MID Board Report Archive

MID Board Meeting of Tues., Oct. 10, 2006
Contact: MID Public Affairs Department, Kate Hora, 209 526-7454
The next MID Board meetings are scheduled for Oct. 17, and 24; and Nov. 14,
21, and 28, 2006.

Water Report

Water Use Manager Joe Lima reported that staff would probably recommend ending the 2006 irrigation season on Nov. 3 depending on temperatures, harvest status, and post-irrigation requests from growers. Water storage in the upper Tuolumne reservoir system is at 85 percent of capacity. Elevation at Don Pedro is 798.74 feet, slightly below one year ago. Oct. 7 was the date on which the dam operator must bring elevation below the flood control level. Today’s weather report showed light snow all the way from Lake Tahoe to Yosemite, an appropriate event since Oct. 1 is the beginning of a new water year.

Board actions today

By unanimous vote, the Board approved agreements with

• Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP to conduct harassment prevention training for supervisors and managers, as required by law.
• COSCO Fire Protection, Inc. for a steam turbine fire protection system to be installed at the Woodland Generation Station.

Electric Resources Policy Update – Workshop 4

Roger VanHoy, Assistant General Manager for Electric Resources, and Dale Bosowski, Senior Resource Planner, presented the fourth in a series of informational workshops on MID’s Electric Resources Policy. The discussion included a summary of new state and federal legislation and how MID resource planners prepare load forecasts.

Peak load forecasts are developed by Electric Resources Division staff, based on total MID customers, central air conditioning stock, system energy sales, the marginal cost of energy, temperature build-up over three consecutive days, among other factors. Projected load is adjusted up or down based on energy use by seasonally operated canneries, passive energy-saving measures put into place through rebates and incentives, MID-activated demand-response programs like industrial interruptible accounts or the STEP air conditioner cycling program, and near-term weather forecasts. The preliminary peak load forecast for 2007 is projected to be 699 megawatts (MW), with a range of 601 MW (minimum) to 760 MW (maximum), excluding reserves.

In the next workshop, staff will present several policy statements for Board approval. The staff positions, projects, incentive programs, rebates, and related decisions needed to implement these policies will be included in the MID Budget.

The 2006 state legislative session included several energy bills that will have a significant impact on MID, as the summary on the next page describes: