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-Editorial
The Imperial Irrigation District Board of Directors met in a regular session on Feb. 21st to discuss and approve the Energy Cost Adjustment for March.
The Energy Cost Adjustment has been established to provide recovery of fuel, purchased power, and other related costs.
The ECA billing factors are calculated with 12 months of actual costs of purchased power, fuel, and incremental renewable that are offset by sales revenues from wholesale, retail energy, and greenhouse gas allowances. According to IID, as of January 2023, purchase power costs are higher than budget at 9%. Natural gas prices are lower than December prices but continue to be higher than normal for this time of year.
Since July of 2021, the board has reviewed and successfully stabilized each month the ECA billing factors to avoid high market spikes during high consumption months, have no under or over-collection at year-end as well as protect the financial stability for much-needed future borrowing for capital investments. Per board direction starting the year 2023, the goal is to return to a floating ECA rate following the approved rate schedule.
As per board approved rate schedule, the ECA factors apply to all-electric customers and the purpose is to recover the cost of fuel, energy, capacity, transmission, purchased power, and transmission costs that are not recovered in the base energy charge after being netted with wholesale sales. It is a rolling 12-month calculation of the actual previous net purchased power cost minus the cost recovered through the base energy component and adjusted salary.
During December 2022, there was higher-than-normal market volatility and a spike in natural gas prices due to constraints on the So Cal Gas System as a result of extreme weather events and colder-than-expected temperatures. The cost of energy started to decline during January 2023, however, continued to be higher than expected for that time of year.
For the billing month of February 2023, utilizing preliminary 12-month actual costs from February 2022 to January 2023, the ECA billing factors have been calculated as follows:
12-Month Rolling Preliminary Actual (February 2022 to January 2023)
ECA Non-Renewable Billing Factor
Net Purchased Power and Fuel Costs $329,009,917
Retail Energy kWh Sales 3,603,637,258
ECA Non-Renewable Costs ($/kWh) $0.0913
Energy Cost Recovered in Energy Rates ($/KWh) $0.0562
Stabilize ECA Factor ($/KWh) $0.0032
ECA Non-Renewable Billing Factor for March 2023 $0.0383
ECA Renewable Billing Factor
Net Renewable Incremental Costs $6,803,753
Retail Energy Kwh Sales 3,603,637,258
ECA Renewable Costs ($/kWh) $0.0019
ECA Renewable Billing Factor for March 2023 ($/Kwh) $0.0019
