who's playing tonight let's call to order uh the electric advisory board meeting it's Monday April 7th 2025 5:30 uh please join me for the invocation and the pledge of
allegiance lord give us wisdom and discernment amen i pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and
justice for all okay first order is approval of the minutes for the regular meeting held March 17 2025 motion to approve second okay uh
discussion all in favor say I i i all no same side okay motion cleared discussion presentation so as promised it's a repeat for two of
you new for new so we thought we would do the famous electric 101 stuff again just so as we move into the budget process and everybody has a concept of the stuff we're talking about because obviously the electric department is pretty
complex here for the city so I will I will try to breeze through this because I know at least two of you have sat here this will enable you all now to ridicule Mike and um Amanda and Amanda uh for not being here because there the you got onethird of the the new folks on there
so I won't belabor it and I'll get right to it and I'll try to be brief this is the only thing that was on the agenda tonight uh next month uh we'll start we'll start deling into the budget process and and that kind of stuff so um so with that um first the the in the
United States there's three organizations that provide electric power to businesses and our residences and those are investorowned utilities municipal owned utilities and cooperative utilities so wherever you are in the United States you're going to be buying power from one of those three
entities investor-owned utilities probably make up about 70% at least in Florida and probably pretty close to that nationwide of all the power sold in the United States investor-owned utilities are are for-profit organizations um where profits go to
shareholders um so their models are a little bit different than ours so they're they're purely in the business uh to make money um that's I don't know if they'll say that's their number one goal but when you're when you're a capitalist and you're in business you
want to make money so I I say that without any judgment their goal is to make money of course you know they want to provide a good product they want to work safe you know all those cool stuff they want to be competitive um so you know we all have that in common but there there is a big disparity I think
in the way we approach the businesses between um purely a profit driven business versus a pure business like us i laugh um uh municipal utilities and cooperative
utilities were similar creatures but slightly different um were actually kind of both municipal utilities and cooperative utilities kind of born out of the same want during you know the 1920s and electrification of the United
States where investor utilities wouldn't provide uh utilities in the urban areas because there wasn't a profit motive uh because it was hard to extend wire and infrastructure and generate uh for a smaller group of of businesses and
households um so major areas in the United States didn't get developed and who did develop those areas municipals or co-ops um so our difference is we're not motive we're not profit driven uh we provide
the same product as an investorowned utility and we're probably splitting the rest of the the customer base in half 15% is typically about a co-op and about 15% a municipal um and our and our differences municipal owned utilities
are either typically run by a city commission or an authority um there's certain co-ops in or certain munis in the state of Florida uh that you'll hear that the bigger uh municipal utilities like JEA Jacksonville Electric Authority
OU Orlando Utility Commission KUA even uh CMI utility authority where those are authoritydriven uh organizations um so the city commissions or the governing body and those entities have typically appointed
a board like yourselves um but the difference in that is the city has ultimately given the keys if you will to the authority to manage the system in terms of rate making policym capital improvement projects all those type of
things and at the end of the day what the city garners back and and and and the biggest difference between investor owned and municipal utilities is the dividend so in an investor own or IOU those dividends go to shareholders in a
in a municipal electric utility those dividends typically come back to the cities in the form of what we call a transfer or a pilot payment in lie of taxes um if you look at the charter of OU for example they they have a specific pilot
so it it's rated on uh a specific amount payment in le of taxes we are a transferbased organization so in our charter we've we've limited our transfer to 6% uh so 6% of electric revenues are
transferred into the general fund um for the use of the public um that that comes back in providing the general services of the city so general service of the city police and fire are the lion share of pretty much any municipal corporation
or or county for that matter it's probably the number one thing that that that we do um so those transfers it it's fair to say help fund police and fire they also go to different capital improvement projects and those type of things so um then we jump down to co-ops
they pretty much look like us with with two different variations they don't have a dividend or transfer th those monies or surpluses that they have is typically kept what they call amongst the members and then they share those highs or lows
with additions or delete credits or debits on your utility account here close to home you guys know SECO everybody's heard of SECO some electric co-op that's probably the biggest co-op in the state um and their distribution co-op so we'll get into that here in a
