 person next time. That's what I think. So I'm Susan Bartlett. I'm the Director of Energy Strategies and Solutions at Longmont Power and Communications which is your local electric utility provider. And again I'm really glad that you're here to have this conversation with us and in case I forget and in case Javier forgets there's going to be a couple more opportunities for you to hear a lot more about our energy future and energy in your community and we'll we'll give you some information on that. But I wanted to talk with you a little bit about our partnership with Platte River Power Authority and Longmont Power and Communications as your not-for-profit community owned electricity provider. Longmont Power has been around since 1912 and as I said we're not for-profit and we are governed by City Council so your elected officials are the ones that provide priorities for Longmont Power as well as give us direction. And then about 50 years ago Longmont, Leblanc, Estes Park and Fort Collins all partnered to develop Platte River Power Authority and Platte River Power Authority is our non-profit wholesale generation and distribution utility and the benefits to that are numerous but many include you know scalability and keeping our rates as low as possible and having very reliable power as well as having collective ambitious goals around environmental stewardship. And we talk about collaboration a lot as partnering organizations and one of the things that we have been partnered on and continue to work very hard on is our goal of having renewable electric energy by 2030 or carbon-free energy by 2030. That's really ambitious 2030 is not very far away and I wanted to share a couple of things that we're doing locally and then Javier Camacho from Platte River is going to give you kind of that broader look into how Platte River is working on that as well. So some of the things that we do locally are to deploy innovation on our grid or new technologies on our grids. Some of you may have experienced this already are in line for your smart meter that's coming advanced metering infrastructure is going to give us a little more visibility into how power moves around on our grid. It's going to give us more control. It's going to help us respond faster to outages and it's going to provide us with new opportunities to engage with our customers. We're also looking at ways to incorporate distributed energy resources on our system in an effective way for our customers and for our grid. We also understand that people are adopting electric vehicles rapidly. They're also moving to electrification. We saw a lot of that in the film and so we're working to make sure that our grid can accommodate a lot of that new load that's coming on and we're working with Platte River to make sure that we have the capacity to support those loads in ways that are as renewable as possible. And you know that's sort of the fun exciting stuff. We also need to do the daily regular annual maintenance and maintain the backbone of our system and that includes things like cabling underground, moving overhead underground or upgrading our cabling so that it's ready to go for another 30 to 50 years. It also means that we have to make upgrades at our substations especially where we have large capacity coming on and we want to make sure that all of those systems are working appropriately and effectively and efficiently so that you get that reliable power that you count on. I wanted to talk a little bit about distributed energy resources because we do believe that we're going to see a larger adoption in this area and quite frankly we need it to be able to meet our goals in the future. One of the first things that we consider as an important keystone of distributed energy resources is energy efficiency and we that's not new. We've been talking about energy efficiency for years and years but it's still the cornerstone the less people use the less we have to generate the less we have to move to your home. So that's really key and we have programs that are available to help people do that. We've also tried out some demonstration programs where we can manage demand in partnership with our customers. An example is a smart thermostat demonstration we did not this summer but the summer before. We're also partnering with our customers by providing EV charger rebates as well as Platte River's rebates for EV charger infrastructure. So we understand these are things that our customers want. We want to be able to help you achieve that but we also want to be in partnership so that we can manage that load as it comes on to our system. I think some other things that are interesting probably for this crowd is that we're reviewing our local solar interconnection and planning process. We see a lot of additional distributed energy resources coming on board and we want to be able to work with you effectively and efficiently to make sure that we're doing that the right way for our customers and for our grid. We're working with Platte River on a weekly basis to continue to develop programs that recognize what customers want to install, how to install it, how to reward customer behavior that's going to be helpful for our distribution grid and our generation requirements and we anticipate new programs unrolling over the next few years to help us in that way. We're also working on city-owned community solar. Not everyone can have solar on the roof. In fact many people can't whether it's that you don't have your you don't own your own roof or you're not oriented correctly or you're in a multi-family situation where you don't have that kind of opportunity and we're working on a program that not only provides that opportunity but provides it for income qualified customers in our community because we also understand the city has some goals around affordable housing and your utility bills are part of how affordable your housing is and we understand that. And then we're finally we're working on something with Platte River to get large larger scale utility scale battery storage into our community because sometimes that's where it can be the most effective is in