Randy Manion: Good morning or good afternoon, wherever you may be, and welcome to the seventh webinar of the 2016 DOE Tribal Renewable Energy Webinar series, our webinar [Break in Audio] development for long-term tribal energy. I'm Randy Manion, today's webinar chair and manager of Western Area Power Administration through Renewable Resource program. Let's go over some even details. Today's webinar is being recorded and will be made available on DOE's Office of Indian Energy Policy and Program's website along with copies of today's Power Point presentations in about one week. Everyone will receive a post-webinar email with a link to the page where the slides and recording will be located.

Because we are recording the webinar today, all phones have been muted. We'll answer your questions at the end of all the presentations. However, you can submit a question at any time by clicking on the "Question" button located in the "Webinar Control Box" on your screen, and type in your question. And if you've entered your audio pin when you joined, at the end of the webinar, you can raise your hand by clicking on the "Raise your Hand" icon and I will unmute you so you can ask our panel your question directly. We'll try to keep the webinar to no more than 90 minutes, and we have several speakers today, so let's get started with our first one and that'll be opening remarks from Lizana Pierce.

Lizana is a program manager in the Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs, duty stationed in Golden, Colorado. Lizana's responsible for implementing national funding and financing programs and administering the resultant tribal energy project grants and agreements. She has more than 20 years of clean energy technology, project development, and management experience assisting tribes and developing their energy resources and building their energy visions. She holds a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering from Colorado State University, and pursued a master's in business administration through the University of Northern Colorado. Lizana, it's a pleasure to have you with us again and give opening remarks, and the virtual floor is now yours.

Lizana Pierce: Thank you, Randy, and hello everyone. I join Randy in welcoming you to the seventh webinar of the 2016 series. The special thanks go out to our presenters today for giving of their time and sharing their experiences with you. This webinar series is sponsored by two S Department of Energy organizations – the Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs and the Western Area Power Administration. The series is designed to promote tribal energy sufficiency and to foster economic development in employment on tribal lands using renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies.

The Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs directs, fosters, coordinates, and implements energy planning, education, management, and programs, that assist tribes with energy development, capacity building, energy infrastructure, energy costs, and electrification on Indian lands and homes. To provide this assistance, we work within the department, across government agencies, and with Indian tribes and organizations and industry to promote Indian energy policies and initiatives to help Indian tribes in Alaska native villages overcome the barriers. To help tribes overcome those barriers, the Office of Indian Energy has developed several programmatic initiatives and partnerships, and this particular renewable energy webinar series is an example of the type of education and capacity building efforts we have developed to assist tribes. As most of you know, Indian lands contain an estimated five percent of all U.S. renewable energy generation potential. A significant potential of renewable resources on tribal lands represents an untapped opportunity for tribal economic development and points to clean energy development as a vital pathway, potentially, for your energy sovereignty and economic growth.

Today, we will focus on project development for long-term tribal energy development, as the title states. We learn about the five phases in energy development, tools and resources that are available to help you, and case studies. We have another four webinars remaining in the series and each new webinar should build upon the previous. The foundation is a strategic energy plan and often undervalued or overlooked benefits of energy development in the strategic planning process. In each of the 2016 monthly webinars, we've been trying to include tribal case studies and information and hands on tools that you can use for your development projects.

So, please, let us know if this webinar is useful, and we'd appreciate any of your feedback. And again, I want to thank you for joining us today and for the speakers as well. And with that, I'll turn the virtual floor back over to Randy.

Randy Manion:           Thanks, Lizana. And I'm going to introduce the four remaining speakers now and give a short bio for each and then we'll get started. Our first speaker will be Liz Doris. She's the principle laboratory program manager for state, local, and tribal programs at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado with a strong background in energy efficiency and renewable energy policy research. She focuses on state, local, and tribal government's needs to find projects, identify and procure funding, and execute projects from single community to multi-state, regional, government's projects.

She holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Boston University and MS from Johns Hopkins in environmental science and policy. And then, following Liz will be Darien Cabral. His economic development career spans over 30 years in New Mexico. He was director of a small business development center in northern New Mexico for 10 years. Darien has raised millions of dollars of private equity and debt capital for many New Mexico enterprises.

In 2010, he joined Koda Holdings, an Indian-owned firm, where he was responsible for producing energy plans and economic development plans for tribes and tribal enterprises throughout the U.S. He recently served as executive director of the regional coalition of Los Alamos National Laboratory Communities – a consortium of local governments surrounding Los Alamos National Laboratory. He is now development director for northern Pueblo's Housing Authority, and will tell us more about their one-megawatt community solar array. He holds a master's degree in international management from Thunderbird. And then following Darien is Ken Haukaas. Ken is a member of the Crow tribe in Montana with ancestry in the Rosebud Sioux tribe.

                                    He is the program manager with the Rosebud Sioux tribe and responsible for administering the Homeland Security initiative and is a member of the Tribal Utilities Commission. He was responsible for conducting the initial studies for a 30-megawatt Owl Feather War Bonnet Wind Farm in 2012. He engaged Citizen Wind and Citizen Energy to develop a 190 megawatt wind farm on tribal land, and he will talk more about developing a tribal strategic energy plan with Rosebud. And then our last speaker today is Tim Willink. Tim joined GRID Alternatives after working for Namaste Solar as a field supervisor for commercial solar installations.