second uh But they call those hot bucks so if if you got friends or neighbors who are on SECO they have hot bucks or and and so they give you a credit and that's kind of their dividend that they share and o all co-ops share that in in
um in the United States the next biggest derivative of a co-op is they have an elected board or a body that the members hire so if you if you're on SECO or Clay or name the co-op you want to inject they elect their board members like we
elect our city commissioners um that's really pretty much the rudimentary difference between the three investors so and you'll hear us refer to those often IUS co-ops and cities
um any questions there um so now we get into kind of I'm going to diverge from the three makeups of what organization provides you electric power into how do we get our power and
how are things broke down and what specifically do we do here in Leburg so the first one is is generation the first way you get your electricity is you have to have a generation source uh generation comes in all forms of of
different models typically generation is unless you get into kind of green energies but everything kind of um that is is is a fuelbased um energy product
gas oil diesel nuclear coal um those are all kind of I I would say fuelbased generation so we make heat we mix it with water that makes steam it turns the turbine and the turbine is big copper reels spinning together that makes
electricity so by and large that's 80 to 85% of all your energy no matter who sells it to you no matter what they're saying about how they love solar or green energy we're all fuel dependent
and then there's arguments on what fuel is better uh here in Florida probably about 75 to 70% of all your electricity whether it's from FPPL an IOU SECO a co-op or the city of Leburg comes from
natural gas so Florida is probably one of the biggest states in the union where natural gas is our primary source of energy and probably up until recently the a lot of the transfers from nuclear and coal shift shifted over to natural
gas um and then probably just I'm being super high level who probably the Biden administration in in 2020 to 2024 probably that was the biggest administration who started trying to shift away from natural gas and go to
green sources so green sources were put up here as as hydroelectric um so um hydroelectric is obviously you build a dam the water comes down the water spins the turbines uh windmill instead of uh you know those type of things the wind
spins the fan and the fan spins the turbines um then we get into kind of different stuff solar's obviously a little bit different you know that has solar energy makes electricity on its own um wind bofuels all sorts of other stuff and those are kind of seen as
green and renewables so for this purpose I'm just going to kind of put a big dividing line between fuelbased and greenbased um and while every utility investor owned co-op or city alike we talk a lot about fuel mix and
diversification which is important we put a lot of stress or emphasis on green energy if we're being direct and candid nobody in the industry in the electric industry likes green stuff and and the reason we we say we do and we make you
think we do um but really at the end of the day um green is inefficient and and so green doesn't return value as much as fuel um it's cumbersome to make and it doesn't really provide the source of
energy that we need because you know I don't know what our total national load is it's in the gigawatts times whatever i'm not even throwing a number at you but the amount of electricity that we need for our consumption nationwide is
humongous and those green sources just haven't put in um that there's not the value there to shift so while we talk about you'll hear different utilities shifting um I'll beat up on GRU a little bit ou talks about it we all talk about
going green and going solar by 2050 i really think that's more of a of a talking point than an actual reality and utilities that have tried to go green you have seen their prices go up versus folks who are still fuel dependent um
and classic example I want to talk about this a little bit more later with our wholesale uh supplier the Florida Municipal Power Agency FMPA um we've even cancelled our last solar project so we'll get into that here in a little bit but those are those are the types of
generation and that's the root of everything that we do is we've got to make energy first so um this next chart kind of shows you the four sections of how power gets to our customers so the first one is uh generation so over at
whatever plant you drive by or whatever se whatever source you see the the generation plants spin the turbines or green makes whatever um and you have energy that energy then is distributed into transmission lines which is like
the highway so that's the I4 or the I95 of the electric business is we got to send high high transmission high voltage power out to different locations but that energy is at such a voltage that
you can't consume it at your house and blow stuff up so um we've got to then do we've got to downgrade it um so that then we go into what we call a distribution system so we go from the generation plant to a to the grid and
you'll hear it referred to as transmission high voltage and then we downgrade it at a substation to a distribution voltage and then the same with transmission to distribution that voltage is still too high for customers
to use you know so if you plug into a transmission a distribution voltage you're going to burn up your haird dryer you're going to burn up your TV um so what we need is even a lower voltage um and you kind of see where it comes out you see at the at the generation plants
we come out at 12 KV so that's 12,000 kilovolts to transmission which is typically 400 kilovolts to 69 um kilovolt and 69 is the low end of transmission and then on the distribution side we're at 13,000