these distributed areas where we can use it more effectively to manage the flow of power on our grid and again those are just a few of the things that we're excited about that we're doing locally but I want to introduce Javier Camacho. He's with Platte River Power Authority and he's going to talk a little broader scale about what Platte River is doing from the generations side and I'll have you come up. The answer is we're thinking about time of use pricing we're doing a value of solar study right now but we'll have another rate evaluation coming up next year and there are a lot of variables that go into determining whether or not a time of use rate schedule is appropriate and how we might best use that so I don't want to say yep we're going to have one and it's going to be in a year yes we're looking at it and we need to be able to weigh the costs and the benefits to customers into the grid for that so it's a good question thank you for asking. Well good afternoon everyone nice to see everyone and thank you all so much for again I'll echo Susan's gratitude for coming out on this very snowy day. I am actually not originally from Colorado I'm from West Texas where we don't get snow in October I can tell you that I've never in my life seen snow in October so this is wonderful but honestly it's really great to be with all of you today I'm so excited to be part of the Platte River team I joined a little over a year ago back in July of last year but officially moved to Colorado on December 1st in the middle of a snowstorm so that was fun also my first time at this facility was in the middle of a snowstorm so me and snow have a great relationship but what's even better is all the great work that we're doing at Platte River in partnership with Longmont Power and Communications and really helping us transition to this clean energy future again my name is Javier Camacho and I am the Director of Public and External Affairs Strategic Communications and Social Marketing and so my team we oversee a lot of our community engagement our relationships with our stakeholders and our partners like you all and really help sharing the story and the great work that's happening with Platte River Power Authority in partnership with all of our four municipalities that we serve as Susan mentioned we serve four Collins Longmont Loveland and Estes Park so we have a lot of information to share with you I'm going to try to get through it as quickly as possible because I'm sure that you all may have some questions for us so as I mentioned our network of our partnership really dates back more than 50 years although this year is a golden year for us quite literally it's our 50th anniversary and we're really proud of that fact we were officially formed in 1973 when these four municipalities came together to form what we call the organic contract but that organic contract was actually in works 10 years prior when it when it officially came to as an idea in 1963 really quick history WAPA which is the Western Area Power Administration a federal Bureau reclamation reclamation project governed by the federal government basically came to this northern Colorado region and said we will no longer be allocating more hydro to your region so if you want to continue to meet the growing energy demand that you all can anticipate you'll need to find other sources of energy in order to meet that so multiple municipalities beyond the four that you see here ended up coming together to determine what was the going what was going to be that plan these four municipalities ended up emerging and developing that organic contract which gave birth of quite literally to Platte River Power Authority which would become the wholesale generation and transmission provider for northern Colorado and fast forward 50 years there's been a lot of growth that's been happening we can see it every single day up and down I-25 and Longmont is definitely on on a path of growth so we work very closely with these four municipalities and those arrows really I mean there's a lot of meaning behind those arrows but there's a deep interaction that happens between Platte River and the municipality and their distribution utility we work very closely with but with all of these entities working with Darrell who's the utility director for Longmont of course Susan and really across the entire network of the city of Longmont so it's a proud partnership and we have a lot of work ahead of ourselves so what is part of that work well we're part of what what's called the integrated resource plan we're undergoing that this IRP we are we are required as a customer of WAPA again the Western Area Power Administration to file an IRP which is essentially a resource plan on our generation every five years back in 2018 however we made a very large decision as our board of directors who are served by the mayors of the four municipalities that we serve that that we we serve in the region as well as the four utility directors here in Longmont where it's a little bit of a unique case because the assistant city manager Dave Hornbacher is the one who actually sits on our board who used to be the utility director was recently promoted to assistant city manager so we were governed by a board of eight and back in 2018 our board made a very big decision to essentially put Platte River on a path of 100% non-carbon by 2030 because of that expedited pathway that we needed to take 2030 even in 2018 was not very far away we decided to expedite our IRP process instead of doing it every five years we began to do it every four and what that does it really just outlines what we're going to do or need to do in order to continue to meet the growing energy needs of our region while also providing a clean energy path for us so we'd look at different areas on how to continue to meet those priorities also we need to ensure that we're always reliable in the power that we provide right even on days where like today there's snow where our customers still expect to flip their switch or turn on their heater or plug in their car they're still going to get the power that they deserve that it's also economical