 01:30:52.240
 So I saw that our sensors can sense additional material than the PMs and the ozone. Are we

01:30:52.240 --> 01:30:57.840
 storing that information anywhere? Absolutely. Yeah. So we have, we have access to that data on

01:30:57.840 --> 01:31:05.200
 the back end. Okay. And if anyone is interested in looking at that data, because as you saw our

01:31:05.200 --> 01:31:12.880
 dashboard currently, it only, we're only publicly presenting ozone and particulate matter. So that

01:31:12.880 --> 01:31:18.640
 when residents, this is informational only, these sensors are non-regulatory. So these, if anyone

01:31:18.640 --> 01:31:22.480
 wants to look into that data further, they can reach out to me. My contact information is there,

01:31:22.480 --> 01:31:28.240
 and if they want that data, they can. I know that there is student researchers at local universities,

01:31:28.240 --> 01:31:34.000
 UNT, TWU, if they want that data and they want to use that for research, they can reach out to us.

01:31:34.000 --> 01:31:39.280
 To Camilla's point, I think that information, if it's not like accessible on this dashboard,

01:31:39.280 --> 01:31:45.120
 would be really great to hear. I just was making sure we didn't over-buy sensors. It's doing

01:31:45.120 --> 01:31:49.120
 information that we're not going to be looking at. So that's really helpful to know that it's still

01:31:49.120 --> 01:31:57.120
 going to be around. The weekly averages. So this is just, it's a, we're casting back a little bit,

01:31:57.120 --> 01:32:01.360
 right? Whenever I open up this dashboard, I can see what was, I don't really have the ability to

01:32:01.360 --> 01:32:07.760
 see what's happening right now. Is that correct? Yes, correct. Okay. And within the dashboard's

01:32:07.760 --> 01:32:14.720
 functionality, I can only see that average of the weekly and then see the logs specifically.

01:32:14.720 --> 01:32:21.520
 Yes. Okay. And I guess to reflect what you just said, if I wanted additional information or I

01:32:21.520 --> 01:32:25.920
 wanted to maybe understand a little bit more about my local context and what I may or may not be

01:32:25.920 --> 01:32:30.880
 being exposed to, I could request that information from you. Yes, for now, yes.

01:32:30.880 --> 01:32:37.440
 Maybe a little in the weeds, but is there any kind of regular calibration or sanity

01:32:37.440 --> 01:32:42.640
 checks that have to be done with those sensors? That's a great question. I'm not sure about

01:32:42.640 --> 01:32:48.000
 calibration. That is something that I can reach out to for our technicians or not our technicians,

01:32:48.000 --> 01:33:00.800
 but I don't know. They are calibrated before they're installed. Yeah. I think I'm on the

01:33:00.800 --> 01:33:07.440
 screen right here. No, and they reference with the TCEQ monitors, so they do a calibration that way

01:33:07.440 --> 01:33:17.680
 as well. Yeah. I had a couple of questions. First of all, this is a great asset. I appreciate all

01:33:17.680 --> 01:33:25.520
 your work in developing it. Do you have any way to ascertain how many people have accessed the site

01:33:25.520 --> 01:33:31.280
 and information? Is there a counter on there where you can see how many folks are getting the message?

01:33:32.960 --> 01:33:40.080
 I believe so. Yes. Do you have any numbers on that now? Not currently, no. Yes, you can get that.

01:33:40.080 --> 01:33:53.600
 Okay. Also, you're probably already doing it, but is there a way to obviously,

01:33:53.600 --> 01:33:58.800
 let me put it this way, if I go on this website and I see the error numbers,

01:34:00.720 --> 01:34:10.400
 is there a button? Can I push a button and go to a part that tells me what Denton is doing

01:34:10.400 --> 01:34:18.560
 to combat this? In other words, what are the clean air initiatives that sustainability offers?

01:34:18.560 --> 01:34:23.600
 I don't know if you've done that yet, but it would be neat if you could unify the whole thing

01:34:23.600 --> 01:34:29.920
 so that people start to understand how it's all interrelated, just like an ecosystem.

01:34:31.040 --> 01:34:37.520
 Currently, we don't have anything on the dashboard. However, the dashboard is located on the

01:34:37.520 --> 01:34:42.880
 Sustainable Denton, that air quality greenhouse gas page, so we have a list of the different

01:34:42.880 --> 01:34:46.960
 initiatives that we're doing, the partnerships, and then when they scroll down, they can find

01:34:46.960 --> 01:34:51.120
 that dashboard. But currently, it's not in the dashboard. Okay. It's something that we could add.

