Short-term Purchases & Sales

CMPAS’s energy planning and procurement objective is to balance short-term
opportunities with long-term cost stability for our members. In effort to meet this objective, CMPAS perpetually monitors the energy markets for opportunistic power supply purchases. These short-term, supplemental purchases can stack on top of the power that utilities self-supply or acquire through CMPAS-sponsored projects to fill their entire portfolio needs. Additionally, short-term purchases can act as ‘bridge’ source of power until longer-term agency-sponsored projects are activated.

When meeting a utility’s needs from the market, CMPAS conducts a great deal of both short and long-term research on how to manage volatility, particularly with natural gas prices. We also analyze how the market may change with increasing amounts of wind and solar resources.

Through diligence and market awareness, CMPAS’s wholesale power costs compare favorably with other agencies. In fact, while wholesale costs for other agencies continue to rise, ours are lower than they were 10 years ago.