right we talked Susan talked about how Platte River works very hard to keep keep our rates as low as possible even with all the investment that we're that we're undergoing we're trying to still determine what is the most sustainable way even though costs could be costs could inevitably go up and the final thing is of course our environmental responsibility right so Platte River 50 years ago we got our start in hydro power even to this day hydro power is still the only non-carbon emitting dispatchable resource out there and unfortunately it's dwindling so we need to diversify our portfolio continue to diversify our portfolio as we move forward and we look at different areas right we have to look at techno technological progress the video that we just saw talked a lot about the innovations that are out there and how we as a utility are harnessing the power of those advances consumer preferences this is the first one of the first times that resource planning across all resource portfolios from from other utilities well we're not only just looking at generation we're also looking at weather forecasts we're also looking at social behaviors that is something that 20 years ago utilities never had to look at so we have to start to value in those consumer preferences and of course regulatory mandates Colorado has one of the most aggressive clean energy goals in the country and that is of course being fed every year through legislation and so we have to monitor that as well and be able to meet to those mandates when they actually do become law the IRP process is a very long process it does and it certainly does not happen in a vacuum we want to continue to engage with the public not only share the story of all the hard work that is happening both at Platte River and across all distribution utilities like Longmont power and communications but also taking the feedback that are that our customers that we serve every day have for us and so there is definitely multiple layers that go on through the IRP process even months before the June 1st meeting that we had I don't know if anyone was at our June 1st kickoff if you were can I just see a show of hands okay not many all right Susan thank you for being there well we do have another one coming up on actually November 2nd which is this coming week this Thursday so we have three major meetings throughout the IRP process but in between those three major meetings we're doing a lot of many presentations going out to groups like here today to share a lot of the work that we're doing so like I'd mention we kicked it off on June 1st our next one will be this Thursday November 2nd and it'll be held at our headquarter facility in Fort Collins which is on the corner of Harmony and and horse tooth so right very close to I-25 so I know it's a little bit of a drive from here hopefully you can join us but we are continuing to have that ongoing public engagement throughout this entire process and we are looking at wrapping up our IRP process in the second quarter of next year when we present it to our board prior to that we'll have one final presentation out in the community and we don't have a good date quite set but we will be sure to advertise that and then of course all the yellow or orange rather this is a lot of the work that our resource planners are doing working with the different models taken in all the data we've contracted with a lot of experts within the energy industry in order to pull a lot of this data in we keep an eye on different utilities across the region and really across the world on what is working what's not and we calculate all of that into the resource planning process there's a lot of more detail that I can certainly share about the IRP but for the sake of time I'm going to go ahead and pull forward and to talk a little bit more about our resource diversification policy so as I briefly mentioned in 2018 that was a major inflection point for Platte River Power Authority every municipality that we serve the four they were all outlining their own clean energy plans and so as the mayors and the utility directors of these municipalities they came together and said Wallace Platte River as our wholesale generation and transmission utility they should have a plan that reflects the work that we're doing on our on our municipal level and that hence came out the resource diversification policy which clearly articulates that staff will work towards a 100% noncarbon energy resource portfolio while still balancing the three foundational pillars of our organization which is reliability economic and financial sustainability and environmental responsibility those three pillars should not be sacrificed based on our operations and our advancements as we work towards this goal and really beyond and so there were nine caveats or nine different elements that we needed to consider as we're going to make our pathway there which is listed on the right side we need to join a regional regional power market we've joined an imbalanced system market which is I know very technical power markets can be an entirely different conversation but essentially that taps us into a network of other utilities across the region that we're able to buy and sell power from each other when other areas are experiencing more renewable energy or maybe we are or maybe we've experienced an emergency we need to tap into other sources so we've joined an imbalanced system market which is great but we've committed to joining an organized market in 2026 but we have to teach ourselves how to do that so that was definitely one piece another one is we needed to we need to keep our eye on the advancements the the infrastructure improvements and the maintenance of both the transmission side which we manage and on the distribution side which is what is in the hands of of LPC so Susan spoke to a lot of those investments that we need to make as well as the technology we need to keep our pulse on those technology advancements what it's currently capable of how it will continue to impact our grid as well as any advancements that need to be made and so that will definitely be an evolving