Denton faces $240 million question
http://www.dentonrc.com/local-news/local-news-headlines/20160611-denton-faces-240-million-question.ece 11 June 2016
...Right now, Denton ratepayers fork over about 10 cents for every kilowatt-hour of electricity they use. By 2019, that’s expected to climb to 10.75 cents. (Texans paid an average of 12.59 cents in 2014.)
In other words, the average electric bill for Denton households is about $150 per month today and will likely reach $161 in 2019.
DME expects the average monthly bill to hover at about $160-plus through the 2020s — if the utility can buy the gas-powered engines to generate power.
But this proposed big-ticket purchase has proven controversial. Activists have submitted more than 600 letters to the City Council opposing the engines. They want DME to buy only renewable energy, as much as possible and as soon as possible.
DME officials have said they could do that. They’ve got renewable energy contracts with more in the works. The utility estimates that going to 100 percent renewable would push the average monthly bill to $176 (or about 12.25 cents per kilowatt-hour) by 2019.
Yet, that also would be the high point for local rates, DME says. After 2019, the rate for 100 percent renewable energy would drop.
In other words, through the 2020s, electric rates for the no-engine plan would be a little higher than the go-engine plan.
It seems counterintuitive, but DME says to save about $7 a month for the average ratepayer, it has got to spend $240 million on a dozen engines....