Washington City power board hears operations, generation and UAMPS update; AMI billing integration may delay roll-out

The Washington City Power Board received a detailed operations and generation update during its regular meeting, covering staffing changes, progress on the Grapevine Substation and transmission-line projects, the city’s AMI (advanced metering infrastructure) rollout and regional UAMPS resource planning.

Rick, a city power department staff member, told the board the department "went from being understaffed to fully staffed in about a 2 week period," reporting a new inventory/BlueStake hire and a lineman addition. He also said Scott Hughes will begin as assistant director on March 17. The staffing additions, Rick said, represent roughly a 20% improvement in labor capacity.

Why it matters: the staff and capital projects shape local electric reliability and costs. Rick described several large, ongoing projects — the AMI deployment, Grapevine transmission lines and the Grapevine Substation — that will carry into the next fiscal year and affect operations and billing.

Major project updates

- Grapevine Substation and transmission: The steel package for the Grapevine Substation was awarded to Stoddard Steel with an eight-week lead time; foundations, ground grid and control-building bids are out and a pre-bid is scheduled before bids are due (Rick said he believed the bid date was March 27). The transformer for the project is targeted to arrive in late June to mid-July, and the work schedule requires the transformer pad be completed before transformer delivery. Steel poles for the transmission line were awarded to CHM; staff noted short lead times created temporary storage challenges.

- AMI and billing interface: Rick said DCUs are installed and activated and single-phase meters are reporting, but the meter-to-billing interface requires a utility software upgrade. "That probably is gonna delay things a month or 2," he said, explaining the delay stems from the need to convert utility billing software before final integration with the AMI vendor.

- SCADA and GIS: The SCADA upgrade is functionally complete but requires coordination with IT to move a server into place; the GIS utility network is "basically done" for crews on mobile devices, with additional desktop access work still under way.

Operations, reliability and outages

Rick reported a February peak demand of about 19.2 megawatts — the highest February peak to date by a small margin — and said average residential usage for February was lower than in prior years, which he attributed to milder temperatures and more smaller multifamily customers.

He described a brief outage on Feb. 10 that affected the east side of town for roughly four to five minutes. The outage resulted from a miscoordination at a regional operator on a UAMPS line, Rick said; the issue has since been corrected. He also noted routine pole replacements and an isolated equipment hit caused by a large drone used for vegetation spraying that required a short repair.

UAMPS and regional resource planning

Rick reviewed UAMPS (the Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems) activities and upcoming topics for members, including an April toolkit session and the UAMPS member conference in August (Olympic Valley). He flagged the extended day-ahead market (EDAM) and resource adequacy as near-term issues that will affect how the utility schedules and procures generation. On grant funding, Rick said grants tied to the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) are currently on hold, and previously discussed Erie-area grant funding is unlikely in the near term.

On potential generation projects coordinated through UAMPS, staff reported repeated transmission-access challenges for multiple proposed projects (wind, geothermal and solar). Several projects have outstanding transmission-connection issues or nonfirm transmission that makes commercial operation risky until firm transmission is secured — in some cases several years out, staff said. Rocky Mountain Power has ordered a major transformer for the St. George substation with a target in-service date of 2027.

Quotes and attributions

- "We went from being understaffed to fully staffed in about a 2 week period," Rick said of recent hires. - On AMI integration delays, Rick said the software conversion needed for billing and the AMI vendor "probably is gonna delay things a month or 2."

Board business and votes

The board approved its agenda and the prior meeting minutes and later voted to adjourn the meeting; votes were taken by roll call. Recorded affirmative votes explicitly named in the meeting transcript included Saunders and Dinsmore during earlier roll-call votes, and Palmer during the final adjournment vote. (Other board members also voted aye during roll calls but names were not all read aloud on the record in the transcript excerpt.)

What’s next

Staff noted Wheeler (an emissions-testing contractor) will visit to perform the triennial emissions testing of the city’s three engines, and the utility plans to continue the Grapevine substation and transmission work through the summer to meet transformer delivery. The board’s next scheduled meeting was announced as May 6. The meeting adjourned after the votes were completed.

(Reporting based on the board meeting transcript; meeting date not specified in the transcript.)