01:34:51.680 --> 01:35:02.960
 Okay. I might go one more. Yeah, I just hope that you will, as soon as is possible,

01:35:02.960 --> 01:35:08.240
 get it so that I can find this on my phone. As fast as our GIS.

01:35:08.240 --> 01:35:16.240
 To this previous question, if I wanted to know, I don't know what ozone is, I don't know what PM2.5

01:35:16.240 --> 01:35:23.920
 is, I can find that still on the greenhouse gas website on sustainability, right? It was. We can

01:35:23.920 --> 01:35:29.760
 add that to that greenhouse gas page. It is on the dashboard, so if they wanted to go and they wanted

01:35:29.760 --> 01:35:35.760
 to see... Like a descriptor, or maybe sources that this could be coming, like VOCs, for example. I

01:35:35.760 --> 01:35:40.240
 know that's not a part of the dashboard, but it's something that they do record, like even trees,

01:35:40.240 --> 01:35:47.360
 for example, can release VOCs, right? Or sulfur dioxide or whatever. Where just it's a little bit

01:35:47.360 --> 01:35:53.120
 more interpretive or intuitive for a user to see, "Oh, gosh, last week I was exposed to red levels

01:35:53.120 --> 01:35:58.800
 of eggs. Now I'm curious, where was that coming from? What's contributing to that?" And at this

01:35:58.800 --> 01:36:03.440
 point, maybe I'm thinking, "Oh, gosh, this city should be doing something about that." I think it

01:36:03.440 --> 01:36:08.560
 leads to a lot of interesting jumping off questions as an educational tool. That it'd be nice to try

01:36:08.560 --> 01:36:13.360
 to consolidate some of those information that way. If there are concerns or there's just curiosity

01:36:13.360 --> 01:36:17.040
 about what's happening and why it may be happening, and it's all kind of localized in one spot for

01:36:17.040 --> 01:36:21.840
 people to quickly understand what is ozone, where does it come from, what does the city do about it,

01:36:21.840 --> 01:36:25.760
 and here's what your neighborhood looked like the week prior. I think that's really informative for

01:36:25.760 --> 01:36:31.280
 people. No, that's a great point. And currently, right now, we do have on each of the pollutant pages,

01:36:31.280 --> 01:36:37.040
 again, it's only ozone in particular matter, but if they wanted to learn more about this pollutant,

01:36:37.040 --> 01:36:42.000
 they can click on this language that says, "For more information about this pollutant, click here,"

01:36:42.000 --> 01:36:47.200
 and it does take them to the EPA page specifically on that pollutant. So that gives the resident the

01:36:47.200 --> 01:36:54.400
 opportunity to research that on their own. Awesome. Any other comments, questions?

01:36:54.400 --> 01:37:05.840
 All right. Now we shall receive a report, hold a discussion, and give staff direction on

01:37:05.840 --> 01:37:19.520
 Sustainability Framework Fund 2024-2025, those programs and the prioritization of programs in 2025-2026.

01:37:19.520 --> 01:37:28.000
 Pardon me? I'm going to take that one, we're all good for a few more minutes? Yeah, sure. Okay.

01:37:28.000 --> 01:37:32.800
 Catherine Barnett, Sustainability Manager. I'm just going to talk a little bit about the

01:37:32.800 --> 01:37:36.880
 2024-2025 Sustainability Framework Fund programs, and then a little bit about

01:37:36.880 --> 01:37:39.760
 what we are looking for for next year.

01:37:39.760 --> 01:37:46.640
 So we'll do some project updates, talk about the expenditures,

01:37:46.640 --> 01:37:52.400
 have a discussion about prioritization for 2025-2026, and then out to look at our next steps.

01:37:52.400 --> 01:38:02.720
 So just a reminder, for 2024-2025, we have about $600,000 planned in programs and projects,

01:38:03.520 --> 01:38:09.680
 I've listed the funding that we have earmarked for those, and our expenditures. A few of them,

01:38:09.680 --> 01:38:15.520
 the water conservation specifically, we ended up not funding out of the Framework Fund because

01:38:15.520 --> 01:38:19.920
 Denton Water Utilities chose to go ahead and fund those incentives through their budget.

