City of Columbus - Municipal Utility Planning
The Need
In 2017, Mayor Andrew J. Ginther announced an ambitious goal to combat climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from municipal operations by 40% by the year 2030, to explore a 100% renewable energy portfolio for municipal operations, and to reduce annual energy spending. In 2020, The City of Columbus, along with community stakeholders and the public, created a Columbus Climate Action Plan (CAP) to serve as a roadmap to meet the 2050 carbon neutrality goal.
Columbus Division of Power (DOP) is a municipal electric utility that serves roughly 20,000 customers in central Ohio. DOP must balance operating as a utility while also enacting the CAP and helping the City to plan for a more sustainable and resilient electric grid.
Our Approach
Since 2019 Go has worked with DOP to understand how to navigate a dynamic energy landscape while supporting the City’s CAP pursuits. Go works with DOP stakeholders to understand how they can integrate technologies such as renewable energy, battery storage, and microgrids into their electric grid and how these impact DOP’s finances, rate structures, and energy procurement contracts.
Economics – Understand how DOP procures power and the impact to its business model.
Infrastructure – Analyze the load and capacity of DOP’s electric grid and the impact from planned generation projects such as solar and cogeneration.
Technologies – Research and analyze technologies to understand their impact on DOP operations.
Rules & Regulations – Understand and identify the pertinent local, state, and federal boundaries and opportunities.
Rates – Model the financial impact to DOP and its customers of net-metering and rate design options.
Contracts – Review and understand the implications of energy-related contracts held by the City and its departments.
Stakeholders – Engage and interview stakeholders from diverse departments to absorb knowledge and enhance our findings.
The Results
With Go’s support, DOP has:
Installed 50 MW and counting of solar PV (link to other profile). These projects help reduce DOP’s electric rates.
Reviewed and revised rates to ensure that they are market competitive and support customer adoption of renewable energy. DOP’s rates allow recovery of costs while fairly reducing customer bills. This is a win-win for the utility and Columbus residents and businesses!
Created a net-metering tariff to more fairly compensate customers for onsite generation of energy. This promotes further adoption of renewable energy by DOP customers.
Developed a procurement strategy to further decarbonize their municipal supply. This is another way DOP helps reduce the carbon footprint of its customers.
Mapped the electric load and remaining capacity on many of DOP’s distribution lines. This helps DOP identify where to add more generation or storage capacity and what size(s) to further decarbonize and provide more reliable electric service to their customers without significant investments in grid infrastructure.
Our Role
Technical Advisor
The Client
City of Columbus
Duration
2019 - Present
Team
Milena Walwer
Peter Worley
Tommy Tappel