Sikeston BMU hosts open house to evaluate future energy needs

Sikeston Board of Municipal Utilities hosted an open house at the Clinton Building on Wednesday, June 14, 2023. Community members came out to hear more about the opportunities and challenges BMU is experiencing as well as the techniques being utilized to evaluate them. (Gina Williams/Standard Democrat)

SIKESTON — The Sikeston Board of Municipal Utilities hosted an open house on Wednesday evening, June 14, at the Clinton Building in Sikeston to present its energy-planning process.

Sikeston BMU is conducting an evaluation of the community’s future energy needs and the best approach for fulfilling them. The process being used by the BMU will assist the utility in understanding options and determining which ones are best able to provide rate stability, energy reliability, the ability to serve current and future electrical loads, the use of technology options for customer benefit, and the ability of Sikeston BMU to provide future benefits for the community through the supply of power. 

The open house event allowed the public to learn more about the challenges and opportunities Sikeston BMU is facing.

“We are just basically trying to educate our community that we are undergoing a study to look at our future,” said Rick Landers, general manager of Sikeston BMU. 

Landers emphasized that the BMU has not yet made any decisions; they are only alerting the public about the study they are doing in order to avoid conclusions from being drawn.

“We are just doing a common planning study that all utilities do, and we are looking at what’s going on in the world and what makes sense maybe in the future for Sikeston to do,” Landers said. “What’s realistic, what’s not realistic, and it’s not any more complicated than that.” 

According to Landers, the city is in the same condition it was nearly 50 years ago. Sikeston’s leaders and community got together 50 years ago to address the city’s future power requirements. 

“At that time, the city was growing, there was an energy crisis, and they were figuring out how to handle their power needs for the next 30 years or so,” Landers said. 

The result of that endeavor, said Landers, was the building of the 235 megawatt coal-fired Sikeston Power Station, which commenced commercial operation in 1981. 

The BMU board emphasized the importance of low-cost, dependable power to the community. The city’s ratepayers, companies and employers, and neighbors have all benefited from the investment made nearly 50 years ago by the community.

Landers noted today’s culture is facing an energy change which influences the energy economy of all municipalities, including Sikeston.

The first step in tackling the difficulties is to participate in the Integrated Resource Plan, which has been launched and conclusions are due later this year.

Due to continuing competition from natural gas and renewable resources, 23% of the present coal-fired capacity (-200 gigawatts) in the United States has said it intends to retire before the end of the decade.

Higher operating and maintenance expenses make coal-fired plants less competitive and more likely to retire. 

In the United States, 151 coal power facilities have already been closed, and another 28 are scheduled to be retired by the end of the decade. 

In reference and high uptake scenarios, solar and wind are expected to produce the bulk of US power by 2050. 

According to Steven Burch, secretary of the BMU, the purpose of this research is not just to determine what makes sense for Sikeston’s future energy, but also to prepare us for what may come in the future.

“If we waited three or four years and some legislation or something else happened in the economy that impacted the plant, then we would be in a lot worse shape in trying to figure out how to deal with these issues,” Burch said.