Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAbout2001-12-17 City Council (7)City of Palo Alto City Manager’s Report TO: FROM: DATE: SUBJECT: HONORABLE CITY COUNCIL ~,~ITY MANAGER DECEMBER 17, 2001 PERFORMANCE REPORT ON UTILITIES CUSTOMER SALES CONTRACTS DEPARTMENT: UTILITIES CMR:453:01 This report is informational only. No Council action is required. DISCUSSION As part of the oversight function of the City of Palo Alto Utilities (CPAU) energy risk management program, Council approved electric and gas retail sales contract reporting guidelines (CMR 324:00). The guidelines were established to ensure that staff implemented proper oversight, review and approval, and performance reporting of all retail sales contracts. The guidelines state that, "Staff shall prepare performance reports on the economics of sales contracts. Attached is the first performance report to the UAC and Council on customer sales contracts. Presently, there is only one customer with a long-term electric sales contract. This contract was executed in 1997 and, as of October 2001, the cumulative net revenue gain to the Utility is approximately $178,000. On the gas side, there are ten customers that very recently entered into one- or two-year fixed price contracts. These 10 fixed-price commodity contracts are estimated to have a total net expected revenue value to the Gas Utility of $8,700. CMR:4-2-t~I Page 1 of 2 ATTACHMENTS UAC report dated November 7, 2001 UAC Minutes from November 7, 2001 PREPARED BY: DEPARTMENT HEAD: CITY MANAGER APPROVAL: RAND BALDSCHUN Assistant Director Utilities, Admlmstratlve Services ~ Assistant City Manager CMR:421:01 Page 2 of 2 Attachment A MEMORANDUM TO:Utilities Advisory Commission FROM:Utilities Department SUBJECT:Performance Report on Customer Sales Contracts AGENDA DATE: November 7, 2001 REQUEST: This report is informational only. No action is required. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This report is intended to apprise the Commission on the status of Utility customer sales contracts and insights learned. Presently, there is only one customer with a long-term electric sales contract. This contract was executed in 1997 and, as of October 2001, the cumulative net revenue gain to the Utility is approximately $178,000. On the gas side, there are ten customers that very recently entered into one-year or two-year fixed price contracts. These 10 fixed-price commodity contracts are estimated to have a total net expected revenue value to the Gas Utility of $8,700. BACKGROUND As part of the oversight function of the City of Palo Alto Utilities (CPAU) energy risk management program, Council approved electric and gas retail sales contract reporting guidelines (CMR 324:00). The guidelines were established to ensure that staff implemented proper oversight, review and approval, and performance reporting of all retail sales contracts. The guidelines state that, "Staff shall prepare performance reports on the economics of sales contracts. The performance reports will contain, at a minimum, an analysis of the cost recovery and revenue impact. The UAC will receive a minimum of two reports per year in the first two years of offering contracts and annual reports thereafter. The Council shall receive annual performance reports." This is the first performance report to the UAC and Council on customer sales contracts. DISCUSSION The City of Palo Alto Utilities (CPAU) offers two types of contracts to its large commercial customers - custom and standard contracts (CMR:449:00). In November 1997, CPAU signed a custom contract with a large commercial electric customer for electric commodity services. This summer, CPAU introduced fixed- term commodity gas rates (G-11) and Custom Commodity Rates (G-12). Fixed- term rates are standard contracts offered to large commercial customers eligible for direct access. Such gas customers were required this summer to elect to: (1) forfeit their Direct Access option and continue service under CPAU’s Rate G-7 or (2) retain their Direct Access option and receive service under either Rate G-3 (monthly price change) or (3) sign up for a contract rate (G-11 or G-12). During this open season, CPAU did not enter into wholesale purchase contracts to cover the gas requirements of these customers until they made a selection. As of September 1, 2001 ten of the eleven eligible customers signed-up for a fixed-term rate (G-11) and one customer elected service under G-3. Custom Contract In November 1997, CPAU signed a custom electric contract with one large customer. The term of the contract is seven years and it may be terminated by either party with appropriate notification and payment of any applicable buyout provisions. Table 1 shows the performance of this contract by comparing the contract revenue CPAU has collected to date ($11,810,502) with the sales revenue ($11,632,079) CPAU would have collected if the customer had continued service under our normal rate schedule (E-7). To date, the