piece as we go through the years and of course looking at end user management right all of you how you're interacting with your power can we have more access and understanding how you utilize your power understanding your social behaviors and of course the technology that you adopt like electric vehicles and finally battery storage the video talked about this and this video that video was produced I believe in 2018 so it's a lot has happened since then but battery technology has is it has not quite evolved in terms of what we need on a long period of time we there's short duration battery storage but we need long duration multi-day battery storage and I'll talk a little bit more about that here in the coming slides but there's been some major milestones that we've made at Platte River and we're really proud of them but there's definitely still a lot of work to be done since 2018 we've added a lot more renewable energy on our portfolio we've added more wind and we've added more solar with a show of hands has anyone been out to our raw height energy station up in Wellington Colorado okay couple of hands alright so why energy station is our we own that facility and it's it's a beautiful facility if you haven't been out there so and we were happy to take you out there as we have public tours all the time it got its start by by generating coal and again Wellington is just half an hour north of four columns so about an hour from here and since then we've we've diversified our portfolio at this facility we've added natural gas turbines we call them peakers which basically means that when energy demand is exceeding what we can currently generate based on other resources those peakers are able to help meet those those area those times of demand so that way you know it when people are coming home from work or in the mornings when everyone's getting ready we're able to meet to the energy that you have and and those were built back in the early 2000s in a phased approach since then we've added solar out there we also have a one megawatt battery storage pack out there nothing much to look at it's just like looks like a trailer but essentially that's teaching us how batteries will function within our portfolio how it works in extreme weather how we're able to dispatch it how much how long does it last there are other things that we've done since then we've have several RFPs that are out there those are called requests for proposals which essentially have allow us to determine who's who's able to help us build more renewable energy on our system that we're looking at wind as well as battery of sorry solar with storage we have 150 megawatt solar array that is slated for construction that will ground will be clearing out the rest of this year and we'll be breaking ground next year so we're really excited about that that'll be located in severance Colorado just east of Fort Collins as well as joining the energy market that I had mentioned it's through the Southwest Power Pool and then we filed a clean energy plan with the state of Colorado now when we announced our resource diversification policy in 2018 it was a full year before the state of Colorado actually mandated utilities must hit 80% 80% decarbonization level based on 2005 levels so we're really proud of the fact that in that Platte River along with its municipal utilities are leading the way in developing a clean energy pathway for the state of Colorado really across the country so here we're taking a look at how that renewable energy energy generation what it looks like as we go through the years so you could see at the very beginning of the of the slide on the left side 2018 the blue represents our hydro the green represents our wind and the yellow is the solar now just take a look at how hydro progresses as it goes through 2030 and we're facing dwindling levels of the of hydro so we don't expect hydro to go completely away from our portfolio but we can anticipate that it will continue to decrease now the kicker is back in 2018 when we first announced our resource diversification policy we did not anticipate that type of decrease in our hydro in fact we had to come back in 2020 and do a refresh on a resource planning because of that dwindling level of hydro and so that has put it added pressure of adding more renewable generation on to our portfolio which is why you see so much of an increase in wind and then of course solar will begin to kick in now we do we are excited about these requests for proposals that we have out right now but it takes about three years for us to actually bring generation from renewable sources online so as Susan mentioned 2030 is not very far so there's a lot of work that we're doing right now to get things started in order for it to begin to produce the power that we need what are some of those challenges and you know we'll be taking questions at the end if I just so that way we can get through the presentation but please hold on to your question if you don't mind and then we'll get to that Q&A period here in a moment okay so some of the renewable jet challenges that we're facing is of course the natural intermittency of renewables it was set in the video and we experience it every day here the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow so we have to be able to calculate that and what that looks like both on a day-to-day basis and how would that happens over a long period of time like such as extreme weather moments we call those dark coms right so there are several days where the sun doesn't shine there's a lot of cloud cover and then there could be several days where there's no wind so we definitely have to calculate those moments and those are happening unfortunately a lot more frequently so we have to anticipate that in fact studies have proven that we can anticipate at least one dark com period per year that's about three to five days and during those moments we you still expect your power right so we need to be able to meet that generation that type of demand even during those extreme moments despite how brief they may be in a year span also ensuring that there's reliability in all