MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Thursday, Memphis City Council members and MLGW leadership came together as the utility considers leaving the Tennessee Valley Authority and buying power from a private company.
A presentation offered new numbers of potential cost savings and the risks of such a move, ahead of MLGW's most significant decision in decades.
But some MLGW customers left the meeting unsatisfied.
"It was like too much information saturation, needed to be simplified," Ray Bauer said.
"Just more or less done apples to oranges, something that you could easily relate to," Glenda Hicks added.
Both Hicks and Bauer are with the MLGW citizen accountability group '21st Century Memphis or Bust'.
"We are TVA"s largest customer, is that not right?" Hicks said. "That alone should present some negotiating power."
Consultants hired by MLGW projected if the company buys its power elsewhere, there'd be an annual savings of either $25.7 or $55.3 million from the two leading bids. That's much lower than the numbers from a 2020 study, which estimated yearly savings between $120 and $150 million.
"We have a lot that we need to try and work through in order to have as much as certainty as possible as we go through this," Memphis City Council member Chase Carlisle said.
Those with MLGW conceded they're also weighing unknown costs should the utility need to build new infrastructure and get power from someone else.
"There's several levels or risks that we'll need to take into account, risks associated with construction, labor. We've got to make sure this thing can actually get done," MLGW President J.T. Young said.
Also not known yet is what kind of savings MLGW customers will see each month on their bill if there's a power supply switch, which couldn't happen until at least 2028.
Customers who attended Thursday promised to keep up the pressure for transparency.
"We came to this meeting today expecting that these bids would be made public only to find out, no, we have to wait until a later date," Bauer said. "This is a publicly owned company. It should all be public."
After Thursday's presentation, there will be a public comment period before MLGW leaders make a power supply recommendation in August, with a final vote by the MLGW board set for September. The Memphis City Council gets the final say.
ABC24 reached out to TVA. This was their response: "We’ve been respectful of MLGW’s process to evaluate long-term energy supplier options throughout the past two years. As MLGW works through the RFP portion of this process, we remain supportive.
We believe that our 80-year partnership with MGLW provides the best long-term value for the people of Memphis and Shelby County. With its current partnership with TVA, MLGW today provides the second lowest energy costs in the nation among its peers.
This is a big decision and today’s meeting highlighted the current volatility of the energy markets – we are all experiencing that at the gas pump. TVA has one of the nation’s most diverse, reliable, and resilient energy systems. This provides our customers with affordable, stable energy costs."
The Southern Alliance for Clean Energy also released a statement.
"Today the public expected a full evaluation of the RFP and what we got was a master class in risk exposure. GDS’s presentation overemphasized the downside risks and failed to balance with the upside benefits. Memphis needs to be eyes wide open about the risks involved with leaving TVA, but with any opportunity comes risks. Let’s not lose sight of the generational opportunities available to MGLW through alternative energy suppliers.” - Dr. Stephen A. Smith, Executive Director
“In addition to the savings over the next ten or twenty years, MLGW needs to consider the freedom that comes from being out from under TVA. As the sector continues to change, MLGW customers would benefit from MLGW being able to adapt to future changes.” - Maggie Shober, Research Director