James Jenson: Am I live?
Male: It doesn't show it yet, James. Want me to go ahead and start it?
James Jenson: Yeah.
Male: Okay. You should hear it.
[Operator]
James Jenson: Welcome, everyone. I'm James Jenson, a contractor supporting Western Area Power Administration and the Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs' Tribal Energy Webinar Series. I'm filling in for Randy Mannion as today's webinar chair.
Today's webinar, entitled "Evaluating Tribal Utility Authority Opportunities," is the sixth webinar of the 2018 DOE Tribal Energy Webinar Series.
Let's go over some event details. Today's webinar is being recorded and will be made available on DOE's Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs' website, along with copies of today's PowerPoint presentations, in about one week. Everyone will receive a post-webinar email with the link to the page where the slides and recording will be located.
Because we are recording this webinar, all phones have been muted for this purpose. We will answer your written questions at the end of all the presentations. However, you can submit a question at any time by clicking on the question button located in the webinar control box on your screen and typing your question. We will try to keep the webinar to no longer than two hours.
Let's get started with opening remarks from Lizana Pierce. Ms. Pierce is a senior engineer and deployment supervisor in the Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs, duty stationed in Golden, Colorado. Lizana is responsible for managing technical assistance services, implementing national funding and financing programs, and administering the resultant tribal energy project grants and agreements. She has more than 20 years of experience in project development and management, and has been assisting tribes in developing their energy resources for the last 18 years. She holds a bachelor's of science degree in mechanical engineering from Colorado State University, and pursued a master's in business administration through the University of Northern Colorado. Lizana, the virtual floor is now yours.
Lizana Pierce: Thank you, James, and hello, everyone. I join James in welcoming you to the sixth webinar of the 2018 series. This webinar series is sponsored by two US Department of Energy organizations, the Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs and the Western Area Power Administration.
The Office of Indian Energy directs, fosters, coordinates, and implements energy planning, education, management, and programs that assist tribes with energy development, capacity building, energy infrastructure, energy costs, and electrification on energy lands and homes. To provide this assistance, our deployment program works within the Department of Energy, across government agencies, and with Indian tribes and organizations, to help Indian tribes and Alaska Native villages overcome the barriers to energy development.
Our deployment program is composed of a three-pronged approach consisting of financial assistance, technical assistance, and electrification – or, pardon me, in education and capacity building. This Tribal Energy webinar series is just one example of our education and capacity building efforts.
Specifically, the webinar series is part of the Office of Indian Energy's efforts to support fiscally responsible energy, business, and economic development decision making and information sharing amongst tribes, and is intended to provide attendees with information on tools and resources to develop and implement Tribal Energy plans, programs, and projects; also, to highlight Tribal Energy case studies; and identify business strategies tribes can use to expand their energy options and to develop sustainable local economies.
In today's webinar, we will focus on the opportunity for tribes to form tribal utility authorities. The formation of utility authorities can be a powerful tool to give tribes greater control of their energy generation and consumption. But the formation of the utility authority can be complicated and costly, and may not be suitable for all tribes. This webinar will provide you information that will help attendees determine if the formation of a tribal utility authority is something they may want to pursue.
We hope this webinar and webinar series if useful, and we welcome your feedback. So please, let us know if there are ways we can make the series better. And with that, I will now turn the virtual floor back over to James.
James Jenson: Thank you, Lizana. On today's agenda, we have a video and two presenters. I will introduce both of the presenters now.
Our first speaker is Margaret Schaff. Margie has been an attorney for almost 30 years, and manages her own law practice, Margaret Schaff & Associates, LLC. Margie has worked with two tribes who successfully began tribal electric utility operations in 2017.
Margie is also a partner with Kanim Associates, LLC, where she assists tribes and tribal organizations with their energy related issues, including tribal utility formation, electric power generation projects, high voltage transmission issues, oil and gas exploration and development, rights of ways, energy strategies, and legal codes.
Following Margie, we will hear from Raymond Wiseman, general manager of Yakama Power. Ray has worked for the Yakama Nation for 26 years, with the last 14 working as the general manager of Yakama Power, where he has had the privilege to help develop and implement a plan to serve the entire Yakama Reservation.
Before taking the helm at Yakama Power, Ray worked as a forester in the woods and on realty issues as manager of the tribe's GIS office. Prior to working for Yakama Nation, Ray graduated from University of Idaho and served in the Army and Army Reserves. When Ray is not at work, he is at home with his family and three kids, working on his farm or woodshop.
Before we hear from Margie and Ray, we have a brief 12 minute video produced by Bonneville Power Administration that shares the story of three tribal utilities, one of which is Yakama Power. This video is a few years old, but it sets the stage really well for today's webinar. Keep your eye out for Lizana, Margie, and Ray, as they all make an appearance in this video at different points.
I also want to acknowledge in advance that there may be a few of you who cannot see the video due to technical difficulties. If the video does not show on your screen, you will have about 12 minutes of silence until we come back live with Margie's presentation. We apologize for that in advance. While you are waiting, if you can't see the video, you may be able to find – or you should be able to find it by searching YouTube. Search for BPA tribal utility video, and the first video that shows up is the correct one. Once again, that's BPA tribal utility video is the search words. I'll start the video now. It will take a few moments to load.
[Video playing, 0:07:50 through 0:20:13]
James Jenson: Okay. So cool video. We did get a couple of questions that came in, and sorry for not being able to answer all of them, but if you weren't able to hear the video, it was coming in over your computer speakers and not the phone line. So you can turn those up, but obviously now it's too late for that. Just search YouTube for the video. Once again, it's BPA tribal utility, and that should bring up the video on YouTube.
All right. Next, we're going to go to Margie's presentation. Let me just bring it up here, and we'll get started with that. Margie, you can go ahead.
Margie Schaff: Thank you, James. Good morning. My name is Margie Schaff, and I'm an attorney and consult providing energy advice to tribes, mostly on legal strategies for maximizing sovereignty and control over energy and utility infrastructure and policy. I've been working on utility issues for 30 years, and I'm honored to work for many tribes. And I've helped in establishing federal policies, state policies, and other policies that make tribal utility formation easier. You saw in the video that previously I worked with the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua to begin UIUC, Umpqua Indian Utility Cooperative, which began service back in 2000. We spent about 18 months putting that utility together, so it was a pretty quick process, once we had everything kind of set up through Bonneville Power Administration.
Last year, I was pleased to have worked with a great team to establish the Pechanga Tribal Utility, now called Pechanga Western Electric. It's the first operational tribal utility in California. And on the same day that Pechanga Western Electric started, our client, Kalispel Tribal Utility, also began operation in Washington State, after a lot of work by that great Kalispel Tribal Utility team.
