Meeting with Yankee Gas

This week there was a meeting between Yankee Gas and Town officials. Rich Ogurick was kind enough to draft minutes (he often does that, even for unofficial meetings for which no official minutes are taken) and share them. If you have the time to read these minutes and you follow this stuff, I trust you'll find some interesting tidbits. Can you find any of them? Here's the text:

MEETING NOTES
Meeting date: July 28, 2008
Prepared by: Rich Ogurick
Date prepared: July 29, 2008

SUBJECT: Meeting with Yankee Gas Services

LOCATION: Cheshire Town Hall

TIME: 3:00 PM

ATTENDEES: Bob Farnham, Yankee Gas
Nancy Mala, Yankee Gas
Bill Pernaa, Yankee Gas
Joe Michelangelo
Michael Milone
Laura DeCaprio
Rich Ogurick

1. The purpose of this meeting was to discuss two proposed capital projects at Cheshire High School and Cheshire Community Pool and the capability of the Yankee Gas Services (YGS) distribution system to handle these new gas loads.

2. Nancy said that the existing infrastructure can handle 963 cubic feet/hour (CFH) at the pool site. It appears that we can replace the existing boiler/blower gas loads with an alternative heat generating system that also makes electricity, i.e., a combined heat and power (CHP) plant; however, it can’t consume much more gas than the current loads. Bob said they might be able to accommodate 5% more demand at the pool, but there is no guarantee. An improved energy efficient enclosure should significantly reduce the gas demand, possibly making the capacity a moot issue.

3. Rich will forward the projected gas consumption of a microturbine to Joe, who will forward it to Nancy to have YGS analyze whether they can handle it. YGS has our current demand and usage numbers and annual profile to compare the present conditions to future plans.

4. Significant expenditures would be needed by YGS to increase capacity for firm customers in south Cheshire. Different options are being considered, but each must be paid for by the revenues generated by the new loads, not existing rate payers. This is a DPUC requirement.

5. New loads at CHS would be a separate consideration and probably would not be a problem as long as they are interruptible (at the current rate).

6. Normally there is a process where facilities management calls YGS to notify them of expansions and conversions. Bob McCarthy used to do this for the BOE. Joe should take on this role for municipal facilities and a replacement for Bob should be appointed.

7. YGS acknowledged that there are other private new loads in town that, taken together with these two projects, could form an aggregation sufficient to justify the investment and guide YGS to the most appropriate means of accommodating them.

8. A 3%/yr load growth is assumed in YGS load forecasting. Somehow the process of planning for continual growth in Cheshire broke down.

9. There are obvious economic development impacts related to the YGS capacity shortfall that must be resolved, especially when positioning Cheshire against neighboring communities that do not have the same supply problems.

10. YGS said that they could have a clearer picture of what they need to do in about four weeks. A follow up meeting was scheduled for August 25, 2008.

11. Michael reviewed the timelines that we need to try to work to:
a. Adopt capital budget: 8/1/08
b. Pool referendum: 11/2009
c. Possible pool rehabilitation: 2011/2012?
d. CHS heating system conversion: 2010/2011 season

Any comments? The one correction that's been included in followup emails was the date to adopt the capital budget (11a). It should read 8/28/08.

I realize the focus of this meeting was CHS and the pool, but we also should be considering residential and commercial.

Tim White