Speaker numbers apply only to this recording.
On October 13, 2026, the Columbia Water and Light Advisory Board held a work session from 6:01 PM to 8:28 PM to discuss the Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) with a focus on electric generation capacity. City utilities staff presented six scenarios and addressed a looming capacity gap caused by expiring power purchase agreements and aging gas units. No formal votes were taken, but consensus emerged on pursuing a diversified portfolio and issuing requests for proposals (RFPs) for new generation.
Presentation Recap: Staff recapped the IRP, emphasizing capacity (peak load) versus energy. A one-year extension of the Dynergy capacity contract covers the 2027 gap; the Sykston PPA may continue into the early 2030s, buying time. Urgency remains as any new generation takes years to permit and build.
Scenario Analysis: Six scenarios were presented:
Accreditation Challenges: MISO’s capacity accreditation for renewables is low and declining, especially in winter (solar could be 0% by 2043). Even four-hour batteries see deteriorating accreditation; staff recommends six- or eight-hour batteries to remain viable.
Peer Utility Comparison: Other Missouri and comparable utilities (Ameren, Liberty, Lansing, Ames) are predominantly adding gas and batteries, with limited renewables, confirming similar trends.
Cost Considerations: Levelised costs over 20 years were shown, but many costs (land, decommissioning, financing) were excluded. The solar deal at $55/MWh is considered excellent, but future renewable procurement is expected to be much higher.
Well, let's go ahead and start. She'll be she'll be here in a minute. We have quorums, and we'll go ahead and start at um 601. I'll kick it over to city employees to get started on that our work session. Great, thank you so much. Uh Eric Keys, Director of Utilities with me tonight, Gwen Cortez, Assistant Director for Electric, and Ron Weibel, our power supply manager. Um Don Jennings, our assistant director for rates and fiscal planning. There's questions about that. Uh so we just wanted to. Well, both us and the Water and Light Advisory Board wanted to have this work session. Uh, we've also got one scheduled for December in case we don't get through all of it because this is very dense material, uh, we understand. Um, but it's about our integrated resource plan. Last time uh the Energy Authority TEA was here to discuss this work, and they got through presenting the plan. There really was not much opportunity to discuss the plan. Um, so that's uh a little bit why we're here tonight. Uh, and really what I want you to be thinking about is what is our vision for Columbia for our electric generation. Uh what we're talking about tonight is just about capacity, which has to do with our peak loads. That's not about the actual energy at this time, it's it's really about capacity. Um, so what direction do we want to head in? So we're we're not necessarily making a decision that's you know, this thing is gonna happen tomorrow, but some of these things are very long term, and so if we want to implement uh our own generation, then that's something that we need to start thinking about now in order to set the stage to make that happen. Um so just a reminder at our public meetings, we had some pretty extensive public meetings about this integrated resource plan. And what we heard from the public was uh there were some people that wanted us to look in the future at continued gas generation. Uh, some people wanted us to do solar, some people even brought up nuclear, uh, which, as you know, our state is even talking about that uh quite a bit. Um, the other thing that came up in our public meetings was uh that our own generation was important. Uh and the third thing that that really came up in those meetings was they wanted us to be proactive. And so we have already staff has already started working on some of the the concepts and the ideas that we need to move forward with our generation. Uh and so we'll be discussing that tonight. Um so big picture questions are when it comes to replacing our uh retiring power purchase agreements. Uh, for example, Sykston. Uh, do we want to do that with gas? Do we want to do that with uh something else, uh solar and batteries? And then when it comes to replacing our own gas units, which are which are getting past their useful life, uh, where do we want to go with those? Because again, both those things will take time to come up with the the plans and uh funding, especially uh to move forward with those. Um so tonight we're gonna cover the uh the plan again. Uh, as we know, um we have a new council member that wasn't here, so try to uh go a little more quickly uh through the plan, but just revisit a lot of that. Uh there were a lot there were some questions that council asked at the last meeting, and so we'll try to address some of those questions that came up and then hopefully have an opportunity for discussion, or like I said, if we need to continue this into December, we have that scheduled. So uh with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Gwen. All right, good evening, everyone. And we have a couple members from the TEA also joining remotely in case there's any specific topics where they might be suited to chime in.