The city seeks to contract for projects (or off-take shares of projects) yielding between 10 GWh and 75 GWh or electric output per year.
The city has a preference for projects located within California, however will consider projects with a delivery point located within the Western Electricity Coordinating Council region. Projects within California must have an on line date on or after October 1, 2002, and those outside of California must have an online date on or after January 1, 2005. All projects must have a projected online date on or before December 31, 2012.
Palo Alto has a peak demand of 190 MW and an annual energy demand of 1,000 GWh, which is currently satisfied through a variety of resources, including rights to output of the Calaveras hydroelectric plant, a contract for power from the Central Valley Project through the Western Area Power Administration and several existing renewable energy contracts.
Palo Alto council has imposed renewable energy supply targets of 30% by 2012, and 33% by 2015.
This RFP process entails soliciting electric renewable power with the intent of negotiating and executing one or more power purchase agreements with one or more selected bidders. Selected bidders will be based on the city’s evaluation of Proposals based on the responsiveness to meeting the requirements of this RFP and the selection criteria. The city’s intent is to negotiate such contracts with selected bidders within a two year period from the close of this RFP.
Each Proposal submitted in response to this RFP shall be for only one proposed energy resource, and can include more than one generator of like kind. Bidders may, however, submit more than one project in their proposal. Each Proposal may also include several different price structures, project terms, and business/ownership structures. At minimum, however, each proposal must include one price structure option consisting of a basic PPA structure with a cost of energy that escalates at a fixed rate of 1% and 1.5% per year.
