Lathrop Irrigation District — when they started delivering electricity to River Islands households in 2011 — promised to do so at rates at least 5 percent below PG&E.
Fast forward to today.
An average LID customer uses 750 kilowatt hours a month.
That translates into a $210 electric bill.
The same energy consumption in PG&E service areas costs $355.
It means LID is now delivering electricity to customers at just under 40 percent less than PG&E rates.
Lathrop Irrigation on Wednesday celebrated the installation of 10 linear generators by Mainspring Energy.
The $12 million investment will not only assure rates stay low, but will help drive them even lower.
LID General Manager Curtis Bryant, who is retiring at the end of the month, noted it is part of the district’s strategy not just to keep costs low, but also be as free-standing as possible while further enhancing reliability.
Given all homes at River Islands have solar as house building didn’t start until after the state mandate requiring it kicked in, when the sun is shining homes meet their daytime power loads and then some.
LID has no storage batteries, meaning at night and on some overcast days they obtain contracted power off the grid.
In looking at options to reduce the expense of using PG&E power, the linear generators were not only significantly less in cost than creating a small storage battery farm, but they serve the dual purpose of generating power at night.
That means a wildfire outage that could cripple PG&E’s ability to transmit electricity when needed to LID will not interrupt service to River Islands customers.
The generators are being powered by natural gas that’s not only less expensive than PG&E electricity, but is considered to be clean burning.
They are designed, however, to operate on any type of biogas fuel.
That means theoretically at some point, the City of Lathrop could capture methane gas — the byproduct of sewage treatment that is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions that is now burned off into the atmosphere — by retrofitting their wastewater treatment plant.
If that happened, and LID bought the biogas it would further cement the “greenness” of the 15,000-home planned community that already uses recycled treated waste water to irrigate common landscaping and has 100 percent of its homes generating solar power.
LID will eventually install 10 more linear generators as River Islands develops.
It also will weigh battery storage as the technology evolves.
River Islands President Susan Dell’Osso noted Cambay Group, developers of the planned community, from the start wanted to find a way to reduce energy costs given it factors heavily into the ongoing cost of home ownership.
It is why they were part of the effort to form the irrigation district in 2002 that also is the domestic water provider.
Cambay loaned money to the LID to set up shop. When that is paid back, it will also lower rates. The same is true of the $12 million LID borrowed from Cambay to purchase the generators.
And those savings will be on top of those customers will start seeing in the near future by being supplied with power from generators at night. That‘s because PG&E has three rate increases requests pending before the California Public Utilities Commission.
Dell’Osso noted that LID, unlike PG&E, doesn’t need to make a profit and that the people in charge aren’t in a boardroom in Oakland but reside in River Islands.
“The focus of Lathrop Irrigation is River Islands,” Dell’Osso said.
Bryant is retiring after getting LID off the ground and making sure new homeowners weren’t supplied by a power company that is guaranteed by the state for an 11 percent profit.
LID, by putting in the power infrastructure and not builders, also means those costs aren’t collapsed into the price of homes.
And by LID generating the bulk of its energy via rooftop solar or the new generators, the power that is produced avoids a lot of add on charges as opposed to electricity the district buys via the grid.
That includes everything from transmission charges to PG&E’s wildfire hardening costs that accounted for a record 15 percent rate increase the for-profit utility imposed on 16 million Northern California residents.
To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com
