Um Charles Hathaway Scott present Scott Warner is here. Um Shane Steel steel steel. Um Mike Roth and Patrick is
running the controls. Craig Schulty and we will start the meeting by approving the agenda in and I don't have any questions on today's agenda. So let's move on down to the first item is the
PAS grant agreement. Um let's see that's not in order here that is a Oh yeah, that's the first thing. Okay. Um, are we going to have Okay. Well, MPC has
ordered the city of Grammar a grant to conduct POS testing and um we plan on sampling the following uh items. The leech from Minnesota Power
and Light Lee 8 from um the grant is $6,000. Testing is up to what 12 to 15 tests I guess is what they're going to do. 12 to have Scott Why don't I just have Scott explain a little bit about why
we're doing this and how the how it works out and what the results how the results may or may not affect us, I guess. So, the MPCA is pushing real hard to to try to get communities and industries to get the PAS out of the the
sewage because the best treatment is don't use it in the first place. Don't don't put it down the sewer. And so, hits for PAS and so uh also uh WLSSD, the big wastewater
plant in Duth that receives our sludge um water to WLSSD. We are. We are. Yes. Consistently all the time or is it We've only had one test so far. One test that turned out positive or one test?
One one test and it's uh right now they're kind of do right. But it's definitely So that the G&G truck drives up, they pull a sample, test it, and they have found PAS composted
uh sludge from the plant. But that sledge from the plant does not include uh gray water hauled by G&G, septage hauled by G&G, leech, right? It does. It does include it because they bring those to our plant,
dump it into the plant. Yes, it brings Yeah. So G&G sends it down the sewer pipe just like anybody in gramarway and then we treat that through our whole process. I see. And then the bacteria grab onto that PAS, a lot of it. Uh, somebody just goes out
into the lake probably from your house. What? I don't think so. It's pretty. Literally anything if you have nonstick cookware, anything that's teflon. Um, if you have rain repellent clothing that is
PAS that that rinses off in the washing machine and goes down the sewer. So, it's uh it's in the it's in our blood. So your body is constantly processing through it. I try not to bleed into my sink.
It happens. Well, Michigan has a problem with this. Um, vases is a really generalized term. It's hundreds or even thousands of compounds of which there's only a couple that we
know for sure are harmful and we just don't know enough. And what we're trying to do is just gather information. Do we test our water drinking water? Our drinking water has been tested for PAS. Okay.
And uh nothing is concerning. I'm sorry. Below detection limits. Is that what you're saying? At this point in time, yes. You say that like tomorrow might be different. It's who knows what tomorrow. What tomorrow will bring.
This kind of a test isn't a simple like pass fail test though. You have to pick the compounds you want to test for. You have to have a test that's capable of looking for them. And I think that technology is still being developed. So the question that you're asking, are we detecting POS? Three years ago, that
would have meant something very different than it means today and it probably will mean something different from now. That's a good answer. That's talked about more and more and more. Mhm. Every you watch TV, they have somebody
to come in and put in filter kits to filter your water. And you know, this is Grand Rapids. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of those areas have sewer water and a lot of neighborhoods that you would not think
are on their own wells and septics, but they are. You don't see the septic sites because everything is SAM. So, you don't there's no mounds. There's nothing like that. So there's a lot of I think there's a lot of stuff flowing in the water that nobody knows about
really to approve the Well, I mean I didn't read through the agreement in any detail, but I mean is there anything there to be concerned about? No, it's just pretty much we're going to use the money to uh pay for the cost of
uh the actual samples, right? And then we'll take as many samples as we can be at 12 or 14 or 15 however the math works out and LSSD if they're asking we we really have an obligation to provide right so when do you expect to have the
testing done and reports in I I will be doing it periodic updates I mean it's sort of nice to hear like say you know what the first quarter results you know it's not like there needs to be every moment momentby-moment report. But
if there's something comes in that's interesting or useful, whether it's no detection at all or Yeah, I can include it in a future board back. Yeah. Some little memo or something. Yeah. Be good.
Okay. Anyway, uh I I move to approve the acceptance of the grant. Okay. a solar interconnection process and policy. Shane, you might have to guide me through this one. I did read a little bit. I mean, it's
kind more or less it's a policy that's going to help guide our So, we've got the interconnection policy in place and it's been in place for a couple years and it we just felt like it was time to
review the process just so that we're all familiar with it and then take a look at some policy scenarios that back at the time of the writing of this memo or just some scenarios that we might encounter in solar interconnection
customers. Uh now they're not scenarios anymore. They're actual um real real world u and their software the Nova power portal to help customers go
through our interconnection process. So star is an engineering service that provides us with the engineering review that um that our solar customers get when they apply for
uh a solar application. And so the process there's it's on this uh second page of my memo. It's get the like the infrastructure in place and tell that to star and then we star does
an engineering review and and there's contracts and um and this is all this is all done in the Nova power portal. Um and then the system gets installed and then we go out and we inspect the system and we turn it off and we turn it back
on and we make sure that it doesn't uh produce power for five minutes. That's it's in the construction happens whenever their installer gets to come up here and do it and then we test soon after that and they're approved to operate.
