Transcripts For SFGTV Public Utilities Commission 92215 2015

Was , with this recent drought and with Empirical Data as to the particulates and the increase in the depletion of our ozone level, we need to represent the people, and we need to conserve our resources, so we know and i hope we know that for thousands of years, the regional people who lived here who called this place total island preserved the resources. And then in the last 250 years, we created this concrete jungle and we have to live with it. And this commission, the San Francisco Public Utilities commission is duty bound to preserve our resources and you are uniquely duty bound because you have jurisdiction over large areas where the city of county of San Francisco because at one time, we not only had jurisdiction over San Francisco but as far as palo alto, and i know some of you commissioners who in their day and age know about this and i hope the other commissioners are given an orientation about it, so in short, we are duty bound to look after our resources. Thank you very much. Thank you. Any other speakers today . Seeing none, ill move to item 5, communications. Any comments . Yes . Just one comment, i notice in the waste water Enterprise Capital Program Quarterly report that the trouble bottom line analysis was included as promised and i appreciate that, thats helpful and i think that adds to our transparency as far as what our decisionmaking process is, so thank you. Yes, vicepresident . I have a question also on the waste water report and i mean, just to get a better understanding at some point and maybe its not now an update on where we are financially because i know we have our big cross town tunnel no, whats it called . Central bay side. Central bay side tunnel, i want to get a better understanding of where that is in the queue and what that conversation lies because i know nas a big financial component and also in the overview of i dont know where we are with our entire budget, Green Infrastructure piece of it and that project are the ones im most interested in and a high level conversation as well as like Digging Deeper on some of those issues. So, we can come back and give you an overview, but just to point out, the 2. 7 billion dollars which is phase i, the central bay side construction isnt part of that, and so we are planning to come back once we determine what we would recommend as the size of the tunnel and what type of Green Infrastructures could accompany the tunnel, so were going to come up with a combination of green and gray for that process, but were looking at the whole program and see where we are and come back and let you know where we are from a budget and a skaoejbacker schedule standpoint. Bh will that be . Bh will that be . Sometime in october well get an idea of when well be ready to have all the information so we can present to the commission. That would be great because i know theres been some number that is have been put out there over the year, 6 billion, 7 billion and sort of we have our 2. 7 thats been approved but just to start honing in on what were talking about and kind of whats been spent, what we have left in the pipeline, what the priorities are that are emerging, all of that. Yes, and i know theres been a lot of folks talking about where we are in as far as the budget and comparing other projects and other cities of what the cost would be, so were going to come back and tell you where we are and talk about other similar projects that happen in the nation and so were going to put that in perspective for you when we come back in october. Thank you. On the same topic, and perhaps todays not the day, maybe at the next meeting, i would like comments on the projects that are running late as noted in the report. And i also had another question on i wanted to ask, how does a bile retention planters work . Today were [inaudible] of the sources improvement pra p program, today we have built it along caesar sma vez and we monitored probably out five out of the 15 that were built and they performed well above what we thought in terms of promising and i can get you the exact numbers. We had the San Francisco Estuary Institute assist us with the monitoring and they wrote up a report for us, so we do have that data and i can get that in the correspondence. Typically in a storm event, the water goes into the bile swell and abing hull keeps it oup of the sewer system, the peak, so the Treatment Plant has the ability to treat, you know, the storm event, and so and hopefully it will detain it and then it will seep into the ground, and so that is sort of the way that theyre built, so we measure performance and those events, its performing well, but one of the things that we are looking into is that the storm events are varying, theyre more intense for a shorter period of time and the other thing is it hasnt been a longbacker lot of rain events to measure the performance on a long going effort, so these are some of the channeling but well definitely provide that as part of the update of what you get in october. Okay, thank you. Lets see, other Commission Business . Next report is the general manager. Well, the first update i would like to give is our cca update, barbara hill and as part of that, were going to have an outreach update on cca a and thats going to be given by tyrone ju. Good afternoon f, commissioner, barbara hale, assistant manager for power. Im here to present the beginning of the story we have to tell today. Were going to cover a number of topics. And i think