City staff and Platte River Power Authority (PRPA) representatives told the Longmont City Council on Sept. 2 that they have updated two intergovernmental agreements'the four-city "organic contract" that forms PRPA and the individual power-supply agreement between each city and PRPA'to give the authority more flexibility and reduce duplicative or prescriptive language.

Daryl Hahn, Electric Utility Director for Longmont Power & Communications (LPC), said the updates are intended to reflect technological, legal and market changes since the council set a 100% renewable-energy goal in 2018. "It removes prescriptive language where it says we're talking specifically about renewable energy and uses particular phrases that were correct in 2018 but may not be correct in, say, 20 years," Hahn told council.

Hahn said the revisions emphasize PRPA's three pillars of service'reliability, cost-effectiveness and environmental responsibility'and broaden language around cost recovery, board processes and communications (for example, allowing modern electronic notice rather than hand-delivered paper). He described a refinement to the requirement for each owner community's second board representative to be a full-time employee of the city or an elected official, chosen for judgment, experience and expertise.

Council members asked about limits on local generation. Council member Popkin read language from the power-supply agreement that preserves a grandfathered right for existing municipal generation and a 1,000-kilowatt (or 1% of peak load) cap for new city-owned generation; Hahn and PRPA staff said that limit is tied to PRPA's ability to preserve bonding capacity and to protect all owner communities from a sudden large local project that could erode PRPA's revenue base. Hahn said Longmont would typically work with PRPA on distributed resources rather than develop duplicate systems locally.

Next steps: Council was asked to consider the two updated IGAs next week. PRPA's board will review the power-supply agreement on Sept. 25; cities hope to complete signings in October.