Yeah. I I think it was a couple years ago, but I think my installer really went through most of this itself and so I had very little to do with any of this and the installer typically fills out the application and does most of the corresponding with this is how we do it. But there's no no
particular problem with what's going on. It it's it's what we do. Yep. And it's an it's uh something we've been doing for a few years. We it's so it's more than just a a one-page application that they fill out at city hall. This is an in-depth process with engineering
screenings and reviews of every stage of it. And and this 25% of my time just just managing this process. Uh you know, right now we've got four ongoing applications. They're all in the install phase. So, I'm just waiting for
the installer to finish the build and then they get in touch with me and say, "When can we schedule the test? We want to turn this on as soon as possible." Okay. What does SIMA then what are So, and then the star
they're in the phase of the installation part of it. Yeah. Or do they stay with it? They they they track the application just like I do. They do the engineering review. They look at the oneline diagram of the of the install and make sure that it's up to the for some reason and I want to
have or our our linemen will also be able to contact them and say why is it that we we're seeing this or that. Um, so they're helpful to have because they are the the the experts in the like the solar
um like electrical wiring and and the codes for the state requirements and stuff like that. Look at look at that and suggest you know maybe you would want a bigger transformer here. They haven't done they've only suggested that once. Um and we took that suggestion, you
know. Uh so is there a state of Minnesota electrical inspector that's involved in Yeah. Yeah. And frequently STARS engineers reject oneline drawings for
various reasons. Um they're incorrect or they they don't meet certain specifications. So, I'll get I'll get, you know, multiple one lines because Star is rejecting them because these these solar installers, whoever drew it, didn't do it right. Um, so they're
really helpful to have because I would look at it and know nothing. Yeah. So, the oneline drawings are the um and the way it works is there's solar is generating and and the power is used wherever it's needed first. So typically it's used in the home and if there's
more solar than load at the home then it comes out to the grid. All of their solar goes through a production meter so we can see every single kilowatt hour they generate. But then their their birectional meter, the one that's recording energy in and out,
they only get compensated for energy going out. Yep. Yeah. And so a few things about the rates. Uh Minnesota law, you can you can generate
40KW of solar at the retail rate and we have to compensate them up to 40 at the retail rate. So we have I think I had it on here on one of the pages. We have a 39.7KW system, very intentionally below that
40KW limit. And we're we're compensating them at our retail rate, which is 11.4 cents a kilowatt hour. Where is that system? That's that's a pretty big system. What we can share offline?
Electric data is confidential. Okay. Customer data. And actually, I can't remember which one it is off the top of my head right now anyway. But um the it's a typical residence typical is 5 to 10 kW. Oh, okay. Yeah. It's quite sizable though when you go to
40 versus 40 is significant. 40 is you know what we have on the public works garage. Um one customer has a battery. So their battery can can be charged by their
solar and then is also wired to power a few essential services in their house like their fridge and there might be a space heater or a or so outlets or something so that they can have a little bit of power if if there's no a backup. Yeah.
So they have battery storage. Yeah. and they referenced where they lived previously having outages all the time and so they wanted assurance that they weren't going to be just a flow both directions. So that's part of what we do when we look at a solar installation is ask that question
and so it's also relevant for a battery and and because it's also a solar installation that's useful if it was just a battery we may not get a chance to know about it look at it that battery can also discharge 40 they
get the retail rate anyone exceeding 40 which we do have one customer who has exceeded 40 kW of solar they get simp avoided cost rate which I noted down there for 2025 is three and a half 3.3 cents a kilowatt hour. So it's
significantly less. What what does that mean? The avoided cost rate. What what is that? It's so that's where the term comes from. But it basically means that's what their market rate is to purchase renewable power. And so it's what they're willing to pay any of our
customers to be utility scale renewable power. Do you know how that compares again just out of curiosity with if they were buying coal generated or natural gas generated? Uh typically not fixed on any of them right with our they they get under
contract for a lot of wind and solar and so they know what the price is going to be. If they're producing it themselves we know what the costs are. uh I don't know how it relates but because it's a marketbased system at that rate no matter what uh even if
you use bat load on site it's still treated that way um ability have solar do you uh do you have I mean I'm I'm sure you have the data but Can just generally
what are you seeing like what what's the graph look like applications received per year for new solar installations in Grand Marray is it like in 2020 the first year we did NOVA we had one 2020
in 2020 we had one before that I think we had five so in 2024 we received 12 applications just in 2024 and I think we're on track to hit that this year as well. The solar industry is
doing well. They are finding people willing to install solar and so it seems like there's there's more and more applications every single year and there's more and more companies installing solar each year. Yeah. But now there'll be less and less
subsidies from the federal government to pay part of the cost of installing. And so we'll have to wait and see if that affects financial part of it. Yeah. Yeah. So, let's talk about distributed generation and the Grand Ray climate
action plan because the Grand Loop climate action plan says that we want to decarbonize our electric grid mix and the best way for a city the size of Grand 90% carbon-f free by 2030 which is really an ambitious goal and
it's going to take a huge effort from them to get there and and then getting that additional 10% to to fully net zero is an even greater lift for them. Um, and while distributed
generation, which is rooftop solar, is a great way for people to take action themselves and take initiative in decarbonizing their own footprint because they can generate their own
power. Um, it can also be a detriment to that goal that I mean, so here's how because it costs three times as much. So we can buy onethird of it at the price we have to pay for rooftop solar.
We can buy quite a bit more at utility scale and we've got to buy quite a bit more to get 90% carbon-f free. So u it's only a detriment at scale you know at this scale it's not a detriment.
Yeah. Okay. So uh a solar customer selling us their excess power at at 11 cents a kilo we have to buy it from the customer at a higher rate. And that loss is what we
would invest in the system. Invest in the alignment. invest in the distribution and the rest of the infrastructure to keep the power on for everyone. And also that customer with solar on their roof when the sun is shining isn't paying us
for the power they're using. They're generating their own. And so that to account how we can also then make it fair for the non-solar customers is like you said there's a 3 or 4 cent
gap in price there about about so that might and with you think that would ever change I mean think about that at that you know at some point in time is it going to