special promotional section
An American Public Power Association survey ranked Roseville Electric Utility in the top 10-15 percent nationwide for reliability , saying its customers experience an outage about once every eight years , a benefit of having 85 percent of its distribution lines underground .
As a result , about 50 percent of Roseville Electric ’ s generation is carbon-free , exceeding the state renewable-energy portfolio mandate of 33 percent . “ We are seeing that more and more of our customers are looking for environmental stewardship and energy efficiency ,” White says .
The utility recently unveiled a small solar project with capacity for 200 residential customers , according to Erin Frye , communications and marketing manager for the city .
“ It ’ s only 1 ( megawatt ) of power , but we wanted to see what a demonstration would look like before we did this on a larger scale ,” White says . “ We filled up the program in about a month , and we have a waiting list . It wasn ’ t a hard sell .” Frye says 85 percent of those customers chose to get 100 percent of their power from the solar project , even if it would cost slightly more than the base 50 percent that was offered .
White says Roseville Electric ’ s rates are about one-third lower than PG & E but only in part because of the municipality ’ s tax-exempt status . “ The overall financial model is different for investor-owned utilities ,” he says .
Investor-owned utilities generate revenue through fees for long-distance transmission of electricity and the financial return on investing in that distribution system . These companies are not tax-exempt and are responsible for paying dividends to investors . In contrast , municipal utilities like Roseville Electric are owned by local taxpayers , making them tax-exempt and without the financial responsibility of dividends , so rates are closer to the actual cost of generating power .
White says lower rates attract business , especially energy-intensive companies , like the computer chip manufacturer , data centers and medical-device makers that chose to be based in Roseville . “( But ) the main driver of our business growth is our reliability . Business tends to gravitate to areas where they know the power will stay on ,” he says .
An American Public Power Association survey ranked Roseville Electric
Roseville Electric Utility is municipally owned and gets about 40 percent of its electricity from a city-owned natural gas power plant in Roseville .
PHOTO BY ELIJAH WILBUR COURTESY OF THE CITY OF ROSEVILLE
2020 | comstocksmag . com 39