customer has paid CPAU $178,423 additional revenue as a result of this contract. However, this net revenue gain will reverse itself within the next few months because Palo Alto’s retail commodity electric rates recently increased significantly on July 1, 2001 and the customer’s commodity price remained fixed under contract. To avoid an unreasonable under collection of revenue with this contract over the remaining three years of the contract, staff plans to exercise the contract termination option after notifying the customer. Table 1 Electric Custom Contract Performance Custom Customer Sales Contract # 1 Sales Revenue Actual Contract Revenue to Date $11,810,502 Estimated Revenue if Customer Stayed on Applicable CPAU Rate 11,632,079 Actual Net Revenue Gain to CPAU to Date $ 178,423 Standard Contracts The gas fixed-term rates (G-11) are a full service commodity and distribution rate, however, only the gas commodity charge component of the rate is fixed. All other fees, administrative, distribution, local transportation charges, etc. can be changed by Council at any time. The Commodity Pricing Policy is the methodology used to price the commodity. Fixed-term rates were structured to recover all commodity costs on a total class basis. The fixed term commodity charge is calculated on the forward wholesale market price at PG&E Citygate. To offer a uniform price for all qualifying customers, the fixed charge is based on the load shape of the entire customer class. The charge also includes CPAU’s current supplier volumetric fee. However; the retail commodity rates were hedged by buying gas to match the individual customers projected load shape for the term of the fixed-term rate. Differences in the class and individual load shapes resulted in over and under collecting on an individual customer basis. Expected Net Gas Revenue of Standard Contracts It is too soon to develop the past performance of the ten contracts that were only recently executed. However, staff can predict the performance based on the known contract sales price and the corresponding wholesale prices to hedge the contracts. The Projected Net Revenue for fixed-term rates is a function of the projected revenue minus the projected cost to hedge the rate plus CPAU’s suppliers assessed volumetric fee. Table 2 shows the individual contracts’ and total expected net revenue. Because load shapes of individual customers will vary with the overall class load shape, cost recovery on an individual customer basis will vary slightly. For confidentiality purposes individual customers are not identified. Due to a staff oversight, the supplier volumetric fee for fixed-term rates for the first two contracts executed was unintentionally excluded. This represents an undercharge of approximately $20,000. The value of the low-cost Redwood transportation capacity is about $21,500. The expected net revenue of all ten customer sales contracts is $8,718 (0.002% of the expected gross revenue). Although this results in a revenue neutral position and meets the objective of successfully hedging these contracts, there are some risks that could be covered better. This will be discussed in the next section. Also, the expected net revenue projection will change on a monthly basis, as the actual volumes used and purchased are known. Table 2 Analysis of Individual Fixed-Term Gas Contracts A B C D E F G H I J TOTALS June 13 24-mo Aug01 518,000 $0.597 June 15 24-mo July 01 362,000 $0.573 June 29 24-mo Aug 01 434,000 $0.508 July 20 12-mo Aug 01 301,000 $0.499 July 20 12-mo Aug01 689,000 $0.499 July 20 12-mo Aug 01 372,000 $0.499 July 20 24-mo Aug 01 1,776,000 $0.491 July 25 12-mo Oct 01 1,905,000 $0.492 August 23 12-mo Sept 01 384,000 $0.441 Sept 19 12-mo Oct 01 689,000 $0.370 ($/therm) $625,813 $427,985 $442,228 $148,446 $340,204 $183,644 $1,753,382 $940,177 $162,942 $247,663 $5,272,484 $618,841 $414,293 $440,548 $150,089 $343,969 $185,677 $1,744,367 $937,248 $169,541 $255,065 $5,259,638 Redwood Capacity Expected Value Savings GRAND TOTAL Expected Net Revenue/(Cost) Revenue (Cost) ($6,971) ($13,692) ($1,680) $1,643 $3,765 $2,033 ($9,015) ($2,929) $6,598 $7,402 ($12,846) $21,564 $8,718 Lessons Learned 1. Volumetric risk is realized when the quantity hedged is more or less than the quantity sold and the difference must be bought or sold at a price different than the fixed-term rate. With the current fixed-term rate contracts there is no constraint on how much gas the customer could use and therefore volumetric risk exists. This risk is priced as a component to be added to the commodity charge. In pricing this risk for the ten customer contracts, it appears that we priced it conservatively close to a break-even goal. In the future, we will price it higher to provide more of a cushion. Supplier operational throughput fees for two contracts were unintentionally excluded in the contract price. For the future, staff will be more cognizant of these charges and will assure that they are included. NEXT