01:38:19.920 --> 01:38:26.400
 We postponed a little bit on the ecosystem protection and enhancement. We had a little

01:38:26.400 --> 01:38:33.520
 bit of a rebound with the privet at a couple of our sites this summer. Potentially the heavy

01:38:33.520 --> 01:38:41.840
 rains that we had in the spring helped out a lot. We have the EV rebates, the E-5 rebates,

01:38:41.840 --> 01:38:46.240
 and I'll go ahead and talk about the lawn equipment pilot here too. All three of those

01:38:46.240 --> 01:38:54.400
 programs are doing really well. Those amounts, the $72,000 expended, the almost $38,000 and about

01:38:54.400 --> 01:39:02.320
 $35,000. Those were as of the eighth, whenever we had to have the backup finalized, but we are at

01:39:02.320 --> 01:39:11.040
 about $44,000 on e-bikes now, $79,000 on EV, and about $45,000 on lawn equipment as of today.

01:39:11.040 --> 01:39:20.160
 So really well received. The lawn equipment project program just really took off. We've had 287

01:39:20.160 --> 01:39:26.800
 applicants. Some of those are duplicates. They're buying it one piece at a time, but they're getting

01:39:26.800 --> 01:39:35.760
 them. So yeah, really happy with how that program took off. We funded the electric bikes for PD.

01:39:35.760 --> 01:39:42.080
 That was a $31,000 expenditure. Worked on that charging management for the city as a whole,

01:39:42.080 --> 01:39:49.920
 which are the chargers that are at our facilities. Parks mowers, we have here marked 52,500

01:39:49.920 --> 01:39:55.040
 that should be coming to council for approval soon, and those will be the electric robotic mowers.

01:39:55.040 --> 01:40:02.080
 See, we didn't have to spend any money on the electric vehicle for the city fleet support. We

01:40:02.080 --> 01:40:07.360
 talked about that during the climate action plan update, the vehicles that we purchased. The

01:40:07.360 --> 01:40:11.360
 department's purchased that within their own funding and didn't need that support from the

01:40:11.360 --> 01:40:17.200
 sustainability fund, so that was great. We have a little bit of O&M costs with the monitor program.

01:40:19.920 --> 01:40:23.360
 We'll see a little bit of that continuing in the next year.

01:40:23.360 --> 01:40:32.160
 Catherine, could you remind us, so the funding column 600k, that was our budgeted or that was

01:40:32.160 --> 01:40:40.400
 our actual fund total for FY24? That was the project total for 24. That was what we were

01:40:40.400 --> 01:40:49.440
 programming to spend for 24. Whenever we set that amount, we had, I think we had an $800,000

01:40:49.440 --> 01:40:57.680
 budget, 750, sorry, 750 for 24/25, so we went at that 600 because we hadn't hit those revenue

01:40:57.680 --> 01:41:03.920
 projections before. So yeah, so that's where we are. That was just our program budget.

01:41:03.920 --> 01:41:09.760
 My question, outside of the budgeting for how much we anticipate receiving, I understand the

01:41:09.760 --> 01:41:20.400
 fund is franchise E funded, our actual FY24 total that was within the fund. We expended 280, how

01:41:20.400 --> 01:41:30.880
 much was left in the pot? I'll have to get that together. I know every year we go through this

01:41:30.880 --> 01:41:34.400
 and we're like, did we ballpark right? Did we ballpark right? And we kind of get a little bit

01:41:34.400 --> 01:41:38.880
 of a reflection back to see, we know what our programs did during the year, and then we look

01:41:38.880 --> 01:41:43.280
 at the next year and say, here's what we are thinking we're going to be around. And I know

01:41:43.280 --> 01:41:47.120
 there's always a fine-tuning process. I didn't know if there's additional details we could be

01:41:47.120 --> 01:41:54.000
 thinking about in regards to, it looks like well underestimated or perhaps some of the programs

01:41:54.000 --> 01:41:57.920
 uptake, wasn't it? What we may have thought. I'm just trying to think about those balances.

01:41:57.920 --> 01:42:06.480
 We'll get that information. We don't get finalized numbers until later in the year,

01:42:06.480 --> 01:42:13.200
 so we do have enough funding available for what we're proposing. Cool, thank you. I think that's

01:42:13.200 --> 01:42:22.880
 it. I'll clean this way on that. So just some specifics about the different programs. We launched

01:42:22.880 --> 01:42:31.600
 that electric line up in the program May 29th. Like I said, we're right at 45,000 spent now,

01:42:32.160 --> 01:42:38.720
 and then we are in regular inclusion of that project for 25-26 as a continuity program.

01:42:38.720 --> 01:42:53.920
 EV and EVITE incentives. Again, we're at 79,000 now and 44,000 or 5,000. We have funded those

01:42:53.920 --> 01:42:59.920
 at a higher level, so we haven't reached the entire spend from what we have programmed for 25-26.

