Princeton Municipal Light Department

FY2000 Annual Report

Customers and Rates

As your Town owned Electric Municipality since 1912, the Princeton Municipal Light Department (PMLD) thanks all of its customers for their continuing support of public power. PMLD is a non-profit public service corporation, whose primary goal is too provide reliable and low cost electric service to the residents and businesses of the Town of Princeton. PMLD is a Town asset, working as a separate governmental unit, with its own Board of Light Commissioners, policies, and budget serving the needs and providing value to our ratepayers.

Throughout FY2000, PMLD continued to focus on business improvements, distribution line upgrades, and reducing outages. By the end of 2000, PMLD provided electric service to 1,324 residential, 96 commercial, and 12 municipal customers. Over 90% of the customer base in Town is residential. Our customers used approximately 16 million kWh in energy in 2000, and that usage continues to increase approximately 4% annually.

PMLD has some of the lowest rates compared to Investor Owned Utilities (IOU) and our neighboring municipalities. The following amounts represent what it would cost you monthly for electricity if you lived in these service areas, based on an average customer energy use of 750 kWh per month.

(SO is “standard offer service”. This applies to customers before March 1998. DS is “default service”. This applies to new customers after March 1998. Neighboring Municipals is an average of the bordering municipal light plants.)

Over the past 17 years, PMLD has had only three rate increases. This represents an average rate increase of only 1.6% per year, less than the average annual rate of inflation! PMLD’s number one priority is to maintain the lowest possible rates while providing the most reliable electric service.

Renewable Energy Breakdown

PMLD’s commitment to protecting the environment and purchasing renewable energy continued through FY2000. Purchasing renewable, "green" energy makes a difference in our community. In FY2000 PMLD purchased approximately 28% of its energy from various hydroelectric power plants. Our sources of hydroelectric power come from four small-scale hydroelectric plants in Massachusetts, the St. Lawrence/Niagara power plant in New York, and the Hydro-Quebec plant in Canada. These hydroelectric, renewable energy resources are purchased at very favorable costs compared to our bulk energy contract for market power.

The Richard Wheeler Wind Farm, owned, operated, and maintained by PMLD, generated its largest amount of renewable energy since 1994. This year's wind generation produced approximately 2% of our energy requirements and generated approximately 265,000 kWh - the annual equivalent energy consumption of 30 homes. The power plant is 16 years old and the 40KW wind machines continue to provide renewable energy to the PMLD community. PMLD will install a new 50kW unit this spring that will significantly increase the amount of renewable energy we generate.

The remaining 70% of our energy comes from various sources such as oil, coal, nuclear, and natural gas. Our competent planning and financially sound contracts allow us to accurately forecast energy costs into 2007 and beyond. These are the driving factors keeping raising fuels costs from increasing your monthly bills in the form of fuel adjustment charges.

Service to town

Every year, PMLD performs various services for the Town and our customers. In 2000, PMLD continued to manage the CDL drug testing program for both PMLD and the highway department, discounted the cost of Town street lights by approximately 17%, installed the annual Christmas tree and Town Common lights, inserted important periodic flyers from the Town Hall with our bills to save postage, collected household batteries and lamps, sponsored electrical safety classes for our children at the Thomas Prince School, and many other services that helped our community.

PMLD completed approximately 80% of the long awaited RT62 project. This 2.5-mile upgrade will reduce electrical outages and make our electrical distribution more efficient. PMLD will continue to upgrade the town’s distribution system and improve customer service. One solution to many of the past outages, was tree trimming. PMLD spent approximately $35,000 on tree trimming last year. This significantly improved the reliability of our electric system. In fact, PMLD experienced only 6 Town wide outages in 2000. Prior to the tree trimming, PMLD experienced 26 and 34 town wide outages in 1999 and 1998 respectively.

Future

PMLD will continue to upgrade its electrical distribution system, perform preventative maintenance, and explore new services in 2001. We also plan to purchase the building we currently lease for our operations. To do this, we need your support for this warrant item at the next annual Town Meeting. PMLD will be responsible for paying all of the expenses through its own budget and what’s even better, PMLD will end up paying the same amount as it would if it we continued the lease. As indicated in the past, PMLD will unbundle our invoices next year. Unbundling or itemizing our invoices will allow you to compare our energy rates with other municipals and investor owner utilities throughout New England.

Please come by the Light Department and let us know how we are doing. Thank you again for continuing to support PMLD.

Respectfully Submitted,

Jonathan Fitch, P.E.

General Manager

Board of Light Commissioners:

Bradford Hubbard, Chairman

Scott Bigelow, Secretary

James Whitman