STEPS Staff will report to Council on the performance of current contracts at the December 10, 2001 meeting and will return to the UAC with a report in six months with updated expected net revenue calculations based on actual performance to date. UTILITIES STRATEGIC PLAN Offering customer sales contracts for fixed periods and prices supports the Utilities Strategic Plan objective to "Enhance customer satisfaction by delivering valued products and services." It a]rso supports the Plan’s strategy to "Deliver products and services for competitive markets". ATTACHMENT: G-11 Rate Schedule Prepared by: Reviewed by: Monica V. Padilla, Resource Planner Girish Balachandran, Acting Asst. Director, Resource Mgrnt. Randy Baldschun, Assistant Director, Admin. Services Approved by: ~ctor of Utilities ATTACI:IMENTB UAC MINUTES NOVEMBER 7, 2001 PERFORMANCE REPORT ON CUSTOMER SALES CONTRACTS Ulrich: Doug, can we answer questions about that or ...? Carlson: I don’t know where it is. Ulrich: It’s shown as item, it’s item #3 in your package. Should be right behind the financial. I’ve taken mine all apart so in yours it may be further back. Carlson: I’m the one who just got offthe airplane and has had 10 minutes to look at this, so any questions from my colleagues? Fer~mason: You gave us a heads-up on this a month or so ago. Ulrich: Yes. Ferguson: The bottom line was, this was a plus or minus 20k swing? Ulrich: You can see the grand total at least on the gas contract on Table 2. Ferguson: And so the benefit of doing this, running this little risk of making or losing a little money, was that we accommodated these dozen customers. We ran our business in a more flexible way to make those customers happier. Baldschun: Correct. The decision to offer contracts was done in a context of offering customers choices: direct access gas or electric. So this is another product that we offer. Some customers really value price stability and that’s why they executed these contracts. Carlson: I thought we were stopping doing these for a while because the markets have been so crazy. And this is just a review of what we’ve already done? Is that right? Baldschun: We backed off the pedal on electric contracts several years ago. Stepped off the gas and of course basically we really needed to do this. With the price of gas the way it’s gone this year, we weren’t about to put our other customers at risk on behalf of these customers so we really forced them to make an election to either buy gas from us or buy gas from somebody else and they ended up buying gas from us under contract. Carlson: Commissioner Rosenbaum, any questions? Attach B UAC Minutes 110701 on Customer Sales Contracts 1 Rosenbaum: I remember the issue came up in connection with gas as to whether the people who took advantage of these individual contracts were going to be contributing to the reserves and the answer was no. So then I was curious as to what percentage of our big customers are taking advantage of this? I mean, it looks to me like it’s probably half. Is that right? Dailev: Ten out of ???? that are eligible for this rate took it. Rosenbaum: And they all did it in June and July because it seemed like a better deal than they were going to get by following the City’s rate structure. Daile3~: Most did it in June or July. We started offering this rate in June for a July 1 start up, so that was the first date that it could start. We started meeting with customers and explaining the choices to them. The ones who could make decisions quickly and knew what they wanted to do signed up right away. Some others, it took them a few months to get it done, but October 1 was the last start date for one of these contracts. Basically this whole thing came out of a desire to mitigate our own risks, because the portfolio rate had no term commitment associated with it and customers can come and go off that rate as they choose. In the meantime, we were buying gas for the portfolio. So this is an alternative the customers had if they could not be on the G3 rate which is the one that fluctuates monthly. They could have a stable rate for 12 or 24 months, but had to make a term commitment for that 12 or 24 months. Rosenbaum: And it would appear that financially, it’s a wash and we feel it’s to our advantage because we’ve removed some risk of our having to buy gas and then losing a customer, is that? Dailejg: Absolutely. If a customer chooses to be on the portfolio, they’re on the portfolio for a very long term. If they choose this rate, they commit to a term. We buy for them according to that term and so it is a wash for us. The reason that it’s not exactly a wash is that we base the rate on the load shape for the whole customer class so that on any given day we say, "Here you go, 11 customers. This is the rate today if anybody wants it." We don’t say, "For customer A, the rate is this. For customer B, the rate is that. For customer C, the rate is that." So if every customer signed up for the rate on the same