                                    While at Namaste, he oversaw more than four megawatts of solar PV installations, both commercial and residential. His presentation will provide examples of successful partnerships with the Bishop Paiute and Rosebud Sioux tribes. Tim has a BA in economics from Cornell University and worked for the Navaho national as a lobbyist on economic development and education issues. And Tim is a Navaho originally from the Pueblo Pintado New Mexico. And with that, Liz, let me get your slide deck up and we'll get you doing here.

Liz Doris:                   No problem. Thanks, Randy. Great. I want to thank everyone for being here today. It's a real honor to be on board with these fellow panelists who are gonna talk about real projects and their real challenges and rewards that come with them.

                                    And so my job here is to present a framework, and I'll probably do this several times throughout, but a framework is really, in my opinion, something to be deviated from when reality hits. And so I think the really interesting pieces today will be about how reality hits and how projects actually get developed. But I do think when you are just starting out, it's really important to at least have some form of process on which to base decisions. And so that is why we developed this framework. So, thank you for having me, Randy and Lizana, and I'm very excited to hear about what the next panelists have to say, so I will be quick.

                                    When you go to start a renewable energy project – and we always say this at the National Renewable Energy Lab – that there are dozens of reasons why a government or a community would want to execute a renewable energy project, and all of them are pretty valid. I don't think I have to defend renewable energy particularly for this audience, so I'll go ahead and move on and start talking about the framework. The process that we put together was based on input from people who had done a lot of project development over time – renewable energy project development – and then specifically on tribal lands. And we really wanted to set something else that helped – one of the things that we had heard while we were developing this – which was in, about 2011 – was that it was very difficult for the government, for the tribal council, to know what decisions need to be made and what point. And so we really wanted to focus on decision points, which I won't hugely emphasize today, but that was sort of the – when you see the cycle that we put together, it had notations for when a decision is likely gonna need to be made.

                                    One of the most important things about this – well, there are two, I think, really critical items in the process that even if you can't remember what the five steps are at the end of this, remembering these two things is worth what you paid for the webinar. And so, what the first one is is that the process is equally valid for developing a project as it is for deciding not to develop a project. It is always preferable to bail on something that isn't going to work as quickly as possible. And so the process really tries to help get you there. And for that reason, it's iterative.

                                    So, if you go to the next slide – this is sort of the investment. That blue line indicates the investment. And so at the beginning, when you are just at the beginning of development and exploring, it's not a huge investment, particularly with all the tools, that both the _____ of Indian Energy and NREL and the Department of Energy at large have put out there – which I will talk a little about and certainly can in the question and answer – just sort of determines what the renewable resource on your land is is a pretty low-cost thing to do at this stage in where we are in renewables. And so that is a low-cost – and if you find out you don't have really great renewables, at least in the form that you're looking for and the location, then that is a good time to select to invest funds elsewhere, because it's about to get very expensive or investment intensive. And so, as you go through the steps, you want to knock out as many unknowns as you can.

                                    And so this goes from left to right over time, and so you really don't want to make a big investment. You want to make sure you have your ducks in a row before you do that. So, it's iterative and it is always okay to not continue with the project. But, of course, we want to find projects that work, and so if you go to the next slide, we even set up this process – and it's five steps; it's fairly simple. It looks like it's one cycle, but, like I said, it's iterative – it goes around and around and around.

                                    So, for the rest of my time, I'm going to talk about – I'm gonna talk through each of the five steps and the types of things that are available to you to support you as you go through those. So, the first step is to identify project potential. So, like I just mentioned, there's sort of a data collection piece. And the data that you need are different if you're doing an efficiency project or if you're doing a renewable project. And so you really want to take a look.

                                    There's a "What data do I need" section of the DOE website that we can point you to, and I will send a resource map to Randy after this to send out to attendees. But basically, it runs through like, "What sort of data do you need?" Examples of this are, "How much are you paying for electricity now? Because that's gonna determine how much you want to be paying for electricity with your project – so, what your target price is. And it's different for different types of projects.

                                    I'll talk about that in a second when we get to project options. But so those are the types of things you want to be looking for. And then, of course, you want to – Randy, you can go to the next slide – you can go to the – you want to be looking for potential sites. And when you look for sites, there are all different kinds of items that you need to look for. You need to look for – if you're looking at a solar facility or a wind facility, you need to look for slope.

                                    If you are looking for a biomass facility, you need to look at resources, and there's a tool called the Renewable Energy Atlas which is a GIS tool and it has a layer for tribal lands, which might not be exactly right, because it's a little bit behind the time in terms of ownership. But you can go there and see what kind of resource you have for different renewable technologies within a very specific area. And so that's a really good resource for doing a really high-level, first-cut, super user friendly – if you can use Google, you can use it. And so those are the types of things you're looking for. Possibly most importantly – and the last thing I want to talk about – is the making sure that it's a palatable use of the property, and that can mean many things.

                                    It can mean if there is a cultural reason that the land that you want to use is inappropriate. You want to make sure that you get in front of that. And if you also want to – if there is an ownership issue with the land, you want to make sure you understand the ownership. If there is a technical reason why the land shouldn't be used, that is a good reason. Or, often times, what we have seen in our experience is there's a competing investment.

                                    There's a competing use for that land, right? Whether it's food growth or building a rec center. So, you have to be really holistic in how you think about things, and it is always best to do that – in our experience, it is always best to do that with the broadest number of stakeholders that you can that are gonna be affected by the project – both the positives and possibly, some of the negatives of developing anything. So, stakeholder engagement we think is really important, and we think it's important from the beginning. So, check in with your stakeholders early and often and you're more likely to have a successful project.