So the two utilities' formation processes were very different from each other, and there's many examples of that. First, in California, the tribes generally have allocations of federal hydropower from Western Area Power Administration from the Colorado River or from the Central Valley Project. In Washington, the tribes had to comply with over federal standards for service to gain access to power and transmission opportunities for using the federal Columbia River hydroelectric power from the Bonneville Power Administration.
Another difference is that in California there's an independent system operator called CalISO, and CalISO had to create new policies and procedures to apply the California tariffs to tribes during our formation process. In Washington, there is no ISO or independent system operator, but there were a number of other utility tariffs that we had to comply with and understand.
So in California, we didn't need specific transmission contracts, only compliance with all the CalISO rules, and there were quite a few, quite a few people we had to hire to get in place to make sure we were compliant. In Washington, we needed to negotiate separate transmission contracts, and to comply with all metering and other transmission obligations required there.
CalISO required specific IT systems in place to connect, and in Washington, we only needed the internal IT utility software. We also had to comply in California with California resource adequacy requirements of CalISO, and so we had to separately negotiate capacity contracts and create new systems for the tribes with the State of California, which keeps track of the loads for CalISO. So there were some state activity that was required.
In one of the cases, the tribes had to create new jurisdiction in their tribal core to allow for tribal condemnation of existing utility facilities. In the other case, we were able to do a friendly negotiation of – that facilitated the transfer of the distribution facilities. In one of the cases, the tribe had to form a utility regulatory commission, but in the other case, the tribe didn't. In one case, the negotiations included natural gas delivery charges and changes to enhance the cost savings, and in the other tribal utility, this was not necessary. One of the utilities had significant existing generation and existing power contracts, which had to be considered in all the transmission and operational issues, but for the other utility, we had to create all new power supply contracts.
So those are example of how every tribe situation is different, and everyone here that works with tribes knows that. However, some things were the same. For example, both utilities had access to federal power, but this isn't always necessary. Many tribes don't have access to federal power, but there are ways to buy power on the market or to generate your own. Each new utility needed dedicated staff in place during the process. Each new utility had numerous technical decisions to make about distribution system equipment, placement of facilities, metering, and rights of way, and each new utility had significant analysis to do for their loads, financials, and engineering. Each new utility had construction to do to maximize the facilities and to connect new facilities. And in each case, the tribes created new utility laws and policies and procedures.
In neither case did the tribes need to file anything with FERC. Under rules established originally by Sovereign Power, Inc., the power marketing organization of the Spokane Tribe of Indians, FERC decided that tribal utilities were not jurisdictional.
Both tribes considered and are deploying renewable energy and efficiency options. Both tribes achieved significant cost savings, and both tribes have now joined utility discussions and other organizations where a tribal voice is really necessary in the overall energy discussion.
So the bottom line is that utility formation for tribes is complex and time-consuming, just as it – just as it is for municipalities and other non-tribal organizations. However, it does provide significant value to the tribes for self-sufficiency and sovereignty and cost savings. So anyway, that's a lot of preparatory material. Let's get to the presentation. So next slide, please, James.
So my presentation is specific to electric utilities, but it applies to many utility services, and as you'll from Ray, once you get one type of utility service going, you often end up working with other tribal utility services. Certainly for the electric, you're going to have your communications and fiber systems involved, and for many tribes, you need natural gas, for generation. And once you have natural gas, sometimes you can displace your propane. And once you have your facilities in place, and your internal staff, it might be easier to take over water and wastewater facilities. Next slide, please.
So when evaluating whether to form a utility, you'll need a clear understanding of your utility service provider and their legal structures and motivations. So here's just a little chart that shows the types of utilities, and who controls them, and where you can find their ruling documents, whether it's at FERC or a PUC or if it's just at the Office of the Mayor, and what their interests are, whether they're for profit or otherwise just there for providing service. Next slide, please.
So even if you don't decide to form your own utility, it's very important to know your tribal rights and opportunities. And tribes have existing rights and options as utility customers. Those are things that you can do now, whether you form a utility or not, but if you do form a utility, you're going to become very familiar with these.
So you can take advantage of existing rules and tariffs. For example, many utilities have different tariffs for wholesale and retail or for other types of direct access service. And these things can save you money just by you changing your status as either a wholesale customer or a retail customer. The wholesale prices are generally very much lower.
There's always the option for tribal and tribal member participation in public and customer policy processes. You can file either formal or informal complaints. You can request and fight for changes in the rules and tariffs. And remember that when you pay for things, you can require terms and conditions. So you can negotiate for things, even though utilities generally tend to think that they won't negotiate with you. As a tribe and as a sovereign, you can certainly require negotiation.
You can use the power of being a large customer. That's a very strong negotiating point. And you can use tribal news publications like newspapers and other things to inform your community. You do also have open access rights, meaning you have the right to use transmission lines and substations for tribal purposes. You just have to follow the tariffs and procedures in place for doing that.
In addition to your rights as customers, tribal sovereignty affords many strategic options for utility relationships. For example, the tribe has regulatory jurisdiction over utilities. Sometimes you need to do a legal review of exactly what your jurisdictional authorities are, because the location of the services and the land type, whether it's trust land or whether it's fee land, certainly may affect the level of jurisdiction of – by the tribe.
Tribal laws can also directly address utility customers and service providers. You can leverage your rights of ways and service line agreements, and of course, the tribes have power of eminent domain to take facilities. And as we'll discuss on the next slide, you can determine your goals and learn your rights and learn the utility's rights, strategize, and then implement. Let's go to the next slide.
So I was asked to talk about the tribal utility formation steps, and I always think it's very important for the tribe first of all to clarify its goals and priorities related to your utility services. And almost always, one of the goals is an exercise of tribal sovereignty and cost savings. Sometimes it's improvement of service, sometimes establishing a presence in the utility industry, and sometimes the goals are mutually exclusive. For example, sometimes you can't have cost savings with improved service at the same time.
After you've decided what your goals and priorities are, you can analyze your loads to be served by the tribal utility, and you don't have to take on all your loads. As you'll hear from Ray, you can start with some particular loads, and then expand as time goes on. And you can kind of cherry pick your loads. Pick the best loads you want to serve first.
Understand the tribe's jurisdiction for these loads. And as I've said before, it's kind of a land status-based review in some cases.
Factors to be considered in your load analysis are the size of the loads. Obviously, the bigger the load, the easier it is to gain value. The electrical nature of the loads. For example, if you have just a summer irrigation pumping load, it's very different than an around the clock commercial load. The use of the loads by the tribe. The load's current service providers. Sometimes tribes have more than one service provider operating on their reservation, which is something, by the way, you do have control over. And alternative service providers in the area. So maybe you have somebody else in the area that you can bring in to take over some of the loads. If you don't want to form your own utility, you can bring in someone else. There's always operational issues related to particular loads as well.