the most exciting part will be what thai presents at the end, the outreach and enrollment portion of our presentation. The and to give some context for that, i just want to do a couple of reminders on the supervisor approval of the contracts that provide supply. Its also assumed that we would perform a Risk Assessment that was largely at the urging of commissioner moran, and today i have to report that looking at the very good supply options that weve been presented with which ill dig into a little bit deeper as this presentation goes on, its clear to us that some of our supply options that are most Cost Effective are going to involve us making commitments over the 10 Million Dollar threshold, so it will require a board of supervisor approval. So, as ive been presenting the schedule, that assumption i think we need to set aside because i think we will need to go to the board of board supervisors of at least some of the supply contracts that were likely to present to you. In addition, that Risk Assessment and the rigor were trying to apply around that Risk Assessment has really grown from being a Risk Assessment into a full Business Plan for the Community Choice aggregation program, so we are preparing a clean power assessed Business Plan that will integrate with the Business Plan that weve already presented to you. Were going to in order to meet the rigor that i think youre looking for and in light of the fact that we now are we now have bond holders and indenture to stay true to, were going to have that Business Plan third party reviewed, so thats going to take a little bit more time than we had initially pants panted. We had at the last Commission Meeting reported we thought we would bring that Business Plan to you on october 13th, now were going to work with the general manager and we advise our schedule and come back to you next week with a new schedule. I want to emphasize that what were talking about here is a matter of weeks, not months, and i want to emphasize that were committed to Swift Movement but also to Smart Movement in implementing our cleanpowersf program, so we think on balance, its smart for us to come back to you with a revised schedule. We also recently received more information about pg es planned rates for 2016. They are forecasting rate changes that will affect our Business Analysis and we need to factor that in as well. So, those are some things that have changed since we put together the original schedule and so well be coming back to you with a new schedule, i expect the Business Analysis, the approval of contracts, the setting of rates, those were all activities that we had scheduled for october and early november to shift a matter of weeks. Yes, commissioner . Can i ask you a question about so, the Business Analysis, thats just for cca, thats not and the Business Plan overall that weve been talking about, i imagine that might impact that as well, and will we be able to see that at the same time . Yes, what were proposing is a Business Case presentation for the xlaoen power assessed program that factors in and acknowledges some of the same information that weve presented to you for our overall Business Plan for the power enterprise, with cleanpowersf having been presented in that context as one of the program options, right, and now were going to dig algt deeper in this Business Plan into what the financial requirements and the risk profile is of that Program Within power enterprise. Because i think theyre connected. Absolutely. One of the three goals, their goal of job creation which is what were really driving towards, we also have some other issues at the puc and the business, you know, in the Entity Program and hatch were hoping cca can help with, i dont know where we are with our overall Business Plan but it would be great to at the same time or one after the other have an understanding of how they are connected. Well, they are connected in a way that well, first of all, there are two separate lines of business and thats the way were looking at it when we, you know, got was able to do the bonding for the Capital Projects as a separate line of business, so the connection that we made was that we would sell hetchy power possible sales to cca, but we want to make sure that its affordable, so with we go after these contract and is were seeing prices that are really affordable, we want to take a look at, well, how much would we be able to sell hetchy power for versus going out in the market and get renewables because we want the head room as large as possible so we can do Rate Stabilization because i think the number one thing is we got to make sure we keep our customers and not just go out there and do a buildout, we got to make sure we have investments to keep our customers and then we want to do buildout, so we really got to kind of know and thats why were taking time to see, one, the rates and get the best rate possible so that we can get the red room, the other thing that we have to look at is pg e is now decreased their generation cost to their customers so of course we said were going the match that, so therefore, we have to reduce the cost of our generation which will eat up into our head room as well, and so thats why were taking a pause because this will impact the Business Plan and the Business Plan talks about buildout, it talks about what to mix that we use from hetchy versus these different options that well go over later. It will talk about the risk of financing, you know, what type of rigor we need to do so that we can