                                    So, then we – when we talk about project, we talk about different scales of projects, and there are – the nomenclature for this _____ use, and as the renewable energy and the clean energy has grown, it really does vary. When I – this terminology is the terminology that the Office of Indian Energy uses, and also that the National Renewable Energy uses – its lab uses. And the distinction here that we talk about is really – when you're deciding what kind of project to build – is really about whether or not you're trying to offset your own energy use, in which case, you would try to find a project that matches or is lower than the cost of your existing retail energy cost, or if you're trying to have a revenue generation plant – in which case, you are trying to have a project that costs the less over time than wholesale electricity costs. So, those are the sort of differences. So, our distinction – our primary distinction is self-use, self-sufficiency versus revenue generation.

                                    And so facilitating community are sort of self-use, and the commercial is more of a sales revenue generation. And, as you can see – it's fairly intuitive, right? Putting a couple of solar panels up on a building, while not easy, is a much more streamlined project now than building a large-scale revenue generating renewable project. And so you can kind of judge how you want to move forward based on the energy around the project. One of the things we've seen that's pretty cool is over time, people have sort of used the facility's scale project of a gateway – an opener, right – to help people get more comfortable with the idea, give them some experience within the tribe on working on renewables project – so, doing a smaller scale project first – and then increasing the scale of the projects as you move forward.

                                    So, it can help increase palatability. So, moving on from that, there are several decision points. I'm not gonna go through each of these bullets, but there are several decision points that might just help you decide whether or not you want to do a facility community scale or a commercial scale. And these are some of the reasons, if these were your priorities, you might select those. How you actually select based on funds – if you go to the Levelized Cost of Energy slide – the first one – is this – we use a mathematical formula called Levelized Cost of Energy.

                                    And if you Google it, there's a tool that the Department of Energy developed. I believe it's on NREL's website – it might not be on Energy.gov – that helps measure – helps you compare the cost of a project – the lifetime cost of a project – to your current electricity costs, whether they be wholesale or retail. The wholesale cost is typically lower than the retail cost for a variety of reasons.  And if you're able to do that – the reason you do that, is because capital expenses and developing renewable energy projects are very expensive upfront, but because of the often times reduced in the case of biomass or free fuel cost for a well-planned project – you know, solar, sun; it doesn't cost anything – and yeah, I'm sure someone will figure it out. If you calculate against that, often times, that makes the renewable energy project more economically feasible than they have been in the past.

                                    And then, a lot of times, people also try to place a value within their levelized cost of energy on what historically has been referred to as social values – you know, job creation values – and those can be incorporated into what we lovingly call LCOE in the renewable energy industry. So, having this kind of economic decision is – having this economic information is really important. And if you go to the next, I have one more levelized cost of energy slide. If you have that number, then you can compare across projects. So, you could compare, say, a community wind project to a solar project to a potential _____ if you had it in mind, and really start to understand and provide for people updates on _____ which to make decisions.

                                    So, LCOE is relatively simple, and it really does – there are plenty of calculators online, and it really does help inform decisions. So, we would highly recommend using that metric as at least a simple first cut at your project economic. So, moving on to the second step is sort of evaluating your options. So, once you have your options laid out and you know that the land is palatable for use and it might be good for renewables, you want to look at efficiency – excuse me – I come from an efficiency background, so to me, efficiency is the first renewable. So, when I say "renewables" I mean both.

                                    But then you look at sort of your project options, and so now you're looking – if you go to the next slide, you're looking at the sort of role, what you're going to do, what the trend's going to do within the context of the project. Are you gonna own it? Are you gonna partner with someone? Are you gonna lease the land? Those types of things.

                                    You also want to start to look at the more regulatory aspects of the project, so any internal sort of tribe or external permitting that might need to happen – those can often – those permits can often be the lengthiest part of project development, particularly as your project increases in scale. So, it's really important to look at that – a more detailed look at the economics. Any potential interconnection with the utility and the cost associated with that – should that be an issue? And any potential policies that the state might offer – incentives that the state might offer that you could get access to either at the government or through partnership, you start to look at those and really start to refine your economics and your options. You can also start to look at technologies at this point.

                                    There's a tool that I'll talk more about in step three or as more applicable to step three, but it's called the Systems Advisor Tool, and that can help you really – it's somewhat user friendly, and there's a lot of training online. You can get assistance if you need it through the Office of Indian Energy, but it really helps you better understand the structure – the potential structures for a project and start to refine your estimates of how much it's gonna cost and what kind of project you want to do. So, the next two slides talk about potential different roles. And I'm not gonna walk through these in detail, but I think it's really important – you will have these slides in there, also – specific webinar topics. If you're loving listening to my voice, there's specific webinars on this on the Office of Indian Energy website where you can listen to like, a whole hour about net metering if you're so interested or about different roles, which is not my voice, but someone else.

                                    But you can play all these different roles and of course, the different roles – if you go to the next slide – have different aspects for different types of projects, and also different opportunities. So, you want to consider, within your decision on the role, how much internal funding capacity that you have, how much interest there is in partnering with a third party – a private third party – and sort of experience with that, and how many jobs you would like to develop and how much energy you need internally versus what you sell either to the utility or to another buyer, which in our field, we call the "off seeker" because they're off seeking energy from your project. So, there are a lot of different roles to play, and all of them have different benefits, and so, when you're thinking about how you want to manage your tribe's risk, it's important to think about what role you want to take. This has been – in my experience, at least, with projects – a big driver for councils, for the government decision makers, because it really is about risk to the tribe, and that's something that, of course, the government is especially concerned about. So, moving on from roles...