A third general step is to determine your potential power suppliers, including supplying it yourself with renewable or non-renewable power, or buying power from the market, or contracting with a specific neighboring utility or another tribe, for example, that may have generation.
A fourth step is to analyze the distribution facilities and other physical facilities needed to serve your loads. If you're going to buy federal power, the federal agencies generally require that you own your own facilities. If you're not going to buy federal power, you may be able to just lease or otherwise contract for the use of distribution facilities.
There's a lot of issues with your distribution, of course, including what are the existing right of ways and what is the status there. What is the facility's age, value, and ownership? You don't want to take on really old, broken down facilities. Whether the existing facilities also serve loads that are not under tribal control. You may need to share these facilities with someone else, or create redundant facilities. And the cost of additional needed facilities. What do you have to construct? Any other likely utility acquisition costs. You may need to buy transformers or other large expensive equipment that sometimes has significant delays in – from the time you order it to the time you can have it. So sometimes those kinds of issues determine your timeline, just because you need to make sure you've got your meters and all your facilities and equipment in place for distribution.
Then, of course, you have to do the financial review, compare the likely rates in utility charges of a tribal utility with the historical rates and charges of your existing service providers. And last, of course, you need to develop a strategy for the operation of your utility and other general utility business planning.
Any positive financial feasibility is always weighed with the tribe's willingness to take on the responsibility of providing utility services. There are a lot of responsibilities, including the long term operation and maintenance, billing, collection, safety, of course, legal and contractual obligations over many years, and then just utility administration. Next slide, please.
So when you're doing your feasibility study, there's really two levels of feasibility. The first is technical feasibility, which is what is possible, what's reasonable regarding the facilities, infrastructure, and location, and the feasibility includes power supply. What power can you get to your utility? Or self-generation. Should you institute renewables, or do a traditional generator? Should you buy market purchases or are there other suppliers?
Transmission. Where is your power coming from now? And is there capacity on that system for a different or other power suppliers? There are in place tariffs and processes for doing transmission studies that generally run from about $10,000.00 to hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on the size of the transmission facilities you're wanting to have studied.
Technical feasibility, as – again, we talked about distribution. Can you take over those current facilities? And what else is needed? And operations. Who's going to run things, maintain, and operate?
Then on the financial side, once you've figured out what's technically feasible, you've got to figure out what is reasonable financially, so you can compare the costs of your current service with the alternatives that you have come up with. So know the basis of your current charges, and this requires a lot of really dull and boring review of your utility tariffs, and gathering all your utility bills and understanding how you're currently being billed.
Are there significant new tribal facilities being planned? For example, are you building a new casino or a new housing project or new commercial development? If so, you're probably paying for the utility facilities anyway, but the utility is going to own them, so make sure in your contracts you have the right to acquire or to take over those facilities or to own them immediately. These could really impact your financial analysis if you are intending any kind of large expansion on your reservation.
So how does the cost of an alternative power supplier plus the alternative transmission compare with what you're currently paying? That's really the big question. And how does the cost of the alternative power delivery systems and operational cost compare with your current charges?
So what are your rate setting considerations? These are often political questions that come when you may be shifting costs between different types of users. Are you going to subsidize your residential users by your commercial users? For example, if you have a casino, do you want to keep the price of the casino's power up, so you can lower the price to your residential? Those are pretty big political questions that your utility will have to grapple with. Next question.
So how do you open discussions with your utility, if you're considering forming a new utility? First of all, I would advise beginning at the right level. You want to make sure that you're going right to the top when you first announce that you are considering a utility. Have you tribal chairman write a letter to the CEO of the utility that you want to deal with. That's often very effective in making sure that they know what you're doing.
These, however, require a lot of advanced preparation, a dedicated team in place to be responsive to all the questions that are going to come up, internal coordination. Oftentimes these things take months or years. And it takes political effort at your tribal council and other levels.
So you, again, have to know your and their rights, know your strengths and values, because your values are very important here. If you go to the – your current utility provider and say, it's one of our tribal values to do things a certain way, that's going to help that utility understand that you mean business, and that you do need to make a change. Maybe that will also open up opportunities for them to make changes that might be good for the entire process.
So know what you want, and have your authorities in place, which means sometimes you have to have already passed tribal laws to make sure that you're ready before you open those discussions with your utility. Have that strategy for achieving what you want, and remember, you're going to have to do a lot of communicating and a lot of negotiating. So have your team in place and ready to make those decisions. Next slide, please.
So I was also asked to talk about what is a budget for utility formation, and what's a timeline, and all I could say was, boy, it depends. Twice I've formed utilities in less than two years, and other times, the tribe has chosen to delay utility formation for their own internal reasons. So generally, if everything falls into place, it's very possible to do this in about 18 months, but you can compare that to the City of Boulder, where I live, and – near Boulder, Colorado. The city has – is currently municipalizing and taking over facilities of Excel Energy, and they have been working for many years on this utility formation. They've been in constant litigation, and have spent absolutely millions of dollars, and they're still planning on using Excel to provide their power to them.
So you can certainly do this in a very efficient way, or it can be done that – in ways that don't work quite so efficiently. And of course, it's going to depend on who your utility provider is. But even in the most contentious of times, you can find ways and strategies for the tribe to work through the issue. And I'm going to let Ray talk a little bit about that, too, because he has a lot of experience in that area. Next slide, please.
So some examples of favorable utility and tribe interactions. So I mentioned before the opportunity for wholesale tariffs. Sometimes if you're a retail customer, you can switch to being a wholesale customer under a wholesale tariff and save a lot of money. That may require just some changes to your metering, so that your meter is checking – is measuring a number of tribal buildings, instead of each tribe – each building individually. Then those tribal buildings can all be charged a wholesale tariff.
So that takes a lot of legal review of your tariffs and legal review and engineering review of your situation on the ground, where your meters are and so forth. But these are kinds of things that are ways to save you a lot of money, even if you don't form a utility.
Another similar example of that is the direct access service, which is something that's available in California, and probably a lot of other states. In some cases, the tariffs have expired on these things, but because you're a tribal sovereign, you can require that the utilities consider them on the reservation.
You can do net metering arrangements. I think there have been other webinars where renewable energy and solar energy issues have been discussed, and net metering has been a big topic there. But you can work with your utility to make sure that the net metering arrangements are something that work for your tribe, and you can negotiate the things, whether you – whether the utility thinks they want to negotiate or not, you can certainly require that.
