Well, good afternoon, everyone.

Um it's four o'clock, and uh the special meeting of the Rochester Public Utility Board to discuss approval and authorization for the Mount Simon Generator Interconnection Agreement with MISO is now called to order.

As a reminder, uh this meeting is going to be recorded and recording is available on the city website.

The first item on the agenda is the approval of the agenda.

And may I have a motion to approve the agenda as presented.

I'll make a motion.

Second.

We have a motion and a second.

All in favor, please signify by saying aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed.

The agenda is approved.

Next, we'll move to the open public comment period of our meeting.

Total comment period is limited to 20 minutes.

Each person having two minutes to speak, and any speakers not having the opportunity to be heard tonight or this afternoon, we'll be the first to present at the next board meeting.

Is there anyone signed up to make a public comment?

There isn't anyone signed up.

Thank you so much.

Moving next to the regular agenda on our regular agenda, we have item 2A, which is the approval and authorization of the Mount Simon Generator Interconnection Agreement with MISO.

And this item will be presented by Director of Power Resources, Bill Bullock.

Okay.

Thank you, Malikai.

Um, so yes, we're here to uh to get your authorization to enter into the generator interconnection agreement for Mount Simon.

Um we did, as you may remember, uh a little less than a year ago, got approval to enter the ERIS process, which is the expedited resource addition study.

And when they say expedited, they do mean expedited.

They gave us exactly a week to comment and return the signed agreement back to them.

So it has been reviewed by outside council who gave their approval.

Um, but I just wanted to run through just a brief overview of what the agreement provides.

Um it is uh an interconnection agreement between the Mount Simon Station and the MISO transmission system.

The parties to the agreement are uh as the interconnection customer, Rochester Public Utilities.

And on the other side of the table is the transmission owner, which is also Rochester Public Utilities.

Um and the transmission service provider is MISO itself, so they're standing in the middle.

Um and it establishes responsibilities for design and construction of the interconnection facilities, whatever upgrades are needed to accommodate the additional uh power flows from the uh from the asset.

Um, the cost responsibility who bears the cost of what, um, whether it's RPU or RPU.

Um, and then the long-term operation and maintenance of the facilities.

Um and it is a 30-year agreement with uh kind of an evergreen clause for annual renewals.

Um currently um the the agreement also provides network resource interconnection service or NRIS.

Um this enables uh the asset to to provide firm capacity.

Um the the alternative to NRIS is ERIS, which is energy resource integrate interconnection service.

Um and so it's it's much better to have NRIS than ERIS, especially if you're using it for capacity, which we will be.

Um so it does define the point of interconnection, um, the uh interconnection facilities themselves, uh the network upgrade required, uh, whatever system protection and then metering and communications.

So basically all of the technical details uh of the interconnect.

Um it doesn't provide transmission service.

We'll still have to pay for transmission service um for our load, um, but this does allow um the the uh capacity to be um to be sold even outside the system.

Um so uh the the project responsibilities for for the interconnection customer that's RPU.

Um we do have to fund the interconnection um facilities and require network upgrades um that we're causing by installing this.

Um we need to meet project milestones and commercial operation dates.

Uh we need to provide security and financial guarantees, of course, to the counterparty, which is ourselves, um, which is not hard to do, um, and design construct and operate and maintain the generator side of the facilities.

And the transmission owner, which is also RPU, is needs to design and construct the transmission facilities required.

We need to coordinate the studies and do the system upgrades.

And then we meet agreed construction schedule or potentially owe liquidated damages to RPU.

So the major risk really are delays in permitting a construction.

The mitigation there is that I don't think we'll sue ourselves.

I'll refer to our attorney for that.

The cost overruns of the network, the largest equipment has already been ordered.

So there is not a lot of schedule risk there.

And then on the failure to achieve commercial operation by the required date, really we've started early.

And we're we're ahead of schedule on the interconnect, and that's what the ERAS process has given us.

So if we compare the um the old process, the DPP um process was what we were originally in.