um or or 2400 or we it after or I I jumped here so we go from distribution then we hit another transformer and then we go to your house where you have the lower 24 240 volt that then now you're using that at your house so um what you
typically probably hear in storms or the bang in the night is typically a transformer that blows up so that's this transformer right here and going from a distribution voltage to your house voltage um and then it's in your house
um here in Leburg um we are in what we call the all I'm going to I'm going to use this chart and then go to the other chart we buy all of our power from the m from the Florida Municipal Power Agency uh FNPA is a
joint action agency that was formed back in the early 70s maybe 68 if you ever have to guess about when something was formed in Florida guess 1968 because that's when the constitution of the state really changed uh from the early time to nowadays and we still refer to
that um that date is pretty significant so statutes and everything the basis of all that is legal in those big giant law books 1968 is the magic date so in 1968 all this stuff was kind of set up as far as the parameters of how we govern electric distribution um and
transmission all that stuff so um FMPA was formed shortly after that i don't think it was a coincidence um but long story short FMPA is our joint action agency there's 48 municipal electric
utilities about 48 the right number there's a 43 48 um throughout the state um and FMPA represents some of them we have two joint action agencies if you would one
is FMPA Florida Municip Power Agency the other is FMA Florida Municipal Electric Agency they're kind of brothers and sisters but they do two totally different things so you'll hear talk we'll mention FMPA and FMEA and those
acronyms just roll off our tongue um so let me tell you the difference fmpa is power supplier so all things that associate with generation and transmission and generation transmission
or FMPA all things that are legal or advocacy or lobbying are FMA Florida Municipal Electric Association so when the state legislature picks on us we
typically pick up the phone and call FMEA that's led by Amy Zubli who's the general manager of FMEA who's based in Tallahass Tallahassee and then when you want to pick up your phone and complain about your electric rates then you call
FMPA and you talk to Jacob Williams the general manager of FMPA um FMPA is very active with FMA uh so we kind of I don't want to say it's redundant but our interest as an individual city with
legislation or with things that happen that govern the chart um also affect FNPA so specifically FNPA was organized to provide what we call projects um and projects are the generation source of
this chart so FNPA has a number of projects i think their number is eight um and they kind of call them by title uh St lucy 1 St lucy 2 that's a that was a specific project where there was a need for energy from cities fnpa
organized hey let's build a power plant fn and and St lucy was born or or Stanton projects um the flagship project of FNPA is called the all requirements project so that gets back to this chart
a little bit and that is what we are a member of so all requirements says and we refer to it as the FMPA ARP so all the the acronyms are going to get thrown at you so the ARP is now a
division of FMPA the ARP likes to think and it pretty much is the flagship of FMPA because uh it incorporates uh 13 other members about a quarter of their members and it
provides all their requirements so when we talk about the generation and transmission portion of providing electricity there's several requirements that you need at generate you need generation you need spinning reserves you do all sorts of stuff on the
generation side that's bundled into your bill at the end of the day so bundle bill at the end of the day is uh our bill is uh right now we're 132 I think uh yes 13294 is about and so that's the
so we measure uh every thousand kilowatts um the first thousand is typically the ruler for every utility and what do you sell the first thousand kilowatts of residential electricity for our number is 132.94
um that so that's a bundle bill so when you get that bill your generation cost is in there your transmission cost is in there your your C service cost is in there all those things are all wrapped up in that bill so there's a bunch of different requirements in that bill the
city is a member of the ARP and what we have to do to get to the distribution and utilization part of this chart is we have to buy all these requirements we have to buy our transmission we have to buy our generation and we look to FMPA
to do that for us and the city of Leburg has done that since the early 80s so we have been a member of the all requirements project for the early since the early since its inception um and so when we say FMPA ARP that's our
generation that's our transmission those are all those requirements that is the sole and the budget book you see around the city right is about this big the budget book you see around the city right is about this big and it's
about $200 million and there's one line in it that's our wholesale line that's our bill from the FMPA ARP and it's about I think we're running about 55 million right now so a quarter of that
book that's this big one line one page one number is 25% of the whole book and that is all requirements associated with generation and [Music] transmission so in
Leburg we use FMPA to buy and transmit energy and then here in Leburg now we break down from the transmission side to the distribution side so you'll see the big giant US 27
