"Georgetown is one of 35 Champion Cities selected this week as finalists in the 2018 U.S. Mayors Challenge, a nationwide competition that encourages city leaders to develop innovative ideas that confront challenges facing their cities. Georgetown was selected as a finalist amongst more than 320 applications.
Georgetown’s innovative idea involves developing the “virtual power plant.” While Georgetown is the first and largest city in Texas to secure 100 percent of its purchased power from renewable sources, there are cost uncertainty and reliability concerns related to transporting that energy over long distances. The City of Georgetown hopes to be able to lease rooftop space on residential and commercial properties to install solar panels that will generate enough energy to offset the need to purchase power from outside sources in this completely renewable energy-powered city."
This is the first time we have been told that there will be a continuing need to purchase power from outside sources, even though the city owned electric company has racked up multi-million dollar bills with ERCOT for two different periods over the last two years to purchase power.
Now we find out that the city wants to install solar panels on residential and commercial buildings to offset the need to purchase power through ERCOT.
When are the citizens of Georgetown to have full transparency into the electric company? It looks like a change in state law is required so the the Open Records statues apply fully to municipally owned utilities.
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