5.2. ERMUSR 04-12-2011 - Laserfiche WebLink

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u, N Elk River.; Municipal Utilities 2010 YEAR IN REVIEW Even in these times of economic downturn, Elk River Municipal Utilities (ERMU) continues to grow. In 2010, our purchased energy increased by 6.9%. Based on the most recent data available, ERMU has moved up to now be the 9`h largest Minnesota municipal electric utility by number of customers and the 12`h largest by energy sales. This growth helps ERMU, our customers, and the residents of the City of Elk Rivet. Because ERMU is tax exempt, ERMU provides to the City of Elk River a fixed percentage of the revenue from Elk River customers' electric sales. This amount is a Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT). In addition to this percentage of revenue, ERMU provides donated electricity for non-enterprise City facilities as well as donated labor. In total, ERMU provided approximately $1,100,000 in 2010. This was up 7.7°I° over the 2009 PII.OT and up 14.9% over 2008. This trend is directly related to the growth of the ERMU. The ERMU PILOT is a significant contribution to the City which indirectly helps to keep City taxes lower. In 2010, ERMU was awarded the System Innovation Award from Minnesota Municipal Utilities Association. The award was presented to ERMU "in recognition for its leadership and innovation in customer service, energy efficiency, renewable energy or technology use, which has improved service to its community and enhanced public power's prestige." Our excellent reliability was one of the major factors in receiving this award and really reflects the condition of our robust electrical system as well as the superb response time from our local line crews. This also reflects the local accountability, long term visioning on system design, and ongoing system maintenance. ERMU 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 Yhese 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 a long 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 2010 was 99.985%. This is exceptional especially when taking into account the damaging weather during 2010. The weather related outages for ERMU were actually minimal while our neighboring utilities, as well as utilities throughout Minnesota, suffered more extensive damage. Because ERMU's electric distribution system was able to withstand much of the damaging weather, ERMU was able to Page 1 of 7