is a is a great example if you go down US 27 you'll see the big giant poles those are the Duke transmission lines that feed the city of Leburg so energy comes off of that transmission line the big giant ones and it goes into our
substations we have five in the city of Leburg we call one the north substation Mark that one's up by you Lewis Road we have the center substation which is across the street from the Baptist church on US 27 off center street hence
the name center sub uh we have the east sub which is don't you know that one I don't know why we call it east sub but that one's the one that's right here i guess we call it east sub because it was before we put the one out at the airport uh but that's the the east sub is right
here the one here that used to be by cat trolley you probably saw like on Facebook when it caught on fire about a year ago that was East Sub we have the next substation uh the airport sub which is actually out on 44 uh by Treasure
Trove and kind of all that area um we've got four subs who am I missing and Pixieola i'm missing Pixola sub which is right there behind the CVS so those are our five we have one on the books uh where we purchased some property next to
Pin Brook Pines for the six substation um but that one's still in the works um because load issues and those type of stuff just hasn't risen high enough yet although we're getting there so it's we're it's in the works uh to build a
substation rough number I'll throw $5 million at you um and typically there's two transformers in substations so we come off what they call the high side to transmission side into the transformers and then that downgrades it to our our 13,000 volts that goes into our
distribution system the distribution system i don't know how many circuits we have 25 25 different circuits i should have brought the circuit map for you um but we have each uh you know and the math is about right about five circuits
per sub that break out and serve everybody um then we go so after we go distribution voltage then we hit the transformers and again you'll see that either with the pole mount transformers so you'll see that transformer on a pole or if we have an underground circuit
you'll see a pad mount or big green or a black box sitting on the ground there's transformers that get it to your voltage and then we go from there to your house so in electric speed after we go from the substation to distribution lines we
call that you know primary the primary system or distribution voltage synonyms so you'll hear the electric eyes they they typically call it feeders or primaries and then when we hit the next transformer that goes into your house
then we have the secondary voltage so that's typically uh a wire that that goes from a transformer to your house or underground up through a conduit and into your weather head so your weather head can be that one on the roof looks like a woodpecker with wires going into
it or underground and then it comes up your house by your garage there typically where it's fed from and there's a picture this is what underground service comes from the breaker to underground primary to a padmount transformer and then you have an underground service wire or if it's
overhead it comes off a a pole mount transformer into your house so is all new construction going to be underground typically yes um so while you bring up that number let me throw these numbers at you um I jumped ahead so to run all that
side of us we have about 49 employees in the electric department as just for comparison uh the city of Leburg has about 525 employees so 50 of them are electric um we have
27,854 customers and we serve kind of um yeah I guess four four distinct areas um we serve customers that we that inside this and and your composition of the board tries to capsulate this we have about 13,000 city customers we have
about 9,500 unincorporated Lake County customers we have about 4,500 customers and then the Sumpter County is um I won't believe at this point but there's about a thousand of
those those those are the villages that's the villages of Catherine so um on this note it it's probably a good place to say all of the state of Florida is regulated as far as who serves what where
um and if um you change a territory and typically it's done in virgin areas where there's no service so while all the state has territorial maps that are approved by the Florida Public Service Commission everybody knows where they're going to serve uh there's actually still
there's a few spots where it's in somebody's territory but there's not service to it um so on occasion uh we find that our territories aren't quite efficient meaning one provider could probably
provide it better and so you'll see better meaning uh there's not redundancy less system to build easier to provide access to one utility or another so on occasion you'll see utilities capitulate
and say okay we should trade territories because it makes sense and so when we took on those 935 customers in um the villages the village was actually the the impetus of that change uh because
they wanted the villages to be set up in more cohesive blocks so that their individual um residents would have the same supplier versus on this side of the street is utility A that side of the street it's utility B so they actually
approached us and Duke to say "You guys need to flip-flop." So we did the territorial trade and so the villages of West Lake which used to be our electric territory was traded to the villages I
think we did that in about 2017 and so we flip-flop we took a section of Duke Territory in Sumpter County and they took our territory uh because um in this case I don't know if it was so much maybe there was a a little bit of
economics for the utilities it's probably a little bit easier for us to reach uh the villages of Catherine um because actually we our service in that area comes from the north and we were immediately there and and and Duke came
