Sustainability and Resiliency Committee Minutes - June 8, 2021

The Sustainability and Resiliency Committee meeting was held in the City Commission Chambers at Fargo City Hall at 3:00 o'clock p.m., Tuesday, June 8, 2021.

Present:
John Strand (chairman), Fargo City Commissioner
Tim Mahoney, Fargo Mayor
Bruce Grubb, Fargo City Administrator
Nicole Crutchfield, Fargo Assistant Director of Planning and Development
Brenda Derrig, Fargo City Engineer
Bruce Taralson, City of Fargo Inspections Director
Brock Morrison, City of Fargo Director of Facilities Management
Ben Dow, City of Fargo Director of Public Works
Jennifer Sweatman (At-Large)
Casey Steele (At-Large)
Greta Gramig (At-Large)
Shawn Paschke, Xcel Energy Representative (Ex-officio)
Paul Matthys, Cass County Electric Cooperative Representative (Ex-officio)
Dave Leker, Fargo Park District Representative (Ex-officio)
Blake Mikesell, Fargo School District Representative (Ex-officio)

Absent:
None.

Approval of Agenda:
Chairman John Strand called the meeting to order. He reviewed the current agenda, which the Committee unanimously approved.

Approval of Minutes:
Mr. Grubb moved that the minutes from the May 11, 2021 meeting be approved as read. Second by Mr. Leker. There was unanimous approval.

Cass County Electric Cooperative Presentation:
Mr. Grubb said Paul Matthys, Vice President of Member and Energy Service at Cass County Electric Cooperative (CCEC), will talk today about CCEC’s mission and services as well as the Max Generation Event that occurred in Texas in February and how that affected services in the Upper Midwest.