                                    I have a slide in here about tax equity partnerships, and there's currently a rather large tax break for clean energy projects at the federal level and also several at the state level. Make sure you look into that. And there's an access issue because of tribe's tax exemption status, so you can access that if you partner, of course, and it's a 30 to 50 percent savings often – although, the window's closing because of their policies that get readjusted every few years and, as we all know, we're in a transition year. But it could be a significant savings on the cost of the project, and so if capital cost constraints are an issue, considering partnering with a third party that can take advantage of those tax credits is probably something you at least want to look at, although it does some have some risks for the tribe that you might want to consider. So, moving on from that, the third process is refinement – and, if you haven't noticed, it's getting to be more and more an investment of time and funds as you go.

                                    And so, in the refinement stage, you're really just taking what you did in the previous slides and really trying to make sure things are finalized, because, at the end of this stage – this is right before you start building the thing. And so you want to have a really solid plan in place. You want to have a – you can go to the next slide, Randy; it's got a little outline of what's expected or what you might want to consider in this. You really want to have a great relationship with your utility. As I talked about earlier and should be mentioning throughout, we want you to really make sure you're checked in with your stakeholders.

                                    We've heard a few stories – we've seen projects – not just tribal projects; state, local projects, all of them, private projects – completely stymied because a stakeholder group was not involved or just doesn't like it or doesn't understand it or has different plans for the land. And so integrating with stakeholders at every stage as you refine and refine the project is really important. Also – and other stakeholders are off takers, so as your project changes and evolves, making sure that the person buying or the entity buying the electricity is still on board is a good idea because that will radically change your economics if you don't have an off-taker – a buyer – for your project. So, you're gonna need here some really detailed economic models. You need to either have someone on staff who could execute that or you need to outsource it to a project developer, depending on the role that you have taken on as a tribe.

                                    You need to have commitments into the organizational structure – who's gonna own it? Who's gonna buy the power? You also are going to, at the end of this sort of stage, have all your vendors selected, so you have to run an RFP process – a Request For Proposals process – with all of your project information in it, and that's a fairly – can be, depending on the scale of the project – a complex effort. If you're a member of a tribe that has a lot of experience in development, it probably could fall right into an economic development function. But if you are not, it might be something worth thinking about outsourcing.

                                    And then, if you have a really large project – of course, I shouldn't have said this because of Randy – but if you have a really large project, the other thing you consider is not just the distribution network you're on, but the transmission. And that is not something you wait until step three to do. You start talking about that the minute you start talking about a project – in the sitic piece. So, on the next step, you get going on it. You actually get to build the thing.

                                    And I would say that the first – you know, I painted my daughter's bedroom pink this weekend, and I was thinking about this while I was doing it, and I was thinking, "Gosh, you know, building renewables is just like painting this bedroom in that the prep work takes 18 times as long as the actual building." And if you do it right, then that's very true. 18's not an actual quantified number, but you know, it's a lot. If you're getting slowed down in the building – like, for your next project, seriously consider how well the prep work went. So, it's not something you want to – building's expensive; it's not something you want to get into without solid plans.

                                    And so we hope, at this point, that you're about 75 percent through the timeline of your project, and then you start building, because you have done such a great job planning and iterating on the potential project. At the end of it, you turn the thing on. You interconnect it with the grid, utility comes out and looks at it – if you're going in that direction – and it gets commissioned and then it is completed. And I'm sure everyone on the line who has ever completed a renewable energy project is saying, "Easy for you to say, Liz." So, the next step is operations and maintenance, and this is also something that you have been considering since the beginning.

                                    You know, a lot of economic development types of projects have to do with how many jobs are going to be created by the project, and that can sometimes drive the structure of a project. Very important thing – particularly over the last six to eight years. And so you want to have those jobs – you want to be prepping for those jobs – as you develop the project, and then you want to be able to have trained staff for those or in agreement with someone else and outsourced it to an outsource project party to do that. Of course, you want to have your warranties. You want to check your warranties every year or so and monitor the system, make sure it's performing, and then repairing as needed and replacing as needed – you know, like a solar facility when they need a replaced inverter, even though it doesn't need too much O&M – operations and maintenance.

                                    And then, you want to make sure that your financial performance is working – not just for you, but particularly if you have a partner, they'll be keenly interested in the financial performance of the project. So, after that, you think you're done, but it like, never ends – sort of like, painting your daughter's room. So, you think you're done, but really, what happens here – and this has to do with stakeholders as well – is checking back in with that long-term energy plan that Lizana was talking about earlier. So, did your project meet the needs of your long-term energy plan? What did you learn from that?

                                    How do the stakeholders now feel about renewable energy? Is there interest in moving on with your plan, et cetera? So, updating and revising that plan can really help you keep stakeholders engaged and willing to move forward. So, it's an important piece. And, of course, we always like to hear about the next project you're gonna do.

                                    So, this is just a summary of the steps. The next slide talks about the resources that are on demand. There is more detail – basically, there's more detail on every single slide I just presented. So, if you are really into it – and I suggest you do – please feel free to check out both of WAPA webinar series, which has some really great key studies and aspects of that and then also, the sort of more detailed lecturing types of things that are available on our website and on the Office of Indian Energy website. So, with that, I will pass it back to Randy because I'm way over time and I really appreciate the opportunity and look forward to questions.