01:43:02.160 --> 01:43:06.960
 I think that those are established programs and can continue forward if that's what the committee

01:43:06.960 --> 01:43:18.240
 desires. And then kind of moving into the 25-26 proposed programs, looking at that transportation

01:43:18.240 --> 01:43:24.960
 travel movement that this area kind of ties back to our climate action plan goals. We have the EV,

01:43:24.960 --> 01:43:30.800
 rebank the EVITE, the lot equipment. We have a three-year program planned with parks for the

01:43:30.800 --> 01:43:40.000
 mowers. So that would be about $52,500 per year to get them up to six mowers working in our ball

01:43:40.000 --> 01:43:46.160
 fields. So including that again for next year for expense and then the O&M for their quality

01:43:46.160 --> 01:43:52.400
 sensors. And then one thing that we've had this in the plan since our original big $4 million

01:43:52.400 --> 01:43:58.640
 proposal to work on the bike lane and sidewalk connections just to improve walkability and

01:43:58.640 --> 01:44:03.360
 bikeability in town. So really work with transportation on that and if there's anywhere

01:44:03.360 --> 01:44:07.760
 we can help close some of those gaps. And then we've heard a lot this year about some of the

01:44:07.760 --> 01:44:15.040
 school areas and some white line gaps and sidewalk gaps. Anything that we can do to help facilitate.

01:44:15.040 --> 01:44:24.560
 On the building focus area, we're talking with community development about partnering with them

01:44:24.560 --> 01:44:30.160
 with their minor improvement program where we could go in and if they're working on a home we

01:44:30.160 --> 01:44:36.240
 could go in and we can work on energy efficiency. We would work on the building envelope insulation

01:44:36.240 --> 01:44:41.680
 kind of do all of that upgrade at that one point in time so they only have one construction

01:44:41.680 --> 01:44:52.560
 disturbance and try to try to get them up to a better energy efficient home, more comfortable home.

01:44:53.600 --> 01:44:59.120
 They work between 30 and 50 homes a year and so we would partner with them for up to 50

01:44:59.120 --> 01:45:05.440
 and we're looking at an average of 7,000 and that would help increase this year of their HVAC

01:45:05.440 --> 01:45:13.040
 heat pump units. I was curious on this like because that is a proposed program. Do they have a team

01:45:13.040 --> 01:45:17.440
 that goes in and does the installation for these types of projects or they contract that out to

01:45:17.440 --> 01:45:23.440
 somebody here? They contract. Okay, so we would just be adding some of those additional efficiencies

01:45:23.440 --> 01:45:31.840
 and weatherization programs? Exactly and providing an energy outlet up front. Prior to work? Yes,

01:45:31.840 --> 01:45:40.240
 so we identify the goal of the whole project. Yeah, we're excited about this one. It helps us

01:45:41.440 --> 01:45:49.360
 against that gap that we have from the green sense program that able to go in and help witness things

01:45:49.360 --> 01:45:57.520
 on the front. And you'll see it matches with the green sense that we would bring up to the green sense standard.

01:45:57.520 --> 01:46:08.480
 For land use focus area we're proposing 200,000. That'd be the carryover from 24, 25 as well.

01:46:09.840 --> 01:46:15.680
 Talking with parks about some low water use median projects, the safe routes to schools, anything that

01:46:15.680 --> 01:46:23.600
 we can do to help with that, shade, tree planting by parking canopies, and then the ecosystem

01:46:23.600 --> 01:46:31.040
 protection and enhancement that we're continuing that into the park. Yes? Does ecosystem protection

01:46:31.040 --> 01:46:38.320
 and enhancement, does that encompass say if somebody wanted to zero escape the law? No, no, no.

01:46:39.120 --> 01:46:45.040
 There is a turf buyback program through water utilities that would work for that. Okay. Yeah,

01:46:45.040 --> 01:46:52.000
 but not through this. This would be in our parks. Thank you. So how many previous areas do we have?

