City of Clyde – A Municipality Harnesses Energy

AEP OnSite Partners is the City of Clyde’s chosen energy partner with work spanning two distributed generation projects.

AEP OnSite’s work with Clyde includes a 3.65 MW Solar Energy Center (June 2016) and a 10 MW Natural Gas Generation Facility (December 2020).

Overview

Cities and communities across the country interested in gaining more control of their energy usage sometimes establish a municipal electric utility. The City of Clyde in Ohio joined the 2,000 progressive communities across the U.S. in creating their own municipal electric utility. The leaders of Clyde had a vision to generate their own affordable and exceptionally reliable backup power for the citizens and businesses of Clyde through the installation of a backup generation facility.

To ensure success, the City of Clyde chose AEP OnSite Partners (‘AEP OnSite’), a well-known and trusted subsidiary of American Electric Power, to lead their behind-the-meter generation initiatives. The experts at AEP OnSite helped guide, inform, and ultimately execute an energy solution that made Clyde’s vision of lower electric rates and improved reliability a reality.

In December 2020, AEP OnSite delivered by placing into service a 10 MW natural gas generation facility with no out-of-pocket cost to the City of Clyde. AEP OnSite owns, operates, and maintains the facility, dispatching the unit when the wholesale power market sends a price signal to do so. This activity, commonly referred to as ‘peak shaving’, helped reduce the total cost of the backup power to Clyde.

The City of Clyde Story

As a city with rich history that dates back to the 1800s, the City of Clyde is home to 7,000 residents. Two of Sandusky County’s largest employers, Whirlpool Corp and Revere Plastics, have substantial manufacturing operations in Clyde with over 3,800 employees combined. Economic development is important and city leaders aim to provide best-in-class infrastructure to maintain and attract new industries into the area.

With the goal of better serving the community’s energy needs, the City of Clyde needed an energy partner and quickly turned to a familiar and trusted source – AEP Onsite Partners. Having worked with AEP OnSite on a solar project that was placed in service in 2016, Clyde was confident in and trusted AEP OnSite’s capabilities and expertise.

In 2017, AEP OnSite guided Clyde through a process to further define the need and identify the best solution. Leveraging its vast experience in project development, management and in-depth knowledge of the wholesale energy market, AEP OnSite ran a competitive bid request for the proposed assets and identified the most cost-effective technical solution to meet the city’s needs.

A critical first step in building any backup generator is to evaluate and select a site that was suitable in terms of natural gas and electric distribution infrastructure. Site construction activities commenced in 2019 and construction was completed in December 2020. AEP OnSite’s 20-year resiliency service agreement provides long-term price certainty to Clyde through a fixed capacity fee. Clyde and AEP OnSite’s interests are aligned through a shared savings structure that incentivizes performance and provides a sharing of market benefits over the term of the agreement.

Why City of Clyde Chose AEP OnSite Partners

The City of Clyde has a long-standing relationship in working with AEP OnSite on other distributed generation solutions. Clyde holds all its business partners to the highest standards and OnSite Partners aligns with Clyde’s requirements.

Trust, reliability and energy expertise were key factors in the city continuing to work with AEP OnSite for their energy needs. Past performance proved true in managing the project from early-stage planning and analysis, to solution design and development, to ongoing operations and project management.

AEP OnSite is technology agnostic and this enables a wide array of options and selection of the best technical solutions. As a strong financial resource and long-term owner and operator of energy projects, AEP OnSite offers the expertise of customizing a technical solution and commercial structure that best meets a customer’s need, such as the City of Clyde’s resiliency project.

We have been very happy collaborating with AEP OnSite Partners to lower our costs of energy and increase the overall reliability of our system. The solar project delivers environmentally-friendly electricity while the natural gas project provides a backup power source to ensure best-in-class reliability for our customers. In addition, the gas generation project creates financial benefit for our ratepayers by generating market revenues when the price of electricity is high.”
Paul Fiser, The City of Clyde Manager