Randy Manion:           Thank you, Liz. Excellent presentation. So, Darien, just give me a moment to get your slide deck pulled up.

Darien Cabral:           Okay.

Randy Manion:           And you are good to go.

Darien Cabral:           Great. So, that was the solar-powered fire station that NPHA just helped to build in Picuris Pueblo. Not even sure how that slide came up, but I'm kind of glad it did. There it is – right there. And it's actually – it was built to be the first net zero building in the state of New Mexico, so that – it's an exciting project.

                                    So, I work with the Northern Pueblo Housing authority and we're a TDHE which is a Tribally Designated Housing Entity. We represent three Pueblo tribes in Northern New Mexico. And I have an economic development background in New Mexico, as Randy stated in my bio, and because I work in Northern New Mexico, there's a number of tribes in our area. I started working with tribes and developed some background in Indian economic development, and through a long process, ended up here at Northern Pueblo Housing. And before that, I actually worked with a small, Indian-owned organization called Koda Holdings, and the principal there is a gentleman named Roger Frawa from Hemes Pueblo, and he has an amazing background in Indian energy.

                                    He worked for 18 years with the Council of Energy Resource tribes and really laid a lot of groundwork for legislation, regulation, and dynamics that is allowing Indian energy to happen. And, if you look at – the way that I can structure this presentation is to give you some background – a little bit of background on Indian energy in general and then talk about a one megawatt project that we're doing at the smallest Pueblo in New Mexico – Picuris – that's fairly far along. And we're working very closely with DOE and Lizana on this. We have bi-weekly calls with NREL to update them and get input and oversight, working really closely with BIA and we have private sector investors involved, and it just happens that Tim Willink is also working with our organization and putting in some good alternatives – solar rooftop demonstration projects – at the tribe that we work with. So, we're pretty much linked in with all the different organizations and everyone here on this call.

                                    So, I just want to mention that in order for a project to come together – and I think Liz kind of stated it fairly well – there's so much that has to happen. It's quite remarkable. Some of the major things – you have to have a power purchase agreement – at least for a project of any size. You have to have it interconnected with the utility. You have to have the right location. You have to have the political will and commitment from the tribe.

                                    The pricing has to be right. Funding is a huge issue. Permitting is a huge issue. And as my former partner or my partner used to say, "There's 100 ways that an Indian energy project can go wrong and maybe 2 or 3 ways it can go right." The challenge is to find those two or three ways.

                                    We seem to be finding it with Picuris Pueblo, and I'm really glad that I'm going to be able to share that with you today. So, Liz mentioned the tremendous resource that energy holds for Indian country, and really, if you look at it, Indian energy is probably the biggest economic driver in Indian country that hasn't happened. Potentially, it's bigger than gaming. But to get to the place where you can realize those gains and realize the potential is quite a task. And there's a number of oil and gas tribes, and there's certainly some major successful oil and gas tribes.

                                    And especially now with the current market on gas, it's more vital that tribes start looking at renewables and transitioning over to renewable economy – especially now with global warming and environmental consequences. Tribes can play a huge role in the transition to renewable energy resources in this country, and it's really incumbent upon tribes to do it. And tribes have a number of advantages in order to do that. You can check through the next slide, Randy. Can you go to the next slide?

                                    Okay. Great. So, some of the advantages that tribes have – and this is just a general _____ [Inaudible due to noise from someone's microphone] – energy development, certainly Right of Way. Oh, can we go back? There we go.

                                    Okay. Right of Way is huge, and almost every tribe has utility Right of Ways that cross their land, whether it's for gas lines or telephone lines or power lines. And normally, Right of Way contracts are for 20-25 years. And when a Right of Way contract comes up, it used to be – the old way used to be that a tribe would work with BIA attorneys and they'd negotiate a contract based upon what they called the fair market value of land. And most land they were talking about is marginally priced rural land, so those contracts weren't worth a lot. And then, when CERT came along, they kind of changed that paradigm and started looking at the opportunity cost and valuing Right of Way contracts based upon opportunity cost.

                                    And opportunity cost would be the cost of the utility to bypass the reservation. So, you go from tens of thousands really to millions of dollars. And then, in addition to negotiating for monetary gain, some tribes – some of the more progressive tribes – negotiate a power purchase agreement option, an interconnect option with that utility, and once you have the PPA and interconnect agreement in place, you have the basis – you have what serves as the basis of a renewable project. So, right away, leverage can be used by tribes not only for monetary gain, but also to promote renewable energy projects. Tribes are the only entity in the country – that I'm aware of – that can act as both a government and a business.

                                    That opens up tremendous financing potential. Tribes can sell bonds. They can get grant financing. They can get private financing. So, that's a huge advantage that tribes have.

                                    Then, tribes can also form their own utilities, and about a half a dozen tribes have done that. And that's a huge advantage in developing projects. It's not easy to do, but it is doable and there's tribes that have done it, so that information's available. Finally, tribes are sovereign entities. Tribal sovereignty has gone through all kinds of meanings, iterations, but tribes are extensively sovereign entities, which means tribes are self-regulating entities.

                                    They usually have to comply to federal regulation, but they're generally equal to a state as far as regulation's concerned. And tribes can use regulatory power to put themselves in a great position for energy development. Those are some of the advantages that tribes have. There's certainly more. As far as barriers – I think the big barrier is capacity and experience.

