5.1. ERMUSR 04-10-2012 - Laserfiche WebLink

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~4t ~4 c~,~a v~,ce _ ___ We are PUBLIC POWER with LOCAL CONTROL and Vllhere Does My Dollar Go? ACCOUNTABILITY. Elk River Municipal Utilities (ERMU) is one Purchased Power Production of 125 municipally owned electric Distribution Depreciation and Interest utilities in Minnesota and one of only a few that serves customers Customer Accounts z General & Administrative beyond their city's corporate 9~ 2% 8% boundary. ERMU is the 9t" largest 4~ _;;,: by number of customers and the ~ 3% 12t" largest by energy sales -and ~~ ~~~ ~~~~~ ~~~"~~~ we continue to grow. In 201 I, our energy sales increased by 4.6%. The Utilities realized a 3% _. _ __ - -- increase in resi ential electric sales, a 13% increase in small commercial customer energy sales, and a 13% increase in larger commercial /industrial customer energy sales over last year. The electric utility also ended the year with expenses under budget by 2.3%. Purchased power makes up 74% of our operating costs. 74%© ~. • ~,J + Elk River Municipal Utilities continues to provide very reliable electrical service. In the electric utility industry, there are a number of indexes used to gauge reliability. One of the most important of these is the Average Service Availability Index (ASAI). This is a measure of the average availability of sub-transmission and distribution systems to serve customers; or in other words, what percent of the time you have power. With along-term focus on system planning, scheduled system maintenance, and a proactive tree trimming program, ERMU continues to score excellent numbers in this index as well as the other indexes. Our ASAI for 201 I was 99.994%. This is again exceptional especially when taking into account the damaging weather during 20 I I . Elk River experienced two major storm related outage events in 201 I. The first happened in June when one of our substations was struck by lightning. The second occurred in August when an early morning wind storm knocked out an overhead feeder that serves the landfill gas-to-electric power plant. Overall, the weather related outages for ERMU were actually minimal in comparison to other utilities throughout Minnesota. Because ERMU's electric distribution system is over 70% underground, our system is able to better withstand much of the damaging weather. After ERMU restored power to our customers affected by these storms, ERMU was then able to provide mutual aid labor and equipment assisting Connexus Energy and Princeton Public Utilities restore ower to their customers. , P