Mr. Matthys said CCEC’s mission is to serve its members’ energy needs with affordable and reliable electricity. Since CCEC is member-owned and not-for-profit, he said, anything at the end of the year above operating expenses goes back to the member-owners in the form of capital credit checks. He said CCEC’s power supplier is Minnkota Power Cooperative and CCEC has about 53,400 accounts in 10 counties in southeast North Dakota, about 6,000 miles of line and 41 distribution substations. CCEC has been a pioneer and a leader in the State regarding electrical vehicles (EV), he said, and CCEC currently has two EVs in its fleet. CCEC offers its members an off-peak rate and a one-time rebate for in-home EV charging, he said, and CCEC was awarded some funding through the Volkswagen settlement and installed three Level 3 charging stations at West Acres, Hornbacher's Gateway West and the Fargo-Moorhead Convention and Visitors Bureau. He said CCEC was also involved in getting the first all-electric school bus in North Dakota for the West Fargo Public Schools and monthly operating costs for the bus are about half the cost of diesel. CCEC also purchased with Fargo Parks and the Fargo Police Department an electric motorcycle, he said. CCEC operates the Prairie Sun Community Solar Project in south Fargo, he said, and was the first utility in North Dakota to have a community solar farm. The project consists of 324 solar panels, he said, of which about 75 percent are sold. He said CCEC’s power mix is 55 percent coal, 34 percent wind, 8 percent hydro and 3 percent other, which includes purchases in the wholesale market. He said the Milton R. Young and Coyote stations are CCEC’s base load, dispatchable coal-fired plants and CCEC has wind farms near Langdon, Petersburg, Valley City and Center. He said the wind does not always blow and the sun does not always shine and the combined wind and solar delivers only a small percentage of CCEC’s energy needs. In North Dakota, he said, the wind has a capacity factor of about 42 percent and the solar farm has a capacity factor of about 14 percent. With wind and solar, he said, CCEC has a “must take” contract on the wind when it is producing energy. Minnkota takes it and if CCEC is not using it, he said, it is sold at spot market pricing into the market. Regarding the Maximum Generation Event (MGE) this past winter, he said, Midcontinent Independent System Operator (MISO) asked its providers to enter conservative operations February 14-20 and declared a MGE on February 16 due to the combination of expanded regional need and less generation available. The reasons for the event included frozen plants, natural gas pipeline constraints and less production from wind farms, he said, which made the cost of buying energy from the grid skyrocket. CCEC is part of MISO, he said, which runs from Hudson Bay to the Gulf of Mexico and from Montana to Michigan. He said an MGE occurs when the load exceeds the resources in the market, which is what happened on February 16. He said there have been several of these events over past summers and winters; however, people do not hear a lot about them due to all of the work that goes on behind the scenes. What Minnkota saw on February 16 was prices over $100 a megawatt hour and sometimes up to $900 a megawatt hour, he said, and to put that into perspective, CCEC’s average wholesale rate is about 7.5 cents a kilowatt-hour and the average retail rate is about 10.6 cents a kilowatt-hour throughout all customer-member bases. He said when CCEC was seeing prices up to $900 and more, that is 90 cents a kilowatt-hour, and CCEC cannot buy it at 90 cents and sell it at 10 cents for very long and this was more extreme in Texas, which quickly drove some utilities into bankruptcy. He said CCEC does day-ahead forecasts and submits how many megawatts of wind, coal and nuclear they think they will need. On February 16 what MISO was facing was coal, natural gas and nuclear plants that had issues with the cold weather, but mostly delivered in that MISO footprint. He said MISO had forecast a need for 22,000 megawatts of wind for February 15th; however, only 3.5 megawatts were available. Wind turbines stop operating between -20 and -25 degrees and on that day, he said, the temperature was about -22 degrees, icing was an issue, the wind was not as strong as predicted and extreme cold drives up the demand for electricity. On February 15th the two coal plants in North Dakota were online and kept the heat and lights on, he said, and CCEC came out of the cold snap with few weather-related service interruptions. He said there were no rolling blackouts or days-long outages and electricity provided by the Young station covered the demand and added needed power into the national grid. CCEC also utilized its load management system, he said, at facilities such as Sanford and Essentia hospitals where electric heat was switched to propane/natural gas, which shed about half of the system load. The Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) is an island, he said, and is not a developed and interconnected utility. He said Texas made a decision many years ago to deregulate, which gave Texas residents cheaper energy for many years and Texas was celebrating that cheap energy; however, the celebrating came to an abrupt halt this past winter. Abnormal cold weather caused about 75 of the 600 operating units within ERCOT to shut down, he said, and it is not known just how close Texas was to a complete blackout. He said when a grid goes black, it is not like a light switch that can just be flipped on; certain resources have to come on at certain times, everything has to sync and it can take weeks to get a grid back online and that is after dealing with all the issues with frozen wind towers, coal plants and natural gas wellheads. He said energy plants in Texas are not winterized, as is done in the northern states, and some people keep their electric and gas water heaters outside. He said 28,000 megawatts of thermal plants were offline February 16 and more than 5,000 megawatts of wind was iced during the event. The critical load was about 70,000 megawatts and the peak load was about 12,000 megawatts higher than anticipated, he said; therefore, rolling blackouts were needed to balance the grid. Blackouts are the sacrificial lambs, he said, and turning off small areas kept Texas from going completely black. He said there are challenges with every power source and now the question is where to go from here. Carbon technology exists and it needs to be embraced, he said. There are methods to decarbonize the future and one option Minnkota is looking at is Project Tundra, he said, a carbon capture and utilization project that captures about 90 percent of the Co2 and drives it a mile into the ground. He said it is going to take time and resources to make something happen and everyone has to be on the same page. Some are pushing that everything should be all natural gas, he said, there are groups saying it should be all wind, there are groups that are saying it should be all coal and there is a group in every corner saying one thing or another. He said there are many resources with information about Project Tundra for those interested; however, for the project to happen, it needs an investor who has an appetite for a tax credit. He said CCEC cannot do it alone and CCEC members cannot support it or pay for it. He said there are some companies interested and it will be a matter of what is going to happen with carbon and the current administration. He said decisions cannot be made until there is some direction and once there is direction, time and resources are needed to make it happen.

Mayor Mahoney said the City Commission recently approved Tax Increment Financing (TIF) for a company working on battery storage and it seems battery technology is what may be useful in the generation of energy.

In response to a question from Mayor Mahoney asking about other new technology, Mr. Matthys said the gasification plant in North Dakota has been purchased by a company looking at making hydrogen with natural gas. Although hydrogen is not new technology, he said, it was researched 25 years ago; however, at that time it was not efficient or cost effective. Technology today is making hydrogen look better as a future power supply, he said, and Minnkota is looking at that and just about everything as a possibility. He said another new technology is small-scale nuclear that includes pods built at different locations, much like a substation and not just one big plant. He said nuclear technology is very advanced and a lot safer. He said the big issue is infrastructure to get energy where it is needed. There are so many constraints with transmission, he said, and in order to go carbon neutral by 2030, it would cost MISO more than $500 billion. He said a big issue with wind energy is migratory birds and the Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are anti-wind towers. He said bald eagles, migratory birds and bats are killed by wind towers; however, not much of that is reported, but it is a problem. There are challenges with every power supply source, he said, and no matter what source, there is a group that hates it or there is an issue with it and it will be challenging going forward.