You can, as I said earlier, use utility substations and infrastructure for certain purposes. Many utilities and local generation and transmission organizations have energy efficiency programs that you can be part of. There are also opportunities for community renewables, either through utility programs or through tribal programs. You can have tribal member representation on utility boards. This has been really effective in some of the utilities where utilities provide services to tribes as a cooperative, because as a cooperative, the tribe is already a part owner of that utility, so you have the right to be on the board which helps make the decision.
Certainly, you always have to negotiate your sovereign immunity and dispute resolution provisions. Those are issues often dealt with by attorneys like myself and by your tribal attorneys. You can always participate in damn licensing negotiations when the dams affect tribal rights or trust properties. Also, of course, there are right of way agreements that constantly come up for review. And you can also have a tribal choice of service providers by doing franchise agreements and by having franchise laws in place. Next slide, please.
So here are just some examples of good results, lowered costs, community relationships, infrastructure improvements, improved reliability, and etcetera. Next slide, please.
So I've already talked about some of the lessons I've learned from tribal utility formation projects, but others include the tribe, tribal and utility designated personnel is necessary. So it's very important to have a staff dedicated, in place, for your utility project, and to have the right type of experts, from legal experts to engineers and others.
Creation of relationships is critical, because whether you think you're going to take over a utility's service territory once and for all, you're going to probably be in a long term relationship with those service providers, even as your neighbors, for a long period of time. So it's never good to burn bridges. It's better to create relationships. You can do those relationships, however, in a way that is firm, and that assures that tribal sovereignty is supreme.
Oftentimes, executive to executive communications is the way to go, and then other times, it's appropriate to have only staff level communications. So you've got to know when to choose which level of communication.
You can work with other local utilities and local service providers. Oftentimes, it's really critical to know who are the local engineering firms, and who are the local architecture firms, and who are the local suppliers to utility in your area? What other utilities are in your area that maybe you can use for partnering in certain areas?
Tribal leadership support is essential. Don't even embark upon this if your leadership is not interested in doing it, because it definitely needs everybody on the same page when you begin these discussions.
Make your necessary tribal laws and regulatory entities first. You know, make sure that you have your laws in place and your strategy in place before you begin this, because you can always change your laws later, but you have a much more firm negotiating stance if you're negotiating from a position of having a law in place.
This requires education of your utilities. Oftentimes, utilities don't understand tribal sovereignty, they don't understand what your rights are, but by you educating them, it really helps in your negotiating.
You can develop MOUs and other agreements. These are really good tools for utilities to understand what you're trying to do, and for everybody to know what the next steps are.
Always consider the context of what's going on. Your utility is going to have internal issues. Your utility is going to have financial issues. The tribe is going to have growth and development. There will be political issues in your region. And, of course, there's always going to be market issues, which affect all these things. And you have to understand all these different types of facets of what's going on around you and understand how to best use them to your benefit.
It's really important to set timelines and deadlines, but they require extensive planning and constant attention. You've got to make sure that you're always working to meet your deadlines. I have never worked on a utility where people haven't wanted to slip the deadline, but in the end, we've said, no, we're going to do this, we're going to get this done. And if you allow the deadlines to slip, believe me, they will. They will slip and slip and slip. But if you say nope, we're going to get this done, and here's how we can get it done, and we just have to get the right people in place to make it done, then you can certainly have it work on time and with your deadline. So next slide.
That's the last of my presentation, so I'm going to turn it over to Ray, and I understand we're going to do questions at the end. So thank you very much. I really appreciate everyone's time.
James Jenson: Excellent, Margie. Thank you so much. That was a very informative presentation there. And just as a reminder, folks, you will be able to see these presentations in about one week, because there is a lot of good information on those slides, so you can go back to them at a later date.
With that, we're going to bring up Ray's presentation, and it's all ready, Ray, so go ahead.
Ray Wiseman: Well, good morning, everybody. I'm kind of excited to do this and be able to help expand tribal utilities across the US.
One of the things that I always try to tell tribal leaders and tribal folks as they're looking into doing utility formation is that once you start down this path, your view of the world will change, and you will see different things. And this next slide as it comes up here, you'll see that – my wife was out feeding the horses, and was coming back up to the house, and she texted me this picture while I was at work, and said, hey, sweetie, look at this. Isn't this beautiful? And, you know, and I texted her right back, and it was like, wow, how did you get that power pole centered underneath the rainbow? I said, that's a really good picture. And of course she texted me right back and said that I needed professional help.
Now I've managed to take that picture to most of my coworkers, and I took it around, and, you know, 18 out of 24 of those individuals all saw the power pole. So I know I've got the right people in my staff. And, you know, professional help apparently isn't necessary. But you do tend to look at the world a little differently, and once you see it, it's almost impossible to unsee it. So once you start down this path, just beware.
And the next one, we talk a little bit about why tribes do utilities. And for a lot of people, it's just – it's simply a basic function, right? You pay every single dollar, every day, to be able to go and flip on a switch at your facilities and have the lights come on. It's something that is just natural. We have become dependent on electricity and on energy.
On this next one, this whole entire dollar is supporting a micro-economy. It's supporting infrastructure, it's supporting personnel, it's supporting trucks, it's oftentimes subjecting tribes to contracts that enforce state and other jurisdictional rules on reservations. And sometimes that is incredibly frustrating.
So the whole purpose of forming a tribal utility – next slide – is to convert this. And you're basically taking something that exists today, that's on your reservation, and that you already pay for, and convert it to something that is tribal, and gives you economic development and sovereign control. It gives you jurisdiction back.
And I think for a lot of people, that is crucial, to have and be able to regain jurisdiction. A lot of the tribes, especially in the West, are fractionated, due to the Allotment Act. And, you know, to be able to get that jurisdiction back, you need to have people that sign on to your utility. And the only way that you can get people to willingly sign on is to provide products that they want. So tribal utilities are one of those avenues. Next slide.
One of the things that I really encourage, and I think Margie's absolutely correct – now when we had started, 2004, there were only a handful of tribal utilities out there. Today, if you're interested in forming a tribal utility, call one of them up. There are – there is a tribal utility out there today that mimics where it is that you think that you're going to be. And they won't be exact. In our case, our tribal leadership went to two different tribal utilities. And, I mean, literally, after one tour, they came back and told me, we can't look, like that. It'll never work. All right? But at least we got to see it in action, and we understand what it – what it looked like.
It's really hard for tribal leadership to have a vision where they need to go, unless they have the ability to kind of see what options are out there. Today, there are lots of options out there for tribal utilities, and there are examples out there, so I really recommend that tribal leadership contact these individuals. Most of these tribal utilities are very open about having discussions with other tribal entities, and being able to share information. So I would – I really encourage you to at least go out and see what's out there.