minimize the risk of financing and getting a bond rating, so all this will be included in the Business Plan. The cca Business Plan. The cca Business Plan, theyre tied together because the power enterprise is tied because its looking as one of the options of selling the power to cca. Right. Its not cca. I understand, and im just wondering when that other larger Business Plan of some of these hetchy issues that weve been struggling with and the fiscal cliff and all of that, when were going to get that because it seems this is a component of that, that we want to be looking at. Yes, and i would offer, commissioner, the two workshops we did on the Business Plan for power enterprise which acknowledged the cleanpowersf program but didnt dive into the financial obligations there tremendously, this next Business Plan will, that presentation, those two presentations were explained our strategies for moving forward and part of the implementation, and your next opportunity to influence how we go about making those changes within our organization is in our budget. So, the budget workshops will be the next opportunity for you to see, you know, so we had a Business Plan, how are we moving forward with that, how is that integrating and the point i made about needing to make sure that the cleanpowersf program and as we implement it is staying true to our indenture statements is also part of that because we need to structure we need to figure out clearly how we want to best structure cleanpowersf within our budget, so youll see implementation opportunities and opportunities to influence are Going Forward steps there the budget workshops well be holding as well. Okay, i just dont want to be stuck making a budget decision without plenty of advance review of those, it sounds like cca, its not that far off, but also our general Business Plan as well and whether theyre connected or separate feels like theres implications. Yes, and were taking the two workshops that we presented our Business Plan on, were turning that into a narrative document, were trying to make sure its not so long that no one reads it, but well bring that to you once weve had a chance to review it in final form with the general manager, so youll see that again soon as well. The presentation we made was pretty thorough, so if more information is needed, then maybe we should talk about it because what we plan on doing is what we covered is pretty much explained in the Business Plan. The Business Plan has a lot of levers that were evaluating, i think one of the things that we are making some progress is on the Interconnection Agreement with pg e, so i mean, depending on what that outcome, it could trigger a whole bunch of other decisions that we have to make, so you know, so we will hopefully get a document that is thorough enough but not just overwhelming, so that people make sure that people are able to read it and digest it. That would be great, something thats current with the cca, with the ia, with all the things that have happened. Thank you. Sure. And so general manager kelly was talking about one of the rel leg laory issues i want to report on, pg es forecasted rate for 2016, they filed at the Public Utilities california commission, what they project to be their rates for 2016, cleanpowersf has said we will have rates comparable for both our basic and our premium products, rates comparable to what pg e would otherwise be charging customers, its affordable, Competitive Program so, were tracking very much the changes that pg e makes to their rates because thats our competitive benchmark, thats a sealing for the rates that well be charging our customers. Pg e has made some changes that proposed to make some changes that unmet will put downward pressure on the rates we can charge. Were estimating it to be about a 10 rate decrease from what we had talked about as our not to exceed rate, so that as the general manager described really squeezes our margins, make us have to sharpen our pencils a little sharper and do some more of the Financial Analysis with that information. So, thats moving forward at the california puc, also at the california puc are pg es implementation filings for their green tariff option f, this is the program that will allow pg e to offer a 100 renewable product to their residential and commercial customers, thats the product that would compete with cleanpowersfs premium product, so in early september, the california puc issued a resolution in draft form for comment as to saying what they thought about what pg e had asked for, they largely agreed with that but they did put some conditions, some modifications on it. On that item on october 1, the resolution adopts many of the changes the city had requested in our our advocacy filings in the puc, in particular, we were looking for more transparency and more abilities for a customer to look at our program and what were offering and look at pg es program and what theyre and be able to compare them readily, so we were happy to see that puc staff is recommending modifications that would require pg e to include in their bill a separate line for the power the pcia, the power cost indifference adjust which is going to be disclose hated cleanpowersf customers receive, really as i say, to facilitate that side by side comparison, so the vote is scheduled for october 1 and pg e is saying that theyre intending to offer that program in early 2016, so thats what they had said before, they havent gotten more specific, about the same timeframe as us. I just want to