01:46:52.000 --> 01:47:03.200
 Do you have a? How many are we working on in Denton? You worked on three of them? I think we've done,

01:47:04.640 --> 01:47:11.200
 I think we're up to about half a dozen now, just off the top of my head. Not all of them are scheduled

01:47:11.200 --> 01:47:18.800
 for the enhancement, but we are monitoring up to about half a dozen sites. Okay, and I know that in

01:47:18.800 --> 01:47:27.120
 your report you're signing 100,000 dollars for them. Do you think that's enough? I think I raised

01:47:27.120 --> 01:47:36.400
 an issue before. Yes, and I think as we look at outer years, we may need more. Some of it's

01:47:36.400 --> 01:47:42.080
 being accomplished through existing projects right now, so I think we have adequate funding

01:47:42.080 --> 01:47:47.680
 for the next year, especially rolling over the current year into next year. I think we're good

01:47:47.680 --> 01:47:54.320
 with that. A big project is kicked off just recently down on the south side of town. It's a village

01:47:54.320 --> 01:48:00.960
 with a new permel project, and they've been working through that site. I'm really excited

01:48:00.960 --> 01:48:05.360
 to see this slide. The Safe Cross to School Initiative projects was particularly of interest.

01:48:05.360 --> 01:48:11.840
 I've learned recently that KDB's tree or block program is not that active anymore, and so I think

01:48:11.840 --> 01:48:18.320
 this fills the gap that we have some flexibility to dedicate funds to, and honestly it's a really

01:48:18.320 --> 01:48:22.800
 great way to have some cost-effective programs that people can tell there's a difference,

01:48:22.800 --> 01:48:26.560
 and so this is a really interesting idea, and I think we can see some progress here.

01:48:26.560 --> 01:48:32.880
 Yeah, and I mean it fits in with the bike lane blocking pedestrian connections.

01:48:32.880 --> 01:48:39.120
 Just trying to make it more palatable for folks to walk to school in 100 degrees.

01:48:39.120 --> 01:48:49.680
 So just talking about the prioritization. From our side, we would look at that minor

01:48:49.680 --> 01:48:53.520
 home repair energy efficiency upgrade project kind of as our number one priority,

01:48:53.520 --> 01:49:00.560
 the 350,000 for that, and then move into the bike lane cycle connections and the

01:49:00.560 --> 01:49:08.800
 ecosystem connections. We have a little over a million dollars proposed for next year's budget,

01:49:08.800 --> 01:49:19.120
 and so that's the first 590,000. We would want to focus on those three, and then we'll keep an eye

01:49:19.120 --> 01:49:26.480
 on revenue as it comes to them and expand that as we can. I know we just talked about this,

01:49:26.480 --> 01:49:30.880
 but the relationship with the prioritization specifically. When you talked about community

01:49:30.880 --> 01:49:37.280
 development's program, we're describing this as a pilot, and you mentioned something about 30 homes

01:49:37.280 --> 01:49:42.800
 and then thinking of 50 homes. Is there an existing program that they have that we're building into

01:49:42.800 --> 01:49:50.400
 and then increasing their scope of? It's increasing the scope. They work on 30 to 50 homes a year

01:49:50.400 --> 01:49:57.680
 through their minor home repair program, so we would come in and partner with them, or they may

01:49:57.680 --> 01:50:02.720
 be replacing an air conditioner now, but they're not replacing it up to a 15.2 sear, so we would

01:50:02.720 --> 01:50:08.000
 help them bridge that cost difference, and then they may not be touching insulation, so we would

01:50:08.000 --> 01:50:13.680
 say, okay, we could go in and we can do the insulation piece. The average cost that we're

01:50:13.680 --> 01:50:19.440
 seeing for insulation and then the difference on the HVACs, we feel like 70,000 is a great

01:50:19.440 --> 01:50:23.840
 average cost for that, even if we had to get into some weatherization and maybe a little bit more.

01:50:23.840 --> 01:50:32.400
 And that would be our individual home-by-home investment? Yes. If possible, it would be helpful

01:50:32.400 --> 01:50:36.560
 to see some additional information, and maybe I can find this independently. What community

01:50:36.560 --> 01:50:42.480
 developments process for applicants or how they develop that list for what they can actually get

01:50:42.480 --> 01:50:46.320
 to in a year? I think that'd be interesting information as we think about it. We can get

01:50:46.320 --> 01:50:48.320
 their application process for you. I think I'll send them.

01:50:48.320 --> 01:51:01.840
 So the continuing existing programs, that's about 410,000, so that gets us up to a million,

01:51:01.840 --> 01:51:08.160
 but 410 of that would be continuing existing programs, and those are just proposed by the

01:51:08.160 --> 01:51:21.280
 levels for each. So what we'll do next steps, we'll close out the 24-25 year and then come back and

01:51:21.280 --> 01:51:26.720
 report back on how all those projects closed out for the year, and we'll prepare a framework by

01:51:26.720 --> 01:51:33.920
 work plan for consideration at our next meeting and present that. If we want to go back and talk

01:51:33.920 --> 01:51:39.280
 about the different programs and where your interests lie for prioritization, that would be great.

