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BMU hosts open house about its process for plan
By Gina Williams
Standard Democrat
SIKESTON — The Sikeston Board of Municipal Utilities held an open house on Tuesday evening, Jan. 30 at the Clinton Building in Sikeston to present information about the multi-month process it used to develop an “Integrated Resource Plan,” which will be used as a guide to secure the Sikeston community’s energy future.
The open house provided an opportunity for the community to come and hear about the process thus far, future steps and to ask questions.
Rick Landers, general manager of Sikeston BMU, said during the last two years, BMU has engaged specialists to establish the best possibilities for transitioning its Sikeston Power Station to other technologies that are more cost effective and less carbon intensive.
“I don’t think it’s necessarily fair to have a favorite option right now,” Landers said. “I need to remain open-minded. We need something that is both affordable and reliable.”
At BMU’s first open house this past June, the public was able to learn more about the challenges and opportunities they face and the process BMU was undertaking to meet the community’s energy needs going forward, Landers said.
BMU launched the Power Supply Plan to assist utilities with long-term planning to continue meeting the community’s needs for dependable and reasonably priced electricity. This was done in response to growing market competition, pressure from natural gas and renewable energy sources and rising costs for coal plant operations.
According to Landers, the power supply plan is a planning tool that BMU utilizes to assess the different regulatory, economic and technical issues of producing and supplying electricity to its consumers in the future.
BMU has studied a variety of Power Supply Plan alternatives, including continuous SPS operations, additional natural gas-fired power plants, solar energy, small modular nuclear reactors and more.
Landers noted BMU’s primary focus is on finding the most trustworthy and inexpensive option.
“Looking at the options, we see that the reliability is possibly less than others, but we will have to weigh that into the overall view,” Landers said. “But if you look at the strategies, the priority that the board gave was cost and reliability.”
To view previous power supply updates, go to https://www.sikestonbmu.org/newsDetail.php?Sikeston-BMU-s-Power-Supply-Planning-...