In this edition of #LPEAwire, LPEA CEO Jessica Matlock answers some of your questions on LPEA’s power supply, power reliability, and power costs, in the wake of the rolling blackouts in Texas.
Transcript
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Hi, I’m Hillary Knox,
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VP of Member Experience at
La Plata Electric Association
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and this is your LPEA wire for April.
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In the wake of February’s
rolling blackouts in Texas,
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LPEA has been fielding
questions from our members
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on the reliability of our
power now and into the future.
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I sat down with LPEA CEO, Jessica Matlock
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to discuss this question
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Jessica, thank you very
much for joining us.
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You know, as you know, we’ve
received a lot of questions,
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since the Texas blackouts
our members kind of curious
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about what we’re doing to
ensure reliability and you know,
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one of the main questions
that we’ve gotten
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is how do we know that
what happened in Texas
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is not going to happen here?
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So what’s your response to that?
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Yeah, it’s a good question Hillary.
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I think a lot of us have
friends down at Texas
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so it is very dear and near to our hearts.
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So what we did right away
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is just make sure that our grid is stable.
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And we contacted a lot
of our partners to say
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“how are we protected in our state?”
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Our equipment out here
is weather protected
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for cold weather.
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Texas did not have those protections.
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So we know for a fact that
our gas wells will not freeze
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because we did place
extra equipment on those.
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Second is that Texas is
part of a independent grid.
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It’s called ERCOT.
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We do not have that.
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We’re part of the
Western Interconnect grid
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which is one of the largest
in the United States.
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So we have a great diversity
of energy that we can pull from
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to make sure that we
don’t have the same issue.
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Another thing we’re hearing a lot
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is there have been some that have claimed
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that an over-reliance on renewable energy
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specifically wind energy was
to cause for these outages.
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People also know that LPEA is exploring
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different types of renewable
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and low carbon energy for our future.
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So how would you answer
folks who want to know
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how we’re going to
maintain our reliability
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even as we pursue low
carbon power sources?
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Yeah, that’s a great question as well.
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So just to be clear though,
the outages in Texas
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were not solely the fault
of renewable energy,
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the wind turbines some of them did freeze
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because of cold weather
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but same with gas
pipelines, coal piles froze.
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So there was a larger supply
infrastructure issue in Texas.
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And because of that and because
they’re independent grid
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they weren’t able to
call across state lines
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to get additional energy.
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So for La Plata Electric,
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we do have a goal of
reducing our carbon footprint
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50% below 2018 levels.
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But at the same time,
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we’re making sure that we do
that in an affordable way.
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So we won’t go to that goal if
we cannot maintain our rates.
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So that’s very important.
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And I think the other
thing we’re thinking about
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is that yes, we’d like to
bring in renewable energy
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but you have to firm
it with base load power
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and the only base load power
today that’s affordable
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and on the market, it is coal.
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It is natural gas.
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It’s, hydro-power.
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There’s some battery storage
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but that’s still pretty expensive.
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So we’re looking at all options.
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I don’t think we have to
choose one over the other.
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The point is, is that we need
to diversify our energy mix
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so that we don’t rely on
one source at all times.
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Great. Well, thank you so
much for your time, Jessica.
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Thank you.
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For more information
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on LPEAs future power supply discussions,
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visit our website at
lpea.coop/powersupply.
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And that’s it for this
edition of LPEA Wire.
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Join us next month with more from LPEA.