                                    Could we go back? There we go. Okay. Capacity and experience. It's not easy to put these things together.

                                    You have to know a lot. There's a lot of resources out there, and I think the main thing is to really stick with it if you have a viable project and to be committed. And that not only is for the person who's kind of leading the project, but it's also for the stakeholder and the tribe. They have to have that commitment and that drive to make sure that they see it through. Another barrier is trying to figure out the interface between commercial investment requirements, tribal regulatory law, and the federal regulations.

                                    A lot of times, those things are in some type of a conflict, so we're working through that stuff now with Picuris. It can be challenging, but if we can get it done and do it, we've created a model for Indian countries. That's part of our motivation. Another big issue is that I think people tend to overlook is pricing. People kind of think, "Well, you know, if we make everything solar, we're gonna solve all our energy problems and solve our environmental problems and we can produce just millions of megawatts of energy and the whole country can be solarized."

                                    However, pricing is a huge issue. And in New Mexico, for example, the price of energy – retail price of energy – is between $0.09 and $0.14. That's cheap. So, how are you gonna justify a solar investment if it's actually costing you more than getting energy from the grid? And we think of solar – sunlight's free; it shines all the time.

                                    But the cost of the solar energy project is really the cost of the asset that's spread over the life of the project, and that's kind of the way you evaluate the pricing. And the pricing has to work. Generally, in New Mexico, there's net metering, which is not terribly lucrative. There's also tax abatement, which tribes can't take advantage of. So, pricing is a big issue.

                                    Fortunately, there are ways that tribes can realize these advantages in pricing. In Liz's presentation, she brought up tax equity financing. That's exactly what we're doing. It's a way to get an Indian energy off the ground and make it happen. And I'm gonna be explaining a little bit about that later in the presentation. Then, there's regulations, and that's huge.

                                    Permitting is just a giant maze. We're doing a lease on our project and getting BIA permitting for that. It's time-consuming. It's fairly technical. There's all kinds of assessments and NEPA regulations and so forth that have to be met.

                                    So, that's a huge one. And then, these projects are generally complex. Here, we're doing just a 1-megawatt project, but really, what we have to go through is pretty much the same as if we were doing a 100-megawatt project. It's the same process and it's complicated. Not only regulatory complications and permitting complications and financing issues, but just to make sure all the numbers work out and you're dealing with the right people.

                                    I think that's a huge one. There's a lot of people out there that claim to know a lot and don't. And it's easy to get a hold of the wrong people and to spin your wheels – especially in financing. People will promise you money and it won't come through and waste your time. So, to work with the right people is absolutely a prerequisite, and it's sometimes hard to find those people.

                                    Then we mentioned funding, tax incentives, tax equity financing and so forth – power purchase agreements and interconnect agreements. So, those are some of the barriers and advantages and again, this is not an inclusive list – there's more – but some of those things that we're running into. Next, Randy. So, this kind of gives you an image of where we're working. The first slide up on top on the left is called the High Road to Taos. It's between Santa Fe and Taos, along the mountains.

                                    This is the low road, this is the high road, and Picuris Pueblo is on the high road. So, it's a very scenic area. Bottom right is the valley that Picuris Pueblo is in. There's still snow on the ground on that picture. It's about 8,000 feet high.

                                    And Picuris Pueblo is actually the smallest and most economically challenged and isolated Pueblos of all the 19 New Mexico Pueblos. On the right hand side are the basic asset elements that go into our project. There's the PV modules. There's the combiner box. There's inverters.

                                    There's the transformer meters, and then it feeds into the grid. And then, on the bottom left is the actual site of our project. And the site is one of the best things we have going for us. It's right off of Highway 75, which is that high road that you're seeing in the upper left. And you can see there's a little road that goes into this flat area.

                                    It's actually a very scenic area. If you're on the ground, there's gorgeous scenery on both sides. It's away from the community, away from the view shed, and the big thing –

Randy Manion:           Hello?

Darien Cabral:           Hello? Are you hearing me? Hello?

Liz Doris:                   This is Liz. I can hear you.

Darien Cabral:           Okay. So, the big thing about this site is that three faced power lines go right to it, and those power lines are owned by Kit Carson Electric – the utility – and that makes the whole site vital. Next slide. Could we go to the next slide? Okay.

                                    So, Picuris Pueblo – when I came on board with Northern Pueblo Housing – had actually gone through the process of developing a community energy plan. And at that time, they worked with NREL and with Sandia National Laboratory, and it was almost unanimous that they wanted to be 100 percent renewable. And they were thinking solar. At that time, they didn't know if it was even feasible or even possible to do that. But the will was there.

                                    And the other big thing that we have with Picuris Pueblo – we have a progressive government, a great governor, and, because of the energy plan, we have full community support to go solar. So, when I came on board NPHA, I realized pretty quickly that Picuris Pueblo was in the service territory of Kit Carson Electric, and Carson Electric is an electric co-op under the tristate. They were under tristate. They're gonna be the first co-op to actually get away from tristate, which is good news, because tristate does not really support – or hasn't supported in the past – renewable development. And Kit Carson is one of the most progressive co-ops in the county as far as supporting solar and renewable development.

                                    They have about six megawatts that they developed in their service area, and because of that, they're able to – they were able to work with us and we knew that if we talked to Kit Carson, we'd likely to be able to negotiate a power purchase agreement and they'd probably support our project. And that has turned out to be the case. Next slide. So, we sat down with Kit Carson. They signed a lucrative PPA with Picuris Pueblo.