For Yakama, when we took a look at what – the economic impacts of the status quo, just doing nothing, we saw that a majority of the revenues left the reservation. The local utilities didn't even buy their gas from our tribal gas stations. I mean, there was just really no return for the dollars that we were putting out every day for lights.
We had little or no local control on what happened on the reservation. Most of the boards, everything, were located off the reservation. Very little economic benefit to having them there, little or no savings, and there were no employment opportunities. That was one of the most frustrating things to take a look at. We've had electrical service on this reservation since 1906, and in 100 years, there's never been in _____ Yakama a linesman, a groundsman – I mean, some of the highest paid wages out there, and they exist, but we've never had an opportunity to get in there. So you basically have an unbalanced system. You have no value and no counterweight for having – for having that there. Next slide.
Well, we take a look at what existed in 2005 before our startup. We had four other utilities out there, and the largest, Pacific Power, is an investor owned utility, and they had service to all of the concentrated loads on the reservation, all of the – all of the towns. And Benton REA had more of the rural, and same thing with Klickitat County PUD, and then there was a irrigation project that served just some pumps on the reservation. Next slide.
You can kind of see that the majority of the reservation doesn't have electrical service. It's concentrated down in the valley floors, where we have irrigation, and a few other remote spots, but the bulk of the reservation does not have electrical service.
And this is kind of the inventory of those existing utilities. We hired high school students and college students, armed them with GPS, taught them how to identify structured on a pole, and basically, it took us two years to map 36,000 power poles on the reservation.
With that information, today, we have a better understanding of what we are up against, how to connect the dots, and, you know, what direction we needed to take. So having that inventory definitely formed the strategy that we had for going forward. Next slide.
When we take a look at that gross electrical sales over ten years, so we took a ten year time period and said, okay, how much revenue was generated off this reservation in ten years? And it was $301 million.
Now that was a shock to our tribal leadership, to understand exactly just how much economic development opportunities were leaving this reservation, and we didn't know how to capture that back. And the thought is that if, as a tribal utility, even if we got started small, if we siphoned off a portion of that, granted, a bulk of it still goes out for power – that's your major expense, power and transmission – but you're still siphoning some of that money back onto the reservation through wages and savings and buying from tribal vendors and contractors, and paying leases on the reservation. You're funneling that money around on the reservation.
So that is really, really important. That value, when you're looking at forming a utility, if you're dealing with individuals that are looking at it from just a strictly financial standpoint, and are looking for, you know, a three to five year return on your investment, you can forget it. You'll never get that.
You will get that back when you get past a certain point, and we've seen that. We flipped a few years ago, and all of a sudden, the value there is exceeding any cost that we ever put into it, but it just takes time to get it to build. It's not going to happen overnight.
When we started up in 2006, we were literally just a paper utility with five staff, with contracts for maintenance, construction, and outage calls. We started with serving the tribal campus, which is a cluster of about 15, 20 buildings, 54 homes, the casino, and the 2 tribal saw mills, with a total load of about 3 average megawatts. And I had at that time 132 meters.
We started from scratch. We didn't own anything. We didn't have any trucks, no poles, no wires, vaults, transformers, absolutely nothing. And so this was our startup. Next slide.
When we take a look at what – the impacts we're having today to the Yakama Nation is truly balancing our need for electricity with value. We provide job opportunities. We provide savings. We provide energy efficiency projects, economic development, and jurisdiction back for the tribe.
So the goal here is to do the utility to bring value back to that reservation. Then this is our efforts to do just that. Next slide.
Starting utilities is not easy. The tribe was very adamant that we have employment, that we had our own crews, and so they gave me a clear direction to serve the entire reservation, and to – that they wanted the employment. Well, that's really hard to do when you don't have anybody with any skillsets, because you don't have anybody out there that you can just pull in and start.
So when you're looking at this slide, what I did is I went out to several of the other tribal utilities and took a look, and what I found was that the smallest that you could really be and still support tribal crews and infrastructure and staff was about 16 average megawatts. So even in the video that you watched from Bonneville, I made that statement, standing out there by the substation. Our goal was to get to 16 average megawatts as fast as possible. That was an absolute true statement at that time.
What we see is in the kind of brown on the bottom of the graph, the revenue, we started out at three average megawatts, and you can see that that's the revenue. That means everything above that, we staffed at 16. I sent people off to school. It takes six years to get a lineman back. It takes five years to get a meter man back. It takes, you know, just years of training to get these people out of school.
So we had to make up the difference as investment by the tribe, and that came in in several different fashions. We took outside contracts to do work. I managed to get enough of a crew together, and we were able to take a fiber optic contract for $800,000.00 to install fiber optic lines on the reservation as part of a federal deal. We really worked closely with our TARO office, and I filled it in that way.
The tribe was willing to fund some of the education components. We literally just found ways to fill in that – that void. Sometimes it was grants and contracts, anything that I could find that would get me from A to B. And as people started coming out of school, and we started – I mean, we started in 2006. I didn't have my first crew, and we didn't do our first construction until 2010. We bought our very first trucks in 2010.
In 2010 to now, we've built over 100 miles of line. With that, training is going faster, because now we're doing construction here. I can control the amount of hours that my apprentices are able to get, and that has allowed us to speed that process up considerably. And so our load growth over time has been to get to that 16 average megawatts. Next slide.
All right. Now you can see, with the last acquisition that we've made, Yakama Power owns everything in red. We are gaining. We are now the second largest utility on the reservation, coming from dead fifth last. We do all of our own maintenance. We do all of our own construction. And we handle all of our outage calls on our own. Yakama Power now has two crews of linemen, with a third being structured right now. And I have to say, those are good wages. Wages here for a lineman, with overtime, on a yearly basis, exceed $100,000.00, and those wages just do not exist on this reservation, and yet now we have multiple people with those types of wages.
And the thing the council, it took even them a little bit of time to understand, is that we didn't create this. It was here the entire time. The only difference was is we converted it, and now it's ours.
So we've been gaining, and we have several more acquisitions in the works. The goal is to serve the entire reservation, and we're working towards that goal today, and putting all the necessary infrastructure out there. We started with zero. Yakama Power now – we have 548 miles of distribution. We have 78 miles of transmission lines that we now maintain, 9 substations, and we have over 3,000 customers.
And when you see this next slide, we made it. So when we look at power supply, we get our power from Bonneville. Bonneville Power is – serves 136 utilities here in the Northwest. Right now, there are four tribal utilities, Mission Valley being the largest. They're a federal utility that's a 638 for the tribe. Yakama Power, we're coming in second, and Kalispel is new, and Umpqua, that's been around for a while.