from the south um so it's maybe a little bit easier to utility-wise to service it but the real push there was the villages um so that's our breakdown i think the the the thing that I would point out that's interesting there is is that you know
about 60% of our customers are outside the city limits um as we've pushed on in time um and as uh different utilities have functioned differently and attention has been paid by the state legislature to uh these
type of issues uh outside inside customer has become um a real talking point amongst um uh our our state legislators and representation
um of of rate making gets a lot of talk these days um I still will continually argue that I think even though we have 60% of our customers outside city limits and they don't have a direct voice
meaning an elected official who represents them who you vote this person on a body or they and they appoint somebody to directly make your rates are unincorporated residents through this body and through just the
natural um I think local policy politics still has a significant amount of influence in rate making even though it's not directly elected versus the model that investor own utilities will say which is the
public service commission is the model and why I think even though you don't have direct representation is different than the public service commission is the public service commission is appointed by the governor and there's five members that represent
7 8 n million elected customers where here we have five elected officials chances are you know the elected officials chances are you have their phone number in your cell phone and if you have an issue you're going to be
calling them you have direct access to the CEO of the utility you have pretty much direct access to the electric director so so even though on paper you they're not elected you have significant influence and I think you probably see
that a lot maybe not so much in rate making but when storms times come your circuits are down I think you you're getting our customers are getting a lot more information have a lot more influence than the IOU PSC way did
everybody I know I said that in acronym speak but did that make sense i don't think that's accepted um for a couple of reasons um the investor own utilities are very uh lobbyist centric they have a
lot of political capital and they use that political capital i say that without judgment um and and it's a complex and it's a complex topic so when you have state legislatores legislators who go to Tallahassee to do certain to do all
sorts of stuff I wouldn't say there's too many of them that are versed in the electric industry so then that that puts a crutch on that legislator to listen to lobbyists or listen to the influence on
where the checks are coming from again I said that without judgment as well and that's what's different about our system because when you yell at your city commissioner whether you're inside or outside the city limits you're meeting them at Walmart you're meeting them at Publix you're you're seeing them at ball
games and that has a lot more influence I think that 27,000 on five versus 9 million on five so I think our system has a lot more representation in it so with that we'll break down uh our O and M budget operational maintenance
budgets about 7.9 million our capital budget's about 3.2 and our bulk energy so there's a bulk energy purchase from FMPA and and Brad put in there adjusted for gas that's so um 66 million i think that number is a tick high um but then I
think you asked too what our percentage of over versus underhead that's how we got on this whole train so now to answer your question about 33% of our system is overhead and about 67% is underground so I'm going to say that's a pretty high number
um overhead underground meaning we have we have per capita probably a lot more underground uh utilities than overhead so when new systems go in especially on the residential subdivision side yeah
they're going in underground um our system expansion when we're talking feeders or distribution lines still still overhead a little bit we do take time when it it makes sense to go underground with stuff and then there's a lot of schools of thought too on
what's better overhead underground so real brief synopsis on that while we're at this stage is if you ask any line person uh journeyman or journey person what they rather work on overhead underground their answer is going to be
overhead and and and statistics as much as we keep will show you that overhead and underground outages are about the same maybe a little bit of an edge to underground doesn't go out as quick as overhead but the restoration time is the
big difference so when folks can get out there and see that a wires down or see that a pole is broken or or or see that a fuse is blown the restoration time is a lot quicker versus underground that we we have to do a lot more troubleshooting
so what lags behind is while maybe you get a little bit more uh reliability from underground you don't get the fix as fast and then when you put that all into dollar cents um over overhead it it still really has its place um I'll also
state too that if you have good tree trimming policies um and you keep mother nature away from your overhead lines even at here in central Florida I mean we don't typically see the cat four type five type crazy wind storms you know um
we see big storms you know 100 plus mileph winds generally the cat one type of variety you know your overhead systems can sustain that if you've got your trees cut back and you don't have stuff falling into your lines um so when you put everything together probably we
like underground better because I'm going to tell you that the what it provides you is the aesthetics you don't you don't see it all around out of sight out of mind so it looks cool um but but I would still argue that that
