PUD ponders new rate class
Cheryl Schweizer/Columbia Basin Herald Grant County PUD staff recommended adding a rate class, a decision detailed by Dave Churchman of the PUD at Tuesday’s commission meeting.
EPHRATA — Grant PUD employees have recommended establishing a new rate class for what they’re calling “evolving industry.” Employees are still working on a rate for that class, with the goal of recommending a rate by August, said senior customer officer Dave Churchman.
Churchman reviewed the recommendation for Grant County PUD commissioners at the regular meeting Tuesday.
Consideration of a new rate class was prompted by a flood of requests for new electrical service. “Essentially, we’ve had far more requests, starting last fall, than we could handle, from both an infrastructure and resource standpoint,” Churchman said. Since last fall the PUD has received 125 requests for, or inquiries about, electrical service with a total load of about 2,000 megawatts. “About 75 percent of the inquiries are related to cryptocurrency,” he said.
Cryptocurrency is a kind of virtual money, protected by encryption. Processing the transactions is called “cryptocurrency mining,” and it’s of interest to the PUD because the process uses lots of electricity. Utility district officials implemented a moratorium on new requests while they decided how to proceed.
Utility district employees are working on an evaluation of the cryptocurrency industry, plan to figure out what it would take to meet the demand, determine how to connect those customers and what rate to charge them. Churchman said information and recommendations on all those subjects will be presented to commissioners over the summer.
Whether or not an industry qualified for the new rate class would be determined by a set of criteria, Churchman said. “What we really looked at is, how is this going to impact our long-term revenue stream?” New businesses require new infrastructure, but they also require more PUD employees, Churchman said, and if the business closes all that investment is wasted.
Priority for processing electrical service requests would go to “what I’m referring to as traditional customers, and start to work through those, on a first-in, first-out basis.” Once those were addressed, the evolving industry customers applications would be processed.
Currently the only business that would fall into that class is cryptocurrency mining, Churchman said. “In the future it could be more than cryptocurrency.”
Utility district employees will ask for commission approval of the policy direction in May, Churchman said, and if they get it, start informing customers accordingly. The goal would be to have the new rate class established by August.
Cheryl Schweizer can be reached via email at education@columbiabasinherald.com.