                                    Kit Carson has experience with solar. The power lines that they own go to the site so they are willing to do an interconnecting with us. There's good insulation at that site. We worked with NREL to figure out how much production we could get out of that site. I mentioned there's good access to the site.

                                    The tribe is fully committed, so the next thing we had to do is figure out funding. We did apply for a DOE grant and we were fortunate enough to get that and that's one reason we're working very closely with DOE. We also applied for a BIA grant to fund some minimal preconstruction costs, and we were lucky enough to get that as well. We also got an Enterprise Community Partners Grant to fund some of my salary while I work on this particular project. And the missing piece, however, was finding an investor.

                                    We have matched money for the DOE grant and an investor would kind of take us over the top. And we started looking for private investment and we would get the same answer from almost every company we talked to. First of all, a one-megawatt project was too small for them. They did not work with tribes, and they did not work with projects that had grant funding attached. They wanted to do all the funding themselves.

                                    And we were hearing that from company after company. And then finally, a company called US – it was a company that started out in Florida and has offices in Denver – called us because they were working with Kit Carson. And actually, they are gonna be supplying the energy to Kit Carson Electric now that Kit Carson is pulling out of the tristate network. And they called us and found out about our project. We explained the project to them, and they said this is exactly what they were looking for.

                                    They're a small company. They've done solar development, renewable development. They have an energy trading desk. They can sell their energy. And they wanted to play in the space where the so-called "Big guys" didn't play, which meant tribes, which meant smaller projects.

                                    And so we worked with this company for a good six months and really went a long ways to getting the financial strategies worked out with them. And then, I would tell my director here at NPHA, Scott Veckman, who's been a great help with this project, I would tell him, "Scott, this thing is going too good. I can't believe how good it's going. The shoe has to drop somehow." And sure enough, it did.

                                    We got a call from the energy company and they said, "We just found out that we could only use the investment tax credit against passive income, and we don't have any passive income, so we're pulling out." So, that was kind of a hard one to swallow. We were all of a sudden left high and dry as far as private investment was concerned. But by this time, we had our DOE grant in place. We had assigned lucrative PPA.

                                    We had an incredible site, and we were quite far along in planning for this project. And we put the word out on the street and we were getting inundated – literally inundated – by calls from potential investors. We pretty much soon had about five very serious investment development companies that wanted to fund this project, so we were in an enviable position of having to choose, and that meant choosing the right one. We had to get on the horse that would finish the race. And we selected a company and we've been working with them for the last – about three or four months, and so far, they're incredible.

                                    We found a company that really understands tax equity investing, and unlike the first company that was gonna be the developer/investor, this company's packaging – a tax equity investment – to basically sell on the market at market rates, which is a lot less than our original investor was requiring. So, we're looking at – and we're structuring this in a very innovative fashion, so we're looking at getting more money for all of the people involved – the private investors and also the tribe, which is the main thing we're concerned about. Next. Randy? So, this is basically the gist of the project.

                                    It's a one-megawatt single axis tracking. We did some analysis to figure out that a single axis touch would pay for itself in about a year, which means we get additional production. It's gonna be over 3,000 panels on 6 to 7 acres. It's really 1.2 megawatts if you look at the DC out. Total project gross revenue at the place that we're in – and New Mexico is really the second sunniest state in the country – over a 25-year period will generate about $7 million.

                                    Estimated construction cost – we're dealing with PC engineering, procurement, construction – or a contractor company – and they've estimated construction costs to be about $2.2 million. Then there's gonna be transaction costs, legal costs – just development costs and so forth. So, the full project is gonna be about $2.75 million. And the project is gonna be tied to the grid, which means that Kit Carson Electric will be purchasing the power and it'll just go into their system over a 25-year period. And we have a great rate that they gave us.

                                    At the same time, we're gonna kind of say that this is gonna be the first 100 percent solar-powered tribe in the country, and the reason we'll be able to say that is because Picuris Pueblo – the council has passed a resolution that states that they will use a portion of the revenue from this project to cover all of the power expenses for the tribe and also all the tribal members for the life of the project. And they'll have a good deal of revenue left over. The $7 million's a gross figure. There's gonna be a lot of cost associated with this, and plus – we're using a tax equity structure which I'll get to in a minute. And so the tribe will actually probably pay taxes on this project.

                                    So, when all's said and done, we expect the tribe to probably derive a return of about $3 million to $4 million. And the cool thing about this project is that the tribe is investing nothing. I mean, Picuris is a really poor tribe. There's high unemployment, and the tax equity is gonna really fund the bulk of this project – the construction and provider return along with the DOE grant. So, this is a terrific deal for the tribe.

                                    They're gonna be 100 percent solar powered, and they're gonna derive substantial revenue from this and with virtually no investment. But what they are investing is land and tremendous support and commitment. And that's what really makes it happen. It turns out that Picuris Pueblo does own – they're part owner of Hotel Santa Fe, which is a beautiful hotel in Santa Fe, which is one of the first resorts in the country that's a net zero resort because they buy RECs – Renewable Energy Credits – on the market, so it may be possible for Kit Carson to actually sell RECs to Hotel Santa Fe. That'll just complete the whole loop.

                                    We did show you the net zero fire station. We also have a solar-powered water pump. So, they're very serious about renewable energy. And even though it's such a small tribe, I think they're gonna be a great model for other tribes to look at. Next.