overhead is more functional costs less um although the numbers these days are getting pretty nip and tuck on overhead underground um I skipped a couple of things um here um but we kind of touched on it in that so uh questions question
go back to your last slide with the with the number of homes oh going the wrong direction there Mark that one how do you see the number of customers changing let's say the next year the next three years next five years based on what what is on the books
or dirt that's been committed but construction hasn't begun yet where does 27 278 what does that look like in a few years i see our unincorporated non- city customer base growing um there's your answer here so um so
this is our electric territory uh so let's jump to that on Mark's question so this is the the box of of our electric territory you kind of see the green is is Leburg proper um the I don't know
whatever color that is brown footland Park but everything in the red box is our that's the 27,800 customers that's the little sumpter piece that the villages of Catherine um and and this
was the territorial flip-flop we used to this line straight across and up and then so we gave this so this is Duke underneath so all the growth talk you hear right leburg's busting at the seams we got all this crazy growth going on um for our electric system from my
perspective I think you see it up in the Futland Park sector the most where we where we've grown um Futland Park um the other area of growth that we have in here where we're just kind of starting to see it these little green boxes uh
Treasure Trove uh Silver Lake Point Silver Lake or Silver Lake Estate Silverl Point so that's the old golf course that was the Romac Austriander i for I think that one I can't remember what this one is what's that one that's
the one at Jackson Road and Radio Road um I can't remember the name of that so So I think the growth I'm going to call that the northwest corner is is happening but it hasn't I don't think been as fast as the growth in Futland
Park so now when you hear like most of the chatter about Leburg growth it's happening in South Leburg so we hear the talk about and not even on the map um for our electric territory so this this
red line is roughly or 33 and 27 split so when you get to that point you are outside the city's electric territory and you are now in Duke land um and Duke has kind of bands so Duke has this band but then as soon as you kind of get down
to Arlington Ridge Legacy the band of Seco comes in so all the growth you hear about Whispering Hills Barke uh Blue Cedar uh Hodgeges Anthony that's you know that probably I would say the lion share of where we're seeing a lot that
will where Leburg will grow the fastest but it won't it's not in our territory so crystal ball 2035 or 2040 what do I see Leburg at 3540,000
people are electric and and and if you got a city of 35 or 40,000 split it in halfish and that's what you have for electric customers so um maybe we peak out at 30 35,000
electric customers i think that's a big number i don't think we get that but we'll have even more growth in the south so then mind you this isn't the city limit map because there's a big chunk of the city limits down here i think the interesting thing for us which is a
dynamic and another reason we did a couple of things the redistricting and um as well as the charter amendments to have the major supermajority vote to to um sell an enterprise fund a you so
enterprise fund is your utility funds water sewer electric gas uh if we would ever contemplate selling those we want a super majority vote because I I think with our five districts we could in the future have two or three city commissioners who are
not on our electric system who are involved with ratem policy so that that that's an interesting dynamic so right now we've got five city commissioners four are on the system one is not so as as as that growth dynamic changes I
think will probably be a pretty unique municipal utility and that there could be two or three commissioners who are from South Leburg in in Seco territory versus Leburg territory so that's the dynamic that I would that we need to
watch for um I think it'll make the city manager job harder and uh the electric director job harder because you'll have folks who who might be calling shots on rate making that that aren't on the system so that's why I think as this
body as as we grow into this role of having the electric advisory board maybe there comes a time where Leburg Electric operates more as an authority fashion i think that's what the future hold um we skipped a couple things there let
me kind of go back and um I think I hit that I'm not going to hit every slide in here but kind just so we we put some name I went backwards just to hit some names and faces because um we laid out the the the generation the transmission the distribution so let me just kind of
hit and we talked about service areas so let me kind of just hit some of the ways that we break down so our operations center um Chris I thought that was you tony's over tony so you're under there so our operation center is up there on
Griffin Road we talk about um you know that monitors every stuff so we have the smart meters typically we'll know when your power goes off before you do and hopefully before people start calling us we already have crews dispatched i think we're pretty good at that um and that's
all done at the operation center chris is over that as well so Tony reports to Chris chris Atkins is um what's your official title deputy director for operations no operations detective
services so So Greg has kind of the house split in Greg Brad has the house split in operations um there's their purpose um the next one is metering so Arnold uh Eugene is uh our our meter