Mr. Dow said Texas was an energy island, they did not share and they got into trouble. He said in North Dakota, people think about blizzards and natural disasters and because of the extremes of the weather, North Dakota is more able to think about resiliency.

In response to a question from Ms. Gramig asking about preparedness for heat events and was there any stress on the system from the recent 100-degree days, Mr. Matthys said there was. He said the Minnkota system is still a winter peaking utility but that gap is closing as more commercial load is added.
In response to a question from Ms. Gramig asking how well-positioned this area is to get through more of these types of events, Mr. Matthys said CCEC’s power plants are very well maintained and weatherized for hot and cold. He said what they cannot prepare for is, for example, in the MISO market 22,000 megawatts of wind was requested yesterday and this morning there was one and a half megawatts and it is going to be 95 degrees. He said that is when CCEC starts shuttering base load supply, whether it is natural gas, coal or nuclear. He said some utilities have said they are going to shutter their plants and buy energy and people ask if CCEC can just buy from the market due to the fact that there is always excess energy in the market. He said that is true most of the time and many times it is affordable. He said the average market price in the MISO market in 2020 was 1.9 cents a kilowatt-hour; however, if Minnkota shuts down the coal, adds more wind and just played in the market, that might work for a while; however, what if everybody does that, he asked. What is supplying energy to the market if everyone shuts down their base load, where is all this magic energy coming from, he asked. When the wind is not blowing or it is froze up, the market it is not going to be there so utilities cannot all play the game of shutting down base load, adding wind towers and buying in the market. It would be a catastrophe, he said, that that is not a political statement; it is physics and economics.

In response to a question from Ms. Steele asking if the City has electrical and natural gas peak shaving, Mr. Dow said at most of the City’s major facilities such as lift stations, large buildings and treatment plants, there are standalone generators and when heat events occur, the City gets the notification that it is going to be off-peaked and the generators are started to reduce that base load. He said that also happens in the winter with natural gas where the City has fuel oil heating backup to avoid peak situations.
In response to a question from Ms. Gramig regarding Project Tundra, Mr. Matthys said when it gets down a mile, it is sealed into the bedrock. He said as coal is pulled out of the ground, so is carbon dioxide; therefore, this project would be putting Co2 back in the ground where it came from.

In response to a question from Commissioner Strand asking about wind powerheads that can now produce more energy and does he see that continuing to grow and is there going to be more reliance on wind energy, Mr. Matthys said some states and counties are putting moratoriums on wind, including Stanley Township. He said there are people who do not want to see the wind towers. For some landowners it is a good deal, he said; however, others do not like it and the moratoriums are in place now. He said a lot depends on regulation and if utilities cannot burn coal or natural gas, they are going to lean on hydrogen. He said wind and solar are carbon free as a fuel source; however, the construction of wind towers and solar panels is an industrial process, which is not carbon free. He said there are roughly 800 metric tons of cement in each tower and there are more than 60,000 towers in the U.S. The production of concrete is the number three carbon producer of all manufacturing processes, he said.

In response to a question from Commissioner Strand asking about the EV charging stations and what kind of usage has been seen, Mr. Matthys said it is actually more than anticipated.

In response to a question from Commissioner Strand asking about the difference between Tesla and other charging stations, Mr. Matthys said Tesla is proprietary so if someone owns a Tesla they can get an adapter and plug into any charger; however, if someone owns a Chevy Volt it is impossible to charge on a Tesla charger.

Mr. Dow said Duluth purchased a few electric buses and due to the amount of heat required to keep the batteries warm, the buses could run for only about 45 minutes in the cold weather. He said that is the challenge faced with the battery technology and cold climates.

Mr. Matthys said storage is the key and the lithium ion battery is not the battery of the future. He said China owns most of the precious metals and elements need for lithium batteries such as cobalt, lithium, manganese and nickel. He said those things are mined and strip-mined in China, which the world has turned a blind eye. He said what is needed is a battery that is green, renewable and abundant.

In response to a question from Commissioner Strand asking are there things Fargo could do that someday people will look back and say Fargo had good foresight, Mr. Matthys said Minnkota has already spent about $425 million on the back end of the plants to deal with nitrous oxide, sulfur dioxide, mercury and particulate matter, he said, and if people can embrace carbon capture that could set the standard for India and China. He said if only the United States cleans up its act, it is not going to do any good if everyone else burns coal without emission controls. He said rather than putting money into rainbows and unicorns, put the money into something that is viable such as the technology to burn fuel cleanly and safely in order to have affordability, resiliency and reliability.

