Comments from Rich Arneson, Tacoma Power
Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the 2013 work plan. These comments are from Rich Arneson of Tacoma Power.
In general, we support the activities the RTF has outlined in the 2013 Work Plan. In general, we believe these activities are appropriate and necessary. There are however, two areas in the Work Plan that we believe should be revised.
Existing Measure review & Updates: The 2013 Work Plan shifts a great deal of workload from 3rd party contractors to new RTF contract staff. However, we are not convicned that you will not be able to make this transitions as quickly as assumed. Finding and hiring three highly qualified contract staff at the beginning of the year seems unlikely. For this year, we would expect a need to continue to use 3rd Party contractors during the transition to new RTF contract staff.
The premise to using 3rd Party contracts outlined in the previous Work Plan seemed reasonable, to expand the number of contractors that are familiar with, and cable of conducting this type of work for the RTF. We understand from the recent RTF presentation that RTF staff discovered that developing contracts can be time consuming. Perhaps the 3rd party contracting can be limited to categories of work that do not require as much specialized contract language.
Regional Coordination - Review Seventh Power Plan Inputs and Supply Curves: One of the challenges in rolling out a Power Plan is keeping everyone on board with how RTF assumptions are analyzed and converted into supply curves and acquisition ramps. We think RTF members could provide significant value by vetting assumptions and measures, the development of supply curves, and the five-year acquisition plan produced by RTF-Staff. This process should start soon to provide ample opportunity for the recommendations to be incorporated into the 7th Power Plan. This task should be in cooperation with and oversight by CRAC members. Currently there is no budget or staff time set aside for this activity.
Comments from Bonneville
BPA comments on RTF 2013 work plan.
Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the 2013 work plan. Below are the comments from BPA.
1.Shift of workload of existing measure work from 3rd party contractors to RTF contract staff. This work plan is planning to hire 3 contract staff to conduct a large amount of existing measure work. In previous years, the RTF has focused on training a large group of outside contractors to support measure development and updating. This work plan takes a very different approach and we are wondering the reasons behind this change. Does the RTF believe that the skill sets of 3 contract staff is diverse enough to take on a wide array of work. There are also concerns about the learning curve for contract staff to ramp up, and the potential pool of applicants. We believe that the Operations committee should weigh in on this change in approach and fully weigh the pros and cons of this shift.
2.Continuation of work plan and funding into 2015. The RTF PAC approved the $1.5 million budget for 2012-2014. Should the work plan exclude budget and work plan assumptions for 2015 until the PAC has approved the budget?
3.We could not find a line item for next steps on End Use Load Shape work. Does the RTF plan to dedicate work to the next steps of this process?
4.ECAM Development. NEEA is funding this work. What is the purpose of the additional funding from the RTF?
5.End Use Load Data Library Development and Maintenance. Is this the work being done with PNNL?
6.Review Seventh Power Plan Inputs and Supply Curves. There may be value in having funding here for support in supply curves; translating RTF measure to supply curves, analyzing data and results coming out of supply curves. We think there could be value in the RTF vetting of non-RTF approved assumptions and measures that go into the supply curves
7.Evaluation Activity and Evaluation work plan. Given recent conversations, it seems valuable to allocate additional funds to regional research coordination.
8.Coordinate annual comparison of utility/SBC administrator TRM. Is this an RTF role?
9.Given the amount of content to cover at the RTF meeting, we suggest extending the time allocated on the agenda to at least 60 minutes.