tech or the supervisor over there so um operations talks about keeping the monitoring everything metering talks about measuring all the consumption so metering I think there's only two or three guys and uh in that department uh
but that's obviously super critical because that measures that measures the flow and consumption um uh so that's a big part of what we do uh service planning is under Steve Davis so uh that goes back to kind of both your all's
questions about underground overhead so St steve is our system planner so every time we got to add on to the system or hook in a major new service whatever that's Steve making sure the lines are at the are coming up with a design on what kind of voltages we need what kind
of voltage you need if you're a big customer so Steve reviews all that then the next phase is um I would have done this in a different order so I'm jumping all around substation maintenance so uh that gets back to when we go from
transmission voltage to distribution voltage that we've got a group of folks that manage and maintain all the substations and then we get into um I'm gonna jump to this one distribution and construction which is great David so
that that's probably like when you think of alignment um the the guys out on the pole hooking stuff up after the storms that's that's Greg's department of um making sure the power is flowing and the poles are up versus Steve uh designing
systems and then uh we've got um I think the contract administration so we do a lot of stuff with um let me get back where was that contract administration is a kind of a smaller part of the house but we've got a few
contracts on tree trimming underground utilities so when we are putting in underground we'll go to a company who will put in conduit and then Greg folks will typically come back in and and feed it so contracting and tree trimming or undergrounding it conduit and tree
trimming are are big contract um expenses and then we have administration um and that's really the presentation clear as mud did I go through too fast but I I
think the big takeaway is um as as we move forward in the year um the types of provider investor owns municipals and co-ops and their differences the territorial issues that were all regulated in a certain area to serve the
relationship of who's making rates and how that affects us and then the divisions of the service generation transmission distribution um and th those are those are the big pieces i I think hopefully when you have that in your head as we go through and talk
about rate structure um and those type of things you've got that basic background very good and that's our presentation barring any other questions thank you real quickly
sorry not a political conversation but will tariffs influence the generation of of power i mean I assume it'll probably have an effect potentially on equipment uh things like that but as far as the generation of power might tariffs have
any impact on that that might trickle down to the homeowner at some point okay the broad answer you got to say yes because the steel and the copper and the wires and all the things that go into making power plants are going to be affected by tariffs um I think the thing
that that that probably puts that in question is um probably some of the executive orders that the Trump administration has passed kind of right out of the box going back more towards fossil fuel type of of energy versus
green energy but even on the green energy side um you know there were different costs like for example there's not a there's really not a solar panel made in the United States um and I don't think most people know that and I the other thing I think most people don't
know is is producing that wafer that solar wafer is really a dirty industry um and we don't see it that much in the US because they're not made here uh so I think so yeah I think tariffs will have an effect um I and I think on that note
too there's a lot more talk about being going back more to nuclear type of of energies in the future and you kind of see 30-year blocks maybe 40-year blocks on how we've gone like in the 70s we we love nuclear until Chernobyl and Three
Mile Island right and then everybody wanted to go away from that and then and so and then kind of that coal and nuclear kind of thing and people didn't like coal because coal was dirty and nuclear was radioactive and that really ushered in by 2000 kind of the shifting
of those um fuels to the gas fuels and so everybody in the early 2000s really went gas heavy and you saw the kind of what I call the first blip in about around 2005 when you know GA natural gas typically hang out around hung out
around two $2 a decad to buy and then when everybody was going gas in early 2000 you saw that first spike go up to $15 a dec leveled out and then you know the world kind of stayed the same um and then and then kind of the OB the Obama
and Biden admin administration kind of started saying gas was bad um and maybe not so much from a CEO standpoint but from a heat index so even though natural gas didn't have uh the knocks that maybe
coal fire did it still puts off a heat in the atmosphere and that's a greenhouse gas so um now we start seeing some of that i think we're gonna start seeing some of that roll back and forth so all this time at least since I've been in the business which say 97 um
what we see is kind of each presidency change broad perspectives we start going one way and then every four or eight years that direction changes so you know we had one you know Bush kind of started um holding on to some of the older coal
fire plants i think Big Ben Tikico's plant is a is an example of that that that kind of plant started you know I think Clinton was starting to phase out and go to gas bush got elected h we held on to the big bin a little bit longer um but then by the time Obama came in you