In response to a question from Mr. Leker about rooftop solar, Mr. Matthys said CCEC has a solar farm that produces energy about 14 percent of the time out of 8,760 hours in a year. He said solar does not make any sense here, he has the empirical data and it is not what you care about or what you believe in, it is physics. He said when it snows CCEC has to pay someone to move the snow off the panels; however, there is maintenance on every power supply source. He said if something is made by humans and has moving parts, it is going to fail.

In response to a question from Commissioner Strand asking what other things Fargo should do regarding energy resiliency, Mr. Matthys said people need to get educated and be careful where they get their information. He said people want to reduce their carbon footprint and want to be environmental stewards; however, everyone should think about things such as do they need to live in a large house and do they need eight vehicles. He said CCEC teaches its members how to use less of CCEC’s own product. He said he encourages people to reach out to their energy providers and get information instead of listening to media or on social media. He said CCEC’s members are educated on how to use less energy and lower their footprint.

Mr. Dow said with the City’s EV charging station, there were not quite enough funds to do the infrastructure for the station and he contacted Xcel who paid for the infrastructure. He said with some of these projects, one group cannot do it alone but if you bring the cooperation of this table together things can get done. He said he sees that quite often in the Fargo, Moorhead, West Fargo area.

Mr. Morrison said one last piece for the EV charging station in the west parking lot is a transformer from Xcel and some concrete work. He said then the supplier does a startup and it should be ready to go in mid-July.

Mr. Paschke said before he started working for Xcel he was like everyone else who walks into the house, flips on the lights and does not think twice about it being cold outside and warm in the house. He said residential loads are the highest from 7 to 9 a.m. and 4 to 6 p.m. He said if a few people would push off laundry until 10 p.m., and things like that, it is all the little things that can conserve water and electricity that add up and just being aware.

Ms. Gramig said with fitness trackers, it is a part of psychology when someone sees a metric, it is a competition. She asked if the community could do something like that with conservation efforts.

Mr. Matthys said having people see what they do on a daily basis is a great idea and CCEC has an app where members can see their daily consumption down to the hour. He about 50 percent of CCEC members participate and over time, CCEC sees a trend of that member’s consumption going down. He said if there is a dashboard and members are watching what they are doing, they are more cognizant to use less.

Commissioner Strand said that would really be something for Fargo to create and foster culture that every person can have an important role in conserving energy.

Ms. Steele asked if there had been any discussion about adjusting the fee per kilowatt-hour if someone uses so many kilowatts. She said those who are conscious about conservation and use the app and pay attention pay the same as those who do not and could there be an incentive to increase the numbers of people paying attention, Mr. Matthys said CCEC does offer an off-peak program to incentivize people.

Mr. Paschke said Xcel has similar regulated utility rates; however, they cannot just change rates as all rate changes have to go through the Public Service Commission. He would suggest residents to look at their rates, there are programs for cycling air conditioners, water heaters and other things and all of that can save money and energy.

Ms. Gramig asked if during COVID, because so many people were working from home, did the utilities see any softening of these peaks, Mr. Matthys said CCEC keeps track of all of its residential meters on one virtual meter as well as all commercial meters and during the pandemic all commercial consumption went down and residential consumption went way up; however, now the trend is going back to pre-COVID-19 numbers.

Mr. Grubb said the previous presentation promoting ecosystem services with sustainable vegetation was very interesting and informative to him as well as the City Engineer, Planning Director and Public Works Director. He said the City has started talking about modifications to the City's standard specifications for construction, turf establishment and landscaping. He said perhaps once some sort of draft is put together that could be bought to this committee to share, have some discussion and maybe get the committee to endorse it on its way to the City Commission.

Ms. Derrig said it is exciting to see the acceptance of prairie grass. She said groomed Kentucky bluegrass was the preferred option and when Osgood did its golf course, the education of the neighbors and the building that knowledge and understanding has been exciting. She said it has also been interesting working on the Fargo Project and seeing residents accepting different options for landscaping other than manicured green grass.

Mr. Grubb said some potential future topics for discussion include the Fargo Project, the tree preservation ordinance, storm water pond social environmental benefits and the Downtown InFocus study completed a few years ago.

Next Meeting:
July 13, 2021 at 3:00 p.m.

The time at adjournment was 4:41 o’clock p.m.