Pella joins Missouri River Energy Services
Missouri River Energy Services announced June 9 that the City of Pella, Iowa, has joined MRES as its 61st member.
Currently, Pella, a community of about 10,000 people, produces all of its power needs from generating facilities it owns. The city will begin purchasing a portion of its electricity needs from MRES Nov. 1, and on April 1, 2012, it will begin purchasing all of its electrical requirements from MRES.
MRES, headquartered in Sioux Falls, is a public power joint-action agency serving its member communities in the states of Iowa, Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota with wholesale electricity and a wide range of energy-related services.
As part of its membership agreement, Pella will sell its interest in the Walter Scott Unit 4, a coal-fired power plant, to the Western Minnesota Municipal Power Agency (WMMPA), which has financed and owns the electric generating and transmission facilities that serve MRES and its members.
Pella also will sell to MRES all of the wind energy it is entitled to under its agreement with FPL Energy Hancock County Wind, LLC, and will dedicate to MRES the capacity from its diesel generating facilities. In addition, Pella will retire its local downtown power plant in 2012. Power generated from this plant is primarily derived from coal.
“Our new agreement with MRES will give Pella access to a solid, reliable, diverse electricity supply and membership in one of the nation’s most respected public power joint-action agencies,” said Pella Mayor Darrell Dobernecker. “In addition to power supply, MRES will handle transmission arrangements on our behalf. MRES also offers its members many energy-related services that Pella will benefit from as a result of our member status.”
“We are very pleased that Pella is joining the ranks of our members,” said MRES CEO Tom Heller. “As with all of our members, the city will continue to own and control its electric distribution system. The role of MRES is to provide a way for public power communities to leverage the strength of the group to ensure that they have reliable, cost-effective long-term energy and energy services. This agreement enables MRES to add load and further diversify our generation portfolio.”
The majority of MRES power is produced at the Laramie River Station, a large coal-fired generating plant in eastern Wyoming. MRES also gets power from the natural-gas-fired Exira Station located in Audubon County, Iowa, from the oil-fired Watertown Power Plant in Watertown, S.D., and from several diesel generating plants located in and owned by member communities. In addition, MRES gets approximately 11 percent of its total wholesale energy from wind energy generated at facilities in Minnesota and North Dakota.