By VERNON ROBISON
Moapa Valley Progress
Overton Power District stands to lose a portion of its lowest-cost resource in a reallocation of hydro-power currently underway for power generated at Hoover Dam. Under the proposal, five percent of Hoover-generated power will be taken from existing customers and reallocated to new customers that are currently considered underserved by hydro resources.
In a presentation to the OPD Board of Directors last week, district General Manager Mendis Cooper explained that the reallocation process, being overseen by the Western Area Power Administration has been ongoing for some time now. Interested entities were able to apply for the reallocated resources up until the end of 2013, Cooper said.
“We encouraged and assisted a few of the various entities in our service territories in making an application for those resources,” Cooper said.
These entities included the City of Mesquite, Moapa Valley Water District, Virgin Valley Water District and the Moapa Band of Paiutes, Cooper said.
Last month, the Western Area Power Administration released which entities would receive the resources. None of the entities in the OPD territory that applied were granted any of the resources.
Applications were evaluated based on the loads required by the entities and were devalued based on how much hydro power they already received, Cooper said. The local applicants all had relatively low power load needs. Furthermore, the district receives 25 percent of its resources from Hoover Dam.
“These factors pushed all of our applicants well below the threshhold to be chosen for the resources,” Cooper said. “In the end it was Arizona and California who were the basic winners in the process. They received most of the hydro power.”
The reallocation is expected to become effective in 2017. Fortunately, that is the same time as a block of power contracts is expiring for the OPD. So the resources lost in the reallocation can be rolled into a new contract, Cooper said.
The contract power will still come at a higher cost than the hydro-resources, Cooper explained. Currently OPD pays about 6 cents per kilowatt hour for its contract power. It’s hydro resources, on the other hand, cost only about 3 cents per kilowatt hour.
Cooper said that the Colorado River Commission will be conducting a similar reallocation process next year. OPD will be assisting local entities again through that application process. The resources in that process are expected to be awarded early next year.
“We will see how we do in that process,” Cooper said.
Overton Power District was established in 1935 at the same time as Hoover Dam was being completed in order to accept and distribute hydro resources from that project. At that time, the Moapa Valley and Virgin Valley were the main population centers in southern Nevada.
OPD currently receives a total of about 25 megawatts from hydro resources. The five percent being taken from OPD for reallocation would amount to about 1.5 megawatts of power for the district.