day, net revenue would be zero. But because the shape of the prices changes a little bit as time goes along, when different customers sign up on different days, net revenue doesn’t come out to be exactly zero. There’s a few thousand dollars one way or the other that it can go, but that was the thought behind the design of the rate. Rosenbaum: And there is no downside that we’ve identified with these large contracts? Dailejg: One of the downsides which is pointed out in this report under the "lessons learned" is the volumetric risk. That is the idea that we’re giving these customers a single rate no matter what their usage is, so we do take on some volumetric risk. Theoretically, it’s equally likely their load can be higher or lower than what we projected. Attach B UAC Minutes 110701 on Customer Sales Contracts 2 It’s also equally likely that the market price can be higher or lower than what it was on the day that they locked in. But we’re looking at that and trying to decide if should we be putting some sort of risk premium on this rate for the kind of free option that we’re giving them. Should we design the rate differently that they can lock in for a price, but they’d have to commit to a certain volume as well -- and anything over or under that gets bought or sold at some market price? I mean, there’re a lot of different ways you can address that issue, but that’s one of the things we’re looking at on this rate, certainly. The earliest that one of these will expire will be June of 2002. So it’s not too long from now that customers are going to be saying, "Okay, this rate’s about to run out for me. I need to make a decision again whether to sign up for another fixed term rate or go under the G3 rate or join the portfolio" or those types of decisions. So if we’re going to be making any changes to this rate, we’ll want to do it sooner rather than later. Rosenbaum: Thank you. Ferguson: You tried a product innovation. We’re better off. The customers are better off. We tried the experiment. Maybe we’ll continue it, maybe we won’t. But that’s the fight attitude. The utility didn’t used to do that and I applaud this effort. It’s a nice little case study. You might want to put this in the Council report too. Thank you. Carlson: I have one question in the area and that is if you’re going to do it again, the markets are active enough that you can actually hedge the existing, individual contracts or groups of contracts. The cost of the hedge certainly gives you a good guidance as to whether you should charge a little premium there. You probably should. Daile2: Well we do hedge these. We hedge them on the day that the customer signs up. We hedge each one of these. Carlson: Excellent. Dailev: The alternative that you’re getting at is we could hedge exactly what it is that we’re selling them, which is an unknown quantity. That would be very expensive and but it’s an option. It’s certainly something we could look at. We could say, what we did was sell them a fixed price for any quantity that they used. What we hedged was our best guess of what they’re going to use. Carlson: Any more questions on this issue? Rosenbaum: With respect to electricity, the one custom contract we have looked quite interesting: you’re saying that we’re going to start losing money because we raised our rates and the custom contract was based on the old rate. But we have the right to terminate that contract under the buy-out provisions. Is the customer going to be happy, or are we going to pay the customer money to get out of the contract? How is that anticipated to work? Attach B UAC Minutes 110701 on Customer Sales Contracts 3 Baldschun: Yes, we’ll be paying the customer some additional amount to terminate the contract. Our projections are right now because of the electric rate increase. Now we don’t know again if we’re going to decrease rates soon or next year. But just looking at the annual cash flow, it’s about $90,000 difference each month. It’s a 3 year contract still left there. There’s no way we’re going to stay with a 3 year contract. That’s $3 million that we lose. The customers, you know, they went into this in good faith. This clause can apply to them as well. They can certainly terminate the contract and now, the bali’s in our court and we’ll be providing notice to them. Our electric rates are half of PG&E’s rates, so they’re not exactly going to be paying a large electric bill compared to what it would be in a PG&E service territory. Rosenbaum: Are there liquidated damages? Is it known in advance what the cost of the buy-out would be, or are you going to negotiate? Baldschun: Yes, it’s in the contract. Rosenbaurn: Thank you. Adjournment Carlson: I think that’s it. I see no more items on the agenda. We meet again on Wednesday, December 5th at Our new time of 7:00. A motion to adjourn is in order. Rosenbaum: So moved. Ferguson: Second. Carlson: All in favor? I declare us adjourned. Attach B UAC Minutes 110701 on Customer Sales Contracts 4