weather conditions I've said that before and then of course looking at the next bullets energy storage understanding that there is short term duration short term battery storage but how we still need that long duration right multi-days battery storage DER's Susan hit on that a little bit the distributed energy resources understanding that all of you could eventually start producing your own power if you put solar on your roof you can generate power if you have an electric vehicle you now have a battery pack so you could have storage your smart thermostats or your smart meters can begin to tell us how you're consuming power or when we can actually level power so that way we're able to spread the consumption and and shave peak so that way we're not having to build new infrastructure but we'd rather utilize the resources that are out there DER will give us a lot more insight to the behaviors on a consumer level as well as dispatchable generation so in those moments where there is not enough Sun or there's not enough wind or we don't have enough battery on on sit on the system or it's already been depleted how we're still able to meet that that type of demand so that dispatchable generation will be very important so what do I mean by dispatchable capacity well even the word dispatchable has become a lot more diverse based on how technology continues to evolve over time and we're taking a look at this number one there are thermal dispatchable resources so lots of studies that are out there looking at how we could have a deeper level of penetration on renewable generation in order to support the reliability and the integrity of our grid as well and then also looking at how can dispatchable thermal generation continue to evolve over time right so now there are natural gas plants out there with newer technology that we can actually evolve over time as new sources become available like hydrogen parts that specifically green hydrogen there's also long duration energy storage so as I mentioned right now batteries can run from two hour or four hour even up to eight hour battery storage but we're looking at about maybe can there be a hundred hour battery storage out there that would allow us to help meet the multi-day or the dark calm moments and then virtual power plants DER actually becomes a backbone to a virtual power plant so it doesn't exist there's not a physical facility out there but we're able to tap into how consumers can can also serve as a resource to a virtual power plant and how we're able to interact with that and then this just this pie chart just shows you how much of a jump we are making in terms of our renewable generation and our pathway towards our resource diversification policy of a hundred percent non-carbon but there's still a blue slice that's about eleven point eight percent and that will still require a dispatchable resource so one of these options we need to begin to explore right now in order to continue to meet the energy needs of our customers because if we don't that'll be a big chunk of time where we can actually put reliability at risk again one of our foundational pillars so so what are some of the key takeaways well number one we are adding more than two million megawatt hours of renewable energy to our portfolio we're looking at a at an estimation of around eighty five percent carbon reductions based on our 2005 levels which is great definitely not a hundred percent of the way through but we're keeping a close eye on technology and how it continues to evolve in order to get us there so in order that we need to also be more creative on how we're looking at dispatchable capacity and while we're doing all of these investments how we're able to still be equitable and and not putting utility costs especially for those most vulnerable families at risk so understanding and valuing valuing financial sustainability so there's definitely a lot more information that we can dive deeper into but we ask you all to continue to stay informed stay engaged you know we have we've built out a microsite that has a lot of this information on our website you can also visit us like i said on thursday november second from six to eight that's when we'll have the meeting but we'll be back out here in longmont the following week on november 13th where we get to partner up with longmont power and communications and you can always engage with us via email or through our website again thank you all so much for your time and now i think we can jump into some questions yes uh yes ma'am so yes so geothermal definitely and and you know right now we're taking just a very high level approach definitely a lot more information that we can go into and some of the areas through our resource planning that we're exploring when it comes to our dispatchable capacity we are exploring geothermal bio gosh i'm like blanking out on the different areas that we're looking at but geothermal was definitely one area that we did explore through our resource planning unfortunately it it's right now the there's a lot of different technicalities that we need to consider like the storage of it how do you transfer it um where would it be most viable i do know that there are some third-party companies that are in colorado doing some exploration on how geothermal can interact and how it can continue to evolve so we are keeping our pulse on that just at this very moment we're not considering geothermal as part of our dispatchable capacity just purely based on the viability of its technology today not to say that it wouldn't be something that we could we couldn't explore in the next four years when we come back and re-up our resource plan yes ma'am sure thing okay and you know i forgot to mention we have zack running around with the microphone just so that way everyone can hear the question and the question was about oh okay great i don't know if you wanted to repeat your question it was about smart meters what's your plan how are they going to be phased in how will it change things sure thing that's a good question too thank you we are underway deploying smart meters in long line and we are doing a phased