2014-12-18 Cost of Government Commission Minutes

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Ms. Kelly: So how many of those are direct sell to the County, presently, is wind farm? Mr. Rolston: This will be the only wind farm that we’re putting up probably in the next five years; it’s the best wind site. Ms. Kelly: So it’s the one, it’s the first in Lālāmilo? Mr. Rolston: Yeah. County uses approximately 10-12 megawatts total. So this will be about 25-30% of our total energy use. Ms. Kelly: 10-12 megawatts per day? Mr. Rolston: If you take County as a total, you have to factor some facilities have lights at night, like our Parks and Recreation and our street lamps only go at night, so if you figure the whole aggregate, we’re about 12 megawatts on a 24/7 basis. So we are HELCO’s largest customer which makes us the market power and which makes us, that’s why we are, I believe, we’re effective in the Public Utilities Commission docket because as your largest customer, like the Department of Defense is HECO’s largest customer on Oahu, they have a lot to say about how that utility is run. So we have a lot to say about how our utility is run because not only we’re the largest customer, we hold the franchise agreement. Ms. Kelly: Yeah, but I’m particularly interested to know and I’m glad to hear that it will be sold directly to the County, I tell you why, as I was looking at the electric bill this morning from my husband’s business and on a $4,500.00 electric bill monthly, $2,000.00 were surcharges of taxes, administration fee and all the other garbage fee. His real true use of electric was about $2,200.00, but his total bill was $4,500.00 a month. So that means that all these additional cost of whatever you call them, I call them garbage cost, would be saved, in addition to the cost of power. Mr. Rolston: Overall that’s a correct statement, so I agree to your comment about garbage cost and all those surcharges. The utility business is the most complex business second to the Department of Defense businesses. So these surcharges and things, we try to help explain to the public what exactly needs to, people have the same reaction that you do, what is all this stuff. Ms. Kelly: It’s ridiculous. Mr. Rolston: Yeah, and that’s why we intervene so much in the Public Utilities Commission dockets because there’s so much subtlety to electric utility business and the accounting systems are not the same as a private business. As a matter of fact, the more metal, the more infrastructures they can put in the ground or anywhere, they earn a 10% return on, so it’s an incentive to build as much stuff as possible so they can earn 10%, its run differently than any other business that I know of. Ms. Kelly: I can see that. I’m realizing that and it’s quite upsetting when you realize it. 10