01:51:39.280 --> 01:51:46.480
 Any feedback that you can offer today? I'm

01:51:46.480 --> 01:51:55.600
 pretty partial to the energy efficiency upgrades. I think they are very crucial

01:51:56.480 --> 01:52:02.400
 given the situation. And also, I know it's perhaps not germane to this

01:52:02.400 --> 01:52:09.760
 now, but at some point, as it's already on the matrix, is to look about reinstating

01:52:09.760 --> 01:52:15.440
 some sort of solar incentive, residential solar incentive, and a battery incentive as well.

01:52:22.320 --> 01:52:28.480
 So we are currently looking at zeroing out the fleet support upgrades?

01:52:28.480 --> 01:52:37.120
 We have that money earmarked in the project right now,

01:52:37.120 --> 01:52:40.880
 so we would not be adding additional funding to that next year.

01:52:40.880 --> 01:52:46.240
 Okay, so keeping it at the 175 for the next work plan?

01:52:47.680 --> 01:52:56.240
 Yes. That's true. We are pausing our participating goals with budget next year.

01:52:56.240 --> 01:53:06.480
 I would be, I would love to see at that future work plan presentation, if we know that's going

01:53:06.480 --> 01:53:11.040
 to be a policy on the books, it makes sense to me to go ahead and just zero that line on account,

01:53:11.040 --> 01:53:14.960
 and we can just hold it in our minds that maybe a year or two from now, and that's a door that's

01:53:14.960 --> 01:53:20.400
 open again, we can support those efforts. But if they needed no support in this previous fiscal or

01:53:20.400 --> 01:53:24.960
 anticipating no additional procurement next fiscal, I think it just might make sense to

01:53:24.960 --> 01:53:30.000
 clean it up a little bit and just say we're going to focus on some other issues as my input.

01:53:30.000 --> 01:53:39.520
 Anything else? Thank you.

01:53:44.960 --> 01:53:53.920
 Under staff reports, does anyone have anything they want to add to the matrix?

01:53:53.920 --> 01:54:05.360
 So I think I would like for us to get more information on the styrofoam recycling.

01:54:08.560 --> 01:54:15.920
 I know that's something new that we do, and I'm not sure we know a lot about it and also

01:54:15.920 --> 01:54:20.480
 then tonight, so. Yes, we do.

01:54:20.480 --> 01:54:26.640
 Any other matrix items? I would like for it to go in our matrix

01:54:26.640 --> 01:54:34.560
 during D&E's IOP and R&P development process that we do from then again in an item where we can

01:54:34.560 --> 01:54:41.600
 provide direct feedback to staff regarding our position on some of their policy development as

01:54:41.600 --> 01:55:01.920
 we move through those programs. Zero timeline on this, but at some point I would really love to see

01:55:01.920 --> 01:55:07.440
 that maybe annual or semi-annual analysis of the air quality data that we do capture especially

01:55:07.440 --> 01:55:12.160
 ones that aren't presented or available on the publicly viewable dashboard and that would be

01:55:12.160 --> 01:55:16.800
 really fascinating to kind of understand what are we capturing on that localized basis if we could

01:55:17.520 --> 01:55:33.760
 get that one. Anybody else? I have one thing. A while back we were told about a landfill that

01:55:33.760 --> 01:55:43.200
 was being closed here in Denton and it's out near Crossroads 74 acres. It's adjacent to Mosley Road

01:55:43.920 --> 01:55:49.920
 about four and a half miles east of Denton. Its record ID, which I assume is the state

01:55:49.920 --> 01:55:55.120
 registration with the state, is 239 and its facility ID is 13.

01:55:55.120 --> 01:56:03.920
 And what I would like an update on what plans there are, what they're going to do with this

01:56:03.920 --> 01:56:10.080
 landfill because I know when Brian presented it way back when there was some talk of thinking

01:56:10.080 --> 01:56:15.520
 about turning it into a park, but I'm just curious to see if there's been any development with that.

01:56:15.520 --> 01:56:23.840
 Not to my knowledge, but I'll get an update. Thank you. Anything else?

01:56:23.840 --> 01:56:30.480
 Do we have a motion to adjourn? So moved. So moved. All in favor?

01:56:30.480 --> 01:56:35.840
 Thank you. We are adjourned. Thank you.