It's really hard to deal with these larger entities, because they don't understand tribal utilities half the time, and there's a great deal of education. And you would think that Bonneville would be a whole lot easier to deal with, and sometimes, that's not a true statement. I do believe that they are a whole lot easier to deal with today than they were ten years ago, because I know what I was up against then, and I have to say that the atmosphere and – and communication is a lot better today than it was back – and that's a lot of work.
It's a lot of time and effort to try and get people to understand the difference, because everybody wants _____ to lump in and to fit into a round hole, and you're going to find that you're going to be a little square or triangular. You just don't have the same philosophies. You don't have the same cultural issues. You just don't have some of the same things that the other utilities have.
And oftentimes, we don't even have some of the same benefits. A lot of the utilities out there, the last one that formed in the State of Washington was able to use state law and to form a public utility district. We didn't have that option, not without giving up a bunch of stuff, and the tribe said, forget it.
So I think the goal is to find out exactly what it is that you want to be at the end, and then work your way back, and then know where you're going, and be able to focus your resources on that vision of where you have to go. And you basically just can't take no for an answer. You just have to keep pushing on it, because anything of value out there, they will not give to you. You really have to go after it. Next slide.
So Yakama Power. We have two all-native line crews, as far as I know, the only two in the Northwest. We've managed to get several people out of our apprenticeship program. We started up a – we tried to start up a state apprenticeship program. It was very unsuccessful in dealing with some of the issues that were out there. And ended up with a Department of Labor on the federal side and starting up our apprenticeship program there.
Right now, we opened our apprenticeship program up to a wide variety of things within the tribe. So we helped facilitate for the tribe training, since we already have the board, everything else. So to date, we've graduated I think close to nine electricians, only one of them that I needed here, one HVAC person that went to the casino, and a plumber. And we've managed to get – we've got a meter man that's graduating, and to date, we've gotten several linemen out, and I have several linemen that are in our apprenticeship program right now, today. Next slide.
All of our apprentices, we sent them off to the same exact union schools that everybody else has. We do hold our apprentices to a higher standard. Most of the utilities out there will accept 70 or 75 percent. We will not. If you're not an 80 percent, we don't want you. Now that's been a really tough decision by our tribal council, and they get pushback, because early on, we had 50 percent failure rate, and there were a lot of individuals that were really upset, going to our tribal council.
But our council did not budget, and we're very thankful that they did not, because the quality of individuals that we have that have graduated this program guarantee a success in the field. And when you have to stand up in front of tribal council, and I know I was there in 2006, when they told me I would never find _____ Yakama that would show up in the middle of the night, I had 11:30, in a snowstorm on Christmas Eve to turn their power back on. That's not a ringing endorsement when you're trying to form a utility.
And I am happy to say that I found several of them that – and they do exist. And once our council was able to see these guys make it through these classes, come back and actually provide the service at all hours, on call, 24 hours a day, we've seen a humongous change in the attitude out there, and a huge support for the utility. So it takes time, and it takes, you know, these individuals to make it out of these classes. Next slide.
Today, I have six journeyman, one hot apprentice, two cold apprentices, and a groundsman that are currently in. I have an advertisement out for three additional ones. We do all of our own maintenance. We do all of our own construction. I am absolutely impressed with the amount of infrastructure we've been able to put in. I've had to contract some construction out, due to inexperience of the crews. So in other words, we will build all of the line, and maybe – this last year we actually contracted out to have the portion over the railroad crossing, something that we hadn't done before. But our crews were there to watch. We learned. And this year, we performed our very first railroad cross on our own.
All the poles that we own have been set by our crews. So if there's anything out there that we can physically do on our own, we do. In a couple of cases, we set so many poles I had to call in some construction crews to come in and pull wire, because I just couldn’t keep up with the construction.
Our growth has just been exponential, and with that come a lot of growing pains. And there's a lot of things out there that you have to have in order to support this. Next slide.
One of the things I talked about was the change in tribal council and the support. Our tribal council, once they saw that our crews were out there doing the work on our own, basically helped support us in the purchase of brand new vehicles for our crews. And they did that in the form of a low cost loan directly from the tribe, so that we could get the vehicles in and get that started, and that's worked out really, really well for us. So now we have an entire fleet out there that's maintaining our infrastructure.
When we talk about the infrastructure, though, and you form those utilities, there are substantial costs, and one of those, you know, is just basically trucks, support equipment. You've got to have a warehouse. You've got to have a place to store your meters, and oftentimes, today, copper wire. Otherwise, it won't be there when you show up on Monday. Tools. But that could easily surpass – for us, it's a little over $2.5 million for our two crews.
Inventory costs, depending on your age of your system and size, you know, can range easily from a half million to a million and a half dollars. You've got to have transformers. You have to stock wire, poles. There's just an incredible amount of infrastructure that you have to have on the shelf, ready to go, because unfortunately, outages, they don't schedule. They just happen. And you have to be able to go and pull that stuff off of the shelf and have it back up, because people are dependent on this service. Next.
Engineering. Engineering is something that is vital for the utilities. Now we have a – we're a hybrid at this point. I do have a tribal member that has finished his engineering degree in school and is working towards his professional license. So we contract out to provide certain services.
I can tell you that, you know, I was the happiest camper ever when we got our very first drawing, which I put in this little display here. We were so used to drawing everything out at the local eatery on napkins and then going out and building it, and to actually have drawings with parts and everything else was a huge improvement from where we were at. And we're really excited about this.
And now, we've got somebody that's coming in under him and starting to learn on the staking side of things. So this thing just continues to evolve, and new job opportunities continue to open themselves up. Next slide.
Currently, this is where we're at, at 2017. I can tell you that graph's changed a little bit more. We are by far the second largest utility. We are actively working on that acquisition from the largest, and trying to expand our customer base. And we're trying to do it in a phased approach, either through tribal condemnations, downright acquisitions, or reversals of things as simple as service line agreements on tribal properties. So we constantly are working towards the goal the tribe has set out, which is to serve the entire reservation.
While on our path to get there – next slide – we found that we needed communications with a lot of the electrical equipment out there that we were deploying, our substations, our – you know, to have SCADA systems that'd allow you to communicate with all of your devices and see what's happening on your system. So we put together a fiber crew, and today, this has turned into a nightmare for me, because this is expanding faster than I thought it was going to. When we put out the infrastructure, the cost difference to install a 12 strand fiber and a, you know, 96 strand fiber is not a whole lot. Your major cost is getting the steel cable up and having the crews out there and pulling everything.
So I convinced our board and tribal council early on to put the maximum out that we could buy at the time. Today, we are doing all kinds of things with that fiber. We lease out a lot of our fiber to different entities on the reservation.
Because we were able to get that one contract here on the reservation with the federal government to install fiber out, we're now inter-tied, and have a HUT out here that allows us to inter-tie with the world. And so that has opened up a whole other avenue for us. Next slide.