approach we hope to have everyone's meter installed by the end of 2025 and having that oh 2024 thank you daryl having that technology in place as i mentioned earlier kind of gives us better visibility into how and when really people are using energy it gives homeowners more or or meter owners if you will more opportunity to understand how they're using energy in ways that you can use it differently or save and back to the question on time of use rates without having that infrastructure in place route time of use rates is not really an option for us until we understand when people are using energy and how that coincides with when we have peak capacity demands and when we need to curtail so it's a really important tool in our toolbox for helping us achieve some of these goals and you can check our website there's a whole list of frequently asked questions i believe there's a map available showing where we have our first batches of meters going out and we're also working really hard to communicate with customers to let them know ahead of time you'll get a letter to know when your meter is going to change out so it's not going to be a surprise you'll know it's coming and we do encourage you to engage with the website and and take a look at some of those frequently asked questions yes sir and then we have a question in the middle there just just for the next one i'm not sure what to make of the prospect of hydrogen on the one hand it seems great that you know when you're over producing on some of the solar and wind you can cook hydrogen with it and on the other hand i've been hearing some people expressing safety concerns that it's the you know smallest molecule and leaks a lot easier out of pipelines and just wondering how optimistic you are about that that's a great you know it is a good question and appreciate that because this is definitely part of the evolving technology conversation right so hydrogen is definitely an emerging technology in the energy generation space right there are certainly a lot of uh there there are definitely some concerns we are optimistic about how hydrogen particularly green hydrogen will continue to evolve over time and how it can start to serve as a replacement to those fossil fired generation sources like natural gas at plat river we have recommended to develop a natural gas facility that would allow the support of extra penetration of the renewable generation since the vast majority of our portfolio will be renewables the great thing about that is it allow us to then transition that technology that um that exists in that new natural gas facility to transition to green hydrogen um but there's a lot of there's a lot more runway for green hydrogen to make so to answer your question more simply are we optimistic the answer is yes we are does the technology exist today it doesn't but it's at least giving us the ability to build a facility that could run on that type of technology as it evolves and hopefully we get to that point so but it's evolving very quickly so very optimistic about that yes ma'am question here is there a trajectory um for turning our landfills into producing energy that's a good question um and i don't know if i have enough information about that uh to answer your question here today and i do apologize about that i feel like there may have been probably some exploratory projects if i'm not mistaken i'm not sure if you have any info i don't really know the answer either zack may be able to help us out a little bit um we we currently capture some waste some gas from waste to run the the garbage trucks um but i think that the landfill is a boulder county facility zack is that right yeah and so that's another partnership that would have to take place and i don't know what the um what the capacity of something like that would be for the investment but i i think caviar has made really clear at least um in in conversations that uh nothing that goes nothing is off the table everything kind of goes into the modeling that happens at plat river some things make pop out of the modeling because they don't meet certain criteria like maybe they're not economically viable right now but that doesn't mean they won't go back into the hopper over time and that could potentially be an option and it's a it's a good question so it's something for us to document to take a little closer look at that so thank you for for asking that yes ma'am yeah thank you very much for this great update i have one question about the um IRP process it does not seem to include you had three items there but it doesn't seem to include a funding aspect and so i i'm wondering how close a look i'm i'm sure you have okay taken and there's been a lot of concern about increasing electricity rates in long on recently but i wonder if you have taken a look a close look at how the benefits in the IRA and the Build Back Better bill would help you in this transition process thank you yeah that's a great question so so felt like a maybe a two-part question or or at least you know two-fold or maybe three so number one yes our IRP definitely takes into consideration the costs and in fact when we do we do a an array of resource planning um uh what's the word i'm looking for scenarios thank you daryl yes we do a array of scenarios and we do an examination of what the what the portfolio would look like in those types of scenarios and then therefore what the cost would be in fact we when we first launched the resource diversification diversification policy in 2018 and did our our resource planning in 2020 we ran a scenario where we ran on purely resource renewable energy that portfolio was very expensive because we had to overbuild in order to meet um energy demands at varying levels and so we did these scenarios and so we do recommend three or we try to narrow it down as much as possible and we came down to three portfolios and we ended up presenting one portfolio um that helped balance all of those three foundational pillars that I mentioned earlier reliability financial sustainability which is the cost that you're referring to and then of course the environmental aspect as well and so we