Tuesday, January 15, 2019

GUS Loses $26M Over Last 3 Years

The Wilco Sun newspaper has finally published City financial data that shows the City has lost $26M over the last three years by selling the excess electricity from the wind and solar farms that is purchased at fixed prices and sold at below market prices. The City has to do this since there is no way to store electricity that is excess to the City's needs and they are apparently contractually obligated to take all the electricity generated by the wind and solar farms.

The publisher has acknowledged that perhaps legislation should be enacted that allows the City to share utility contract information with its citizens.
One thing a few city staffers have mentioned to us is that it is unfair to be scolded for not releasing information that they are legally obligated to keep secret. This is mainly the contents of the power contracts.
They have a good point. They can’t reveal what they know without legally endangering the city, or themselves, personally.
What we should do is support legislation to make these sorts of contracts more transparent. 
Perhaps the city folk might ask the companies to amend the contracts to remove the non-disclosure clauses and  allow them to tell their citizens what is in the contracts.
Read all the articles as much more information is provided. 

1 comment:

  1. Irrespective of the law governing disclosure, the management of a public utility should never sign a contract that cannot be disclosed to the ultimate owners of the utility. We the people!

    Georgetown Utility Systems should have told the wind and solar vendors that it would not enter into the contracts unless the peddlers of wind and solar energy agreed to have the terms of the contracts disclosed to the key stakeholders.

    ReplyDelete