Clearly, there’s a lot of opportunities.
Gregg Orrill: Appreciate it.
Maria Pope: Thank you.
Operator: [Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Levi of HITE Hedge Asset Management.
Andrew Levi: Hi, guys. Can you hear me?
Maria Pope: Good morning, Andy.
Andrew Levi: Hey, how are you?
Maria Pope: We can.
Andrew Levi: Okay. That’s good, always a good thing. Just a few questions, if you don’t mind. Just on the August that — hurt things a little bit for the quarter. If you had this settlement on the PCAM in place, just for that event, not for the quarter, but just for that event, how would that have kind of played out? And how would we think about the numbers? Again, it’s more of a guesstimate by you guys, but I’m just curious?
Joe Trpik: So Andy — good morning. So we are — back to what I said earlier, so we do believe the obvious event would be would meet the definition, although that definition is still to be finalized by the commission order. Each event here is unique. But to your comment, and we’re not signing numbers here yet, but they’re would there be some — I hate to be so big, but would there be some impact to our results this year, if it was treated positively, yes. And this event was not — even though each event is unique, not uncommon, over the last — from 2020 to 2022, there were about 15 events that we believe would meet the definition of an RCE over about 40 days. So and — for right now, I would say that we believe there would have been some positive impact to the results for the quarter, if this meets the definition, but we’d like to wait and see and make sure we’re aligned on that definition and calculation with the commissions ordered before we sort of declared what the result would or could have been.
Maria Pope: Andy, this is a solid first step as we work to have power cost mechanism that is comparable to other utilities across the country.
Andrew Levi: Okay. And I guess that’s something for the next rate filing as well to try to improve once again? And then my second question, is around transmission CapEx. And obviously, we have to wait for the fourth quarter. You talked about a robust update on the CapEx in general. But can you just talk about your transmission strategy and how that may ultimately play into the RFPs and how much capital you kind of want to deploy from one to the other with transmission CapEx being a little bit more predictable because obviously, there are no RFPs involve?
Maria Pope: Sure. Well, thank you and clearly, we’re similar to other utilities across the countries — we look at increased electricity use, growing service territory and renewable development transmission is an important component. When we look at our transmission strategy in particular the core of our projects that we’re looking at are actually within our service territory or adjacent to our service territory. Many of them are reconductoring. Most of them use existing rights of way. And so they’re relatively lower risk, easier to execute projects. And as we build those out and better understand the significant growth in customer usage, we will have more announcements as we move forward. And we’re very encouraged as well by the discussions at the federal level with regards to facilitating faster transmission citing and making all of the permitting easier to do.
There’s no question that we need to build transmission and whether it is the Pelton Round Butte in partnership with the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs or reconductoring and within service territory work. It’s a really important opportunity as we move forward. And we will have a decade of projects in front of us that will enhance our overall reliability.
Andrew Levi: Okay. And I just wanted to get back to PCAM because honestly, I’m pretty honest, right? A couple of people hitting me up here on my ID. So I just want to make sure there’s no confusion. So the $0.07 hit or $0.07 negative variable quarter-over-quarter from net variable power costs. You’re not saying that, that PCAM mechanism that has been modified would only have helped by $0.07? Or should we not — is that not like apples-to-apples, that negative $0.07 and how that PCAM. Without getting into the details of it because I think some people are kind of looking at it where just straight apples-to-apples and I’m guessing if not that simple.
Joe Trpik: Andy, so as you know, each year, the PCAM, we set our baseline and that $0.07 year-over-year is just really our relative performance in the quarter to the baseline. So it is potentially any impact of the heat up inside of that performance, but that is in no way meant to identify that. It is just the overall the design by quarter of how the AUT identified net variable power cost to our performance. So yeah, there is no direct linkage…
Andrew Levi: Right. And then as you get into the fourth quarter, that’s part of the reason why there’s such a large benefit because there was such a large hit last year, and now you’re getting a recovery of that this year.
Joe Trpik: Right. As a reminder, so as it relates to year-to-date, as we disclosed in the 10-Q, we are $28 million above the baseline, part of what drives the fourth quarter through that resource availability mix is an expectation that we will move from being above the baseline to some amount below the baseline by the end of the year.
Andrew Levi: Okay. And then, I guess, part of it is also fuel as well, right? From the fourth quarter, right? Lower..
Joe Trpik: That is – to the — key to the fourth quarter here is the expectations of resource mix, what we’ll consider normal win, normal weather, normal — what we’ll call normal market pricing, and that all will allow us to optimize our portfolio and help us to move in the — within the PCAM band between the above to below.
Andrew Levi: And its seem like you guys are in great shape heading into 2024. I mean, beyond this rate case settlement that hopefully gets approved, you’ve had modifications. You’ve got top line growth, robust CapEx opportunities and commission that’s been very supportive and you guys working well with them. I mean, I don’t see anything on the negative side. I don’t know if you guys can do it any differently, but…