definitely take those into consideration now the other part is looking at the IRA the infrastructure reinvestment act um or the inflation reinvestment act i think that i know thank you inflation reduction act i have all these words running through my head um the the IRA and as well as the iij and the build back better so we definitely are looking at that actively as we speak there hasn't been a lot of direction on how to actually pursue these funds so it's been a lot of figuring out that process as we go along um recently uh there was been a round of grants that have been put out um there were a particular subset of electric utilities that that were not awarded we were pursuing a grant and unfortunately we did not get awarded that grant um so we're really trying to determine how we're able to take full advantage of those funds and we're we're figuring that out just to kind of put it simply today um it is a new space for us uh utilities haven't uh before been able to own some of this infrastructure so we're really figuring that out as well um hopefully that helped answer your questions and i'm not sure if there was another piece of there that i may have missed okay but i just want everyone to know that we are absolutely trying to figure this out as well because there are funds out there that we wanted to get advantage of yes ma'am you mentioned um residents producing some of their own energy with solar panels um are you promoting that is there a individuals who are interested can get good information about local providers and rebate programs and things like that feels like maybe both of us will tackle this but i'll say um from the Platte River perspective since we are the wholesale whole sale generation and transmission electric utility we're not necessarily we don't promote it or we don't discourage it we you know we we understand that customers um on the on the distribution and will make choices that fit their need you know some can afford it some cannot some can because they own their home others cannot because they're rent there's just a multi a multitude of very variables that we consider however we are just planning for and we have to forecast if there will be a growth in that distributed generation so we don't necessarily say yes we promote it or no we discourage it we just need to understand what will that trajectory look like as we go forward but i know on the distribution side there could that um there may be it's a different conversation that you all have right it is a little bit different and and complicated i think like Platte River we don't take a strong position on encouraging or discouraging what we do know is that a lot of the resources that are available out there through some of the things that Javier talked about like the inflation reduction act and some of the tax incentives and rebates are available we know that more people are going to take advantage of that and and want to go ahead and put solar on their homes um we would encourage anybody that's going to do that to add storage with it another component because we think that's the best approach for both our customers and for the utility because when you're producing solar is exactly the same time that Platte River is producing solar and when sun isn't shining for Platte River it's probably not shining for you either and that's kind of that that's that gap that we need to try and fill with other distributed energy resources is when um you know the sun isn't shining and so we would we would encourage anybody that's thinking about solar to also think about storage and um you know that's that's an economics decision as well but there are tax incentives available um federal and state incentives available and we currently have a net metering program for solar customers which is um it's like an incentive in and of itself because any um any generation any over generation that a solar customer produces and puts back onto our distribution grid we buy back at full retail rate as opposed to buying from Platte River at a wholesale rate and um you know the conundrum there then is anybody that doesn't have to have solar is subsidizing that extra cost that we're paying for your solar generation so we're evaluating that we want it to be an equitable approach to distributed energy resources in our in our service area we want to understand what that real value of solar is that you're providing and and make sure that it's equitable across all of our rate classes and I'll and I'll just quickly add that I'm so sorry is that we the so Susan I mean yes absolutely all of that she said and that storage factor on a residential side we also realize that that can be very pricey um which is why 50 years ago you know when the four municipalities came together they determined you know this generation utility could do could produce these options on a utility scale and so that's why we are looking at energies or looking at battery storage or producing renewable energy on a utility scale because we understand that for some on a on an individual basis on a residential level could be really pricey so you just wanted to make that known that that absolutely we're looking at economies of scale but understanding that some customers may want to make their own individual choice and how we can interact with that through a virtual power plant or through distributed energy resources awesome thank you for the great questions everybody I think we'll leave it there just in the sake of time let's have a quick round of applause for Javier and Susan yeah thank you Susan thank you and I want to be sure to invite everybody to the resource fair which is going on in the classroom just around the corner here we're doing some induction cooktop demos so we've got some free snacks for y'all to enjoy and we're playing a bingo game where you can take home an efficiency kit that includes led light bulbs and a smart power strip so make sure you stop by just around the corner here these folks will be available if you have any other questions and thanks to our host the museum great to see you all today and we'll see you over there at the resource fair thank you