Taking Steps Towards Power Independence
Over the last several years, the borough has been engaged in trying to find answers to how we can become more independent in our power generation while decreasing our carbon footprint. Those conversations have led to the opportunity to hire an outside consultant to help us design a plan to reach our power generation goals and become more independent as a community. This issue is particularly important to me, and one I have written about and evangelized before, because it very closely aligns with the two important realities that I view as central to our future success as a community.
The first is that as a municipal power company, we have a responsibility to provide everyone in Lansdale with high quality service while mitigating/managing costs. Every dollar our residents pay into Lansdale Electric helps fund multiple projects across the borough. This, in turn, directly improves our community and attracts more people to live, work and play here. That means we have a responsibility to provide green power to everyone, not just those who can afford to build their own solar panels.
Purchasing power for a whole community is not cheap, and the costs go well beyond just the acquisition of power. Additionally, the fee structures created by our power generation partners add significant costs to our purchase power agreements. Every time we re-negotiate our agreement for cheaper energy costs, we are hit with increased fees that make our savings less significant over time. The most significant of these fees is related to transferring energy to Lansdale. Millions of dollars every year is spent just getting power to our community. The only way to change this reality is to generate more power locally.
This comes with a multitude of benefits, but the most immediate would-be saving money on energy transfer fees. The second, and likely less known, is the volume of energy that reaches our grid. Transferring power over miles and miles of lines results in power being lost through the wires. Locally generated power puts power directly into the grid making the whole system more efficient and cost effective.
The second important shift is the investment we are making in ourselves. Rather than paying someone else to provide power to our community, we are empowering ourselves and becoming self-reliant in ways that most communities can only dream of. Jobs will be generated locally to help build and maintain any green power sourcing, likely solar, that we build to help expand our energy footprint. Lansdale will have near end-to-end control over the cost of power and we can work together to identify what the right cost structure should be for residents and for businesses. Finally, we may even generate a new revenue source in selling any excess power to neighboring communities who are looking to invest in decreasing their own carbon footprint.
Four years ago, I began working on the idea of expanding our green footprint and becoming more power independent. I am hopeful that next week we will take the first big step toward building that future by hiring a new power consultant who is passionate about helping us reach our goals. While it is just one step in the right direction, it represents the beginning of a new process that will, fundamentally, improve our community long into the future. I look forward to forging this path with all of you and am excited that we have reached this moment.