Item 4- Draft Recommendation Reporting & Resource Cost — original pdf

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Resource Management Commission Resolution on Contract Reporting and Resource Cost Reporting Version 2.0 WHEREAS, since Austin Energy has been acquiring new resources to implement the 2025 Austin Energy Resource, Generation and Climate Protection Plan to 2035; and WHEREAS, the Resource Plan’s key actions include prioritizing customer energy solutions to reduce the need for additional generation, transmission, and presumably storage in support of reliability, including leading with energy efficiency, demand response, and beneficial electrification; and WHEREAS, the Resource Plan requires acquisition of additional renewable resources including distributed and utility-scale solar and storage resources; and WHEREAS, alternate technologies, renewable resources, and customer energy solutions including efficiency, conservation, demand response, and distributed storage fall within the core duties of the Resource Management Commission per City Code; THEN BE IT RESOLVED that in order to understand the relative roles and cost-effectiveness of Austin Energy’s current resource mix, the Resource Management Commission asks the Austin City Council to direct Austin Energy to prepare a recurring Resource Report, updated annually, that lists all of its resources and performance and economic details including for each owned or contracted resource its total nameplate capacity, annual capacity factor, total annual energy output, and its role in reducing purchases in the ERCOT energy market, reducing congestion fees to Austin Energy customers, and reducing ancillary service purchase costs. This report should include: 1) all fossil-fueled and nuclear energy resources; 2) all utility- scale renewable resources; 3) energy efficiency; 4) distributed solar and batteries; 5) demand response; and 6) district heating and cooling. For each category, statistics will be provided for contributing or offsetting resources, estimating the values of: A) fuel; B) energy; C) capacity; D) ERCOT transmission charge and other costs and fees E) ancillary services costs; F) congestion cost reductions; G) estimated avoided distribution system costs; H) avoided hedging costs I) average estimated annual estimated total payments and costs; J) average per MW and MWh costs. AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that all future Austin Energy proposals to acquire future energy storage, renewables, demand response, distributed assets and alternative technology solutions through contracts with other wholesale providers should include an analysis that compares the cost, speed and risk factors of resource acquisition through contract to the alternative of Austin Energy directly acquiring, owning and operating a comparable asset, and an analysis of using preowned instead of new equipment; AND BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that Austin Energy add energy storage contributions to the energy mix on its "Renewable Power Generation" website, and produce an additional near- real-time online report that shows Austin Energy’s capacity and energy production mix by every resource type (nuclear, coal, natural gas, utility-scale solar, wind, distributed solar, utility-scale storage and distributed storage, and demand response) that is updated at least every 15 minutes.