you started seeing more shift go to gas um really until Biden I I think when then gas was deemed as bad but you had the interruption of Trump and they're right between Biden and Obama and he kind of went back green to to fossil
fuels and now now you see it starting over again so really I think the so I think where the industry suffered is is we've had stop go stop go stop go whichever side of the equation you're on and that's been bad for planning but I think probably in the last four years or
so I think you you see nuclear starting to come back nuclear fision you know about two years ago was probably that first big test where they kind of figured out oh we can make nuclear fision work um when do we see
that in in bulk probably not for another 20 years so really I kind of think what's going to bridge the gap between now and then i guess it probably we go back to gas we'll flirt with the green stuff but I think I I me personally I
don't think the green stuff uh is really practical because as we see it go into implementation what I can't remember what the number is an acre of of ground of an acre of solar panels what get you five megawatts if that our system is
when we peak out at we peak out at I think our new peak is like 125 so I mean do the math on that and then and then put that in the United I mean there's not enough ground um and then you know the other part we talk about solar is you know we're the sunshine state we
only get solar energy in Florida 20% of the time and when we need it the most it's not producing so that's so that's why you know these things are problems and so I I I'm been surprised at that at how
uh the Biden administration was so connected to that because I think there's a lot of minds around that I I and I'm not advocating we we pollute the earth but I'm advocating man I don't think we've done our homework on finding really finding the right energy source
for the future and sticking with it [Music] so um kind of shadows of to come of uh you know our budget process again is coming up so we'll talk agnosium will break down the budget and we'll talk about rate making um I'll say power cost
adjustment and that kind of stuff i think we talked about it a little bit last time so we'll talk about that a little more um obviously the power cost adjustment went up this month um but you also see uh you see some press releases coming out where FPL is going up duke is
is is uh is that the last one I saw was Duke go up uh SECO just announced a 12% increase um I don't say that with Glee uh but I I do say it as a as more of a I told you so don't yell at us it's not
it's not us here at city hall messing with your rates it's really the industry and so where the industry has really seen effects is on this back and forth of fuel sources what is it going to be in the future and then uh 2000s really
saw inflation uh really hit the industry so you know back in 2019 a transformer cost 1,500 bucks now a transformer cost 3,500 bucks so almost everything has doubled our utility not including the power cost
adjustment has not increased our base rate um so I do see unfortunately I see a base rate coming um the electric department has shown some signs of life with trying to squirrel away a little bit of cash so we'll talk about those
kind of things and balance how much cash we want to have versus where we want our rate to be um and then we we'll talk about trade-offs too we did that a lot last year with um one of the big things we talk about is hey can we have a big bells and whistles system where we have
this immediate notification system we we we talked a lot about that but those systems are really expensive and it laden um and increase our costs um and one of the one of the feedbacks that we got from Duke was you know they have a great system as far as notifications but
really when you break down into it they set that bar so high um uh could the complaints that I've received from Duke have been oh yeah we got notified in a minute that our power was going to be out but they told us it was going to be out for three days you know so you know
high expense and kind of you know so they've got that expensive system but then they set the bar so unreasonable that it doesn't help you so I mean or and and and honestly understandably so um because sometimes it's difficult to troubleshoot stuff that I think that's
another area where we do a little bit better in the job because we have a smaller system more people per l we can give you better estimates and and I think we do better in storms but all those other bells and whistles so at the end of the day we really starting cut cutting down on automated type
offormational dissemination uh because we we we've been doing it the oldfashioned way here um but that that saves you when you go pay your bill so I'm sure we will have all those discussions more i think ultimately my hope is by the time we roll to October
one we'll ultimately see hopefully a roll back of the power adjustment and an increase in the base rate another reason for two and a half versus two and a quarter so that maybe those things offset so um and what the difference
there is is if that fuel cost money is going directly into the pot for fuel only and where we see the utility struggling or I don't I don't want to use the word struggle but where we see could use some improvement is to have a little bit more cash on hand and so it's kind of that balance and we'll talk
about that a lot this summer but the all those principles are all the things the the basics of all the intricate details we'll talk Very good roll call bethany you have anything no I do not yes sir meeting
stands adjourned so we'll see you all next month first Monday