Today, Yakama Power provides cable TV. We provide phone service. We provide wireless, either wholesale – the tribe has now formed their own wireless internet company, and they have 13 employees and 1,700 customers. And so this thing has already started to spawn new sub-enterprises that allow us to benefit from each other, and, you know, get more individuals out there with technical backgrounds, and provide, again, additional job opportunities.
We're going to have close to 1,000 phones by the end of this year, and expect that to double next year. So we're in a huge growth phase on this side of the house, and trying to make sure that we have our apprenticeship programs ready to go, so that we can get these people in, get them their training, get them their certifications, has allowed us now to lease these individuals out. We actually do fiber splicing now for other carriers on the reservation when their cable goes down.
It's just opened up all kinds of opportunities that nobody saw when we first – when we first put it out there. This is – this has been a really big hit, and can't wait to see what other opportunities are sitting around the corner, as we continue to get tribal members with professional licenses and certifications that allow us to not only do things on the reservation, but off – to do things off the reservation. Because, again, it's another source of revenue that's sitting out there. Somebody else is getting paid to do it. And if we have the ability to convert that, that just means more money coming into the – to the – to the tribal reservation that, you know, has been there the whole entire time. So we're really excited about those opportunities.
So with that, that's the end of the presentation. This sign was actually built by my line crew and my one electrician. So again, I stress all the time that if there's anything that we can do on our own, we will – we will attempt that. And I know sometimes that frustrates my crews, but we literally try to do everything internally. And I think what they see and what they have is they built it, they own it, and there's a great deal of pride and kind of just – it's ours, and they want to take care of it. And it's been a real – it's been a real pleasure to work here for this long, to see it from where it was to where it is today, and I can see what it looks like at the end, and I'm really excited.
So it's all about power to the people, and that's the end of my presentation.
James Jenson: Great. Thanks, Ray. That was a great presentation, and inspiring. _____ tribal utility you've put together there.
So now we're going to go to questions, and so we have a few questions that have already been asked, but feel free to continue to ask questions, because we have a bit of time. Just you have to submit written questions and all. I'll read them to our panelists here.
So let me go and pull up the questions now. All right. So here's kind of a specific question that we may or may not have answered, and maybe Margie, but certainly, Ray, if you have an answer, jump in. Could you explain some ways that Pick-Sloan tribes can direct their hydro allocations?
Margie Schaff: As with all of the WAPA allocations, generally, Western in the past has required a benefit crediting arrangement, if the tribe doesn't have a utility. If the tribe does form a utility, they can direct their allocations to directly serve tribal loads. Generally, the larger loads are the ones you want to kind of cherry pick. You do have to acquire the facilities necessary to provide service to that, so acquire the distribution, and have the tribal utility available.
In other areas outside of Pick-Sloan, Western has allowed tribes to negotiate different types of arrangements with other utilities. Whether or not Pick-Sloan will allow that, I think it's on kind of a case by case basis, and I think if a tribe requests a different type of application of their allocation, if they can show good reason for doing that, I think it's a very negotiable opportunity.
It's really hard for me to come up with examples without specifics in mind, but if somebody has a specific question there, you're welcome to call me directly on it.
James Jenson: Great. Thanks, Margie. Another similar question. Have you had any cases where the WAPA allocation was spread out to all co-op members, even though some of them may not be tribal members? Specifically, the Rosebud Sioux tribes get their allocations through their electric co-op. In the co-op annual report it shows the cost savings is spread across all members, even though they are not all tribal.
Margie Schaff: Yeah, that's not the way it's supposed to work, generally, the tribe will give Western and the benefit crediting partner a list of meters that the allocation is supposed to be applied towards, and you should not be spreading the tribe's benefit to non-tribal members. That would be an issue that I would go after, if you're finding that that's the case.
James Jenson: Thanks, Margie. Another question maybe for Ray, but maybe not applicable. So it's have you looked at blockchain ledger as a form of payment to assure investors of payments? So blockchain technology? Have you looked into that at all at this point?
Ray Wiseman: No, we have not.
James Jenson: Sounds like you have enough headaches already.
Ray Wiseman: We'll take any kind of payment, huckleberries, salmon, whatever it takes.
Margie Schaff: I know of some tribes that have looked into that, and I think that it seems to be a further complication at this point that I think maybe in the future, it's going to be a really good option, but at this time, it seems like just getting the utility up and going is enough of a technical issue without adding some other kind of technical new obstacles to the mix.
James Jenson: Okay. Thank you. Another question here, and you may have to answer it generally, but how much does it cost for a tribe to take over or own their own power company? So maybe to feed off that, is there a good way to estimate the cost if you're going to buying existing infrastructure? Are there tools and methods for estimating that?
Margie Schaff: Well, I –
[Crosstalk]
Margie Schaff: Yeah, I think you can – the more you spend, the more detail you're going to get. Let's put it that way. So if you're just doing a feasibility study, if you want something really high level, the DOE technical assistance program is available, and they usually allow for up to 40 hours of technical assistance for tribes to answer those kinds of utility questions.
And there are really good kind of general rules of thumb. You can say, okay, if you have this many miles of distribution and three substations that are, you know, this size, here's a general idea of what that would cost. And so you can do a really high level feasibility study for a pretty small amount, oftentimes even for free within the DOE technical assistance program. Obviously, you don't want something that high level if you're going to begin negotiations with the utility. You want to have a much more specific review, both from an engineering and a legal point of view.
So really, the question is at what level do you want the answer to come in? Do you want the level to be a really high level question? Is this something we even want to consider? Or something much more detailed that arms you with what you need to begin negotiations?
Ray Wiseman: I would agree with that. I think it's good that people go out and get a good evaluation of that system. You know, we started off with something as simple as just having high school students going out and getting an idea of the average cost of a pole, everything else, and we had some idea of what it was we were looking at.
And you will find that there are states out there that have statutes on the books that already determine the cost of what you would buy the system for. I know there are some out there that said that none of their public utilities can sell their infrastructure unless they get three or four times their net book value, and it's a requirement. So regardless of what the value is to the individuals, there are definite statutes out there that kind of set a rock bottom price that they're willing to negotiate for.
Margie Schaff: And I'll say, too, though, that even if there are state statutes that tell the utilities what they can do, oftentimes, tribes have a very good legal argument that those state statutes don't apply to reservation-based jurisdictional systems. So even if the utility says that those are the statutes that apply, you have a very good legal argument to say that they don't. So the tribe can make their own laws with regard to their own jurisdictional utility issues.
James Jenson: Okay. Thanks, guys. Another question for Ray. Is the GIS of Yakama Power distribution system available to the public?
Ray Wiseman: No. It's actually owned by the tribe. They're the owners of that. The stuff that we have internally, we're just now building, so I have access to it, and we use it for kind of visual displays and everything else, but we're not the owners of the information.
James Jenson: Okay. Has Yakama Power considered or utilized solar energy?
Ray Wiseman: We actually have two projects that we're considering right now and have in the works to develop solar. We do have some low head hydro currently, and we are looking at potential for some wind, but there's some requirements that we would have to meet to get a favorable tribal council resolution to proceed.
James Jenson: And to follow that up, most of your generation is coming from BPA. Is that right? Do you have any other major self-generation?
Ray Wiseman: No. Currently, we buy all of our power from the Bonneville Power Administration. The stuff that we do generate, we actually sell out on the open grid. Our contract doesn't allow us to self-perform at this point.
Margie Schaff: Yeah, Bonneville has a number of different types of contracts. Most of the tribal utilities – I think all of them, actually – in Bonneville service territory, have full requirements contracts, meaning that they have to buy all their power from Bonneville. You can also buy a different type of contract from Bonneville, but the rates are different, and those include like a block of power, or what they call a slice of the system. So it depends on how you contract with Bonneville, but it's most expedient to start with just the full requirement Bonneville contract.
It does, however, limit you then to doing other types of generation that you would provide to yourself. Bonneville full requirements contracts allow you to have up to one megawatt of like a solar project or something small, but you can't have a five megawatt solar project, if you have a Bonneville full requirements contract.
James Jenson: Another question here. First off, so thank you, Margie and Ray, for the inspiring and great presentations. And it goes on to say, for Ray, when you initially started in 2006, can you share how much, in rough terms, the initial capital investment was? And how much did you need to sustain you to – for the next three years?
Ray Wiseman: Hmm. Boy. Now I've got to put on my thinking hat here. Two thousand six, the tribe made an initial investment in purchasing the infrastructure of a little over a half million, and that's what got us started. We had a grant at the time. That was a federal grant. And I think, you know, there were $600,000.00 or $700,000.00 on that grant. And that probably carried us for a couple of years. We did some other little things here and there to – so my expenses weren't very high. I only had the six employees, and, you know, a couple of them were in school. That was also being – I guess that's really hard for me to track, because some of this was an actual investment by the tribe to kind of get this thing started. So I didn't see their side of the books.
But, I mean, linemen expenses are – got to be $100,000.00 a year, by the time you've got to pay salary and their education, as they're getting their experience. So I know that the tribe, when I – let me see if I can – when we gave this presentation back in I think it was down at NAFOA, down in Arizona, several years back, total tribal input into the utility was about $17 million over that time period, and that's us putting in our – total cost, right? And then – but we ended up with like $18 million in assets sitting out there that we owned outright during that time period. So we had actually flipped to where we actually – the tribe's – the assets were sitting on the tribe's books. We had more assets than what we had actually put into it, and it was growing exponentially after that. So it does take a period of time to get started, and then at some point it flips, and then – and then you – the tribe actually sees the value.
And it's really hard to put that value on there, when you – I mean, now I'd have to add in things like Yakama Nation networks, and I'd have to add all these other things in there, and I don't – we quit looking at it. I mean, it became really obvious that this was a – this was a huge success. So we – I don't think anybody's really looked at it much after we noticed that, you know, we had made that swap.
James Jenson: Got you. Yeah, that's great. A new question here just came in. Is there any data set or lists of tribal utilities in the US, or even more generally, how many tribal utilities are there?
Margie Schaff: There's a report that was done by Western Area Power Administration a number of years ago that details all of the tribal utilities, and Lizana, maybe you can reference where that can be found on the DOE website. I think they're working on getting that report updated to include some of the new utilities. There's also been recently kind of a group of the tribal utilities have gotten together and tried to begin coordinating issues amongst themselves. So that's been a very effective kind of email group to address particular issues that might impact tribal utilities. And if anybody's interested in joining that, you can get a hold of me or Ray, and I think we can add you to that email list. And it's the actual operating existing utilities that are all kind of a member of that group, plus a number of other groups that are kind of interested in utilities have been welcome to listen in.
Lizana Pierce: Yeah, and Margie, thank you. That report is on the Office of Indian Energy website, and if you scroll along the top, it'll be under energy resource library. And we do hope to get it updated and recognize the tribes that have more recently formed tribal utilities. So if you have trouble finding it, you can always send an inquiry to our main mailbox at Indian Energy@Headquarters.DOE.gov.
James Jenson: Thanks, Lizana. Another related question here, actually, is there a list of renewable energy generation by tribes?
Lizana Pierce: So there – we do – for our office have kept a database that actually goes back to the mid-nineties with the Energy Policy Act of 1992, and that is also on the Office of Indian Energy website. We have recently funded research to quantify the installed systems in Indian Country, and we hope that report and the Tribal Energy Atlas will be announced and issued shortly.
James Jenson: Okay. Thank you, Lizana. Another specific question. Can – and maybe for Margie. Can you elaborate on what a 638 contract is?
Margie Schaff: Sure. That's basically a contract that a tribe can enter into with the Bureau of Indian Affairs to take over a BIA project. So it's basically the tribe taking on a project that the BIA previously ran. So Mission Valley Power was previously a federal utility, and the tribe took it over pursuant to that contract.
James Jenson: Okay. Thank you. And one last question. So both of you guys did a good job of addressing some of the things to consider as you look at forming a tribal utility. In both cases, there was a lot of background information that was needed, and a lot of research and evaluation. Is there kind of a first cut kind of scenario where someone can look at and say, my tribe might be a good candidate, or, you know, maybe it's something that's not worth spending time on? It's probably a hard question, but do you have any kind of real high level guidance on how to determine if you want to spend the time and effort evaluating tribal utilities?
Margie Schaff: I would say ask for a free analysis through the DOE technical assistance program. I've done a number of really high level, is this worth looking at kind of analyses under that program, as have other contractors that they've hired. So I think that's a really good way of just having someone from the outside just assess what your situation is and whether or not you may be a good candidate.
James Jenson: Great. Thanks, Margie. So that's all the questions we have, and thanks to Margie and Ray for your excellent presentations. Please feel free to give us feedback on today's presentations, as we are very interested in your suggestions on how to strengthen the value of this training. I've posted up on your screen a list of their main webinars in the 2018 series. The next webinar on July 25th is request for proposal strategies for tribal community energy projects, and all of these webinars are 11:00 AM mountain time, and on the last Wednesday of each calendar month is the general idea, for your scheduling purposes.
Thanks again for your interest and attendance, and have a good day.
Lizana Pierce: Great. Thank you, everyone.
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