                                    So, this kind of goes over the financing. We have a PPA for 25 years. We've got an attractive price on that PPA from Kit Carson. I already told you what the construction cost is gonna be – it's about4 $1.80 a watt. And then, there's O&M and G&A expenses and _____ replacements, insurance costs. And so the funding – again, I'm just gonna go over what I already said – DOE and a tax equity investor.

                                    And I want to kind of – the tax equity investor will be involved in this project for six years. At the end of six years, they'll be a buyout for a small amount of money, and the tribe will own 100 percent of the project for the remainder of the project life, which is 25 years. And the primary return towards the investor comes from the investment tax credit. When we were doing this – when we started this project, the investment tax credit was slated to expire at the end of 2016, so we thought we were under the gun for that. And then Senator Heinrich from New Mexico – who's a major champion of renewable energy in the green congress – actually came up to Picuris, visited the project, learned about it, and was busy working on a deal, along with his colleagues, to kind of trade oil and gas exports – which was important to the Republicans – for extending renewable energy credits.

                                    And that went through, so we're no longer on that deadline. I don't think we could have made it anyway, so that was a major boon for us. So, the investor – we'll go over this in just a minute here – will be getting a return from the investment tax credit, which is 30 percent of the full value of the project – and I'll talk about that in a second – along with depreciation over a 6-year period upon which the project will flip 100 percent to the tribe. We'll also be getting some fees from the PPA, and then we're anticipating a before tax return to the tribe close to $5 million when this thing's all said and done. Next.

                                    So, this is kind of the structure that we're trying to set up. It's a little bit complicated, but there's gonna be a taxable entity that the tribe will be part owner of and the tribe will declare itself to be taxable, which normally doesn't happen. But in this case, it needs to in order to be able to take full advantage of the ITC. And one of the things that we're doing here that hasn't been done – except I just found out from Lizana, it may have been done in Wisconsin with the Pottawatomie tribe – is that we'll be taking the – or our investors will be taking the ITC 30 percent tax credit based upon the full value of – market value – of the project, even though DOE will be paying close to half of the project cost. That makes the whole thing work wonderfully well, and it allows the investor to basically fund the project or the major portion of the project through tax equity and depreciation while the tribe realizes almost the entire benefit of the PPA.

                                    So, the structure's fantastic for Indian country, and we hope that we can get this to happen and that it can be replicated. So, there's a couple of different special purpose entities that will be created here in order just to make the whole thing fly, and then we may build some debt into it, we're not sure. We may have to have a construction loan. We may be able to get around that depending upon the timing of how the money comes in. But we may build in some debt simply to increase the upfront value of this project.

                                    Next, Randy. Can you get the next one up? Okay. So, here's a list of some of the major – this is really a two-page list of some of the major things that we need to go through to make a project happen like this. And I'll just go through this very, very quickly and then we're done.

                                    And Liz already mentioned a lot of this stuff but stakeholder commitment is absolutely essential. We got it from Picuris. We got the PPA from Kit Carson. We got a great site. We got the right attorneys, good accountants, that understand tax equity investing.

                                    We've researched incentives and the right kind of structure. We got a start grant from DOE that gives us access to technical assistance from NREL. We got our budget developed. We applied for a BIA grant and got that. We identified investors.

                                    We secured resolutions from the tribe. We got a DOE grant. We got an environmental firm to do the environmental assessment on the site. We secured our private sector investments/investors, and we got our interconnect agreement from Kit Carson. Next one.

                                    Is that it? So, the last slide didn't come up for some reason, but anyway – there it is. Okay. So, there it is. Okay.

                                    So, we're getting – we're in the middle of getting our BIA permitting done. We're organizing our special purpose entities. We're completing our BIA lease. We got our investors on board. We're finalizing the interconnect with KCEC – Kit Carson – and we're getting all our legal stuff going.

                                    And then starts the pre-construction phase and we hope to be – we originally were hoping to be under construction in August. Now, it looks like if everything keeps going the way it's been going, it'll be under construction in October. So, that's pretty much the – what we have going. I hope that you might have some questions and we can – that this will be a model for Indian country and other people to work with. Thanks.

Randy Manion:           Thank you, Darien. Excellent. Ken, just give me a moment to get your deck pulled up. And can you give me an audio test here to make sure –

Ken Haukaas:             Can you hear me?

Randy Manion:           Oh, perfect.

Ken Haukaas:             Can you hear me?

Randy Manion:           Okay.

Ken Haukaas:             All right.

Randy Manion:           Yep. We can hear you. Let me get your deck _____. Okay. You're good to go.

Ken Haukaas:             All right. This first slide here is from the book Black Elk Speaks and I've read it two or three times over the years, and I didn't quite know what he was talking about until I recently read this particular page and this notation. I will leave it up to you, whatever, to read this and make your own interpretation, but once you get the copy of the Power Point, you will have it in notes, some of the things that he speaks of. Next slide. Okay.

                                    Strategies Energy Planning for Tribal Governments. Why? Take charge of our tribes' energy future? Become energy independent? Save money?

                                    Build businesses? Build a local economy? Self-reliance? These are all very, very, very good reasons and is probably the main reason why the tribe is attempting to build their own company utility to kind of take the pressure off our people when it comes to dealing with the local utility. It seems the local utility just don't care, and any given month in the winter time, we'll be shut off after the 60 days of not paying your bill.

                                    In March of this year, over 430 residential consumers were shut off. The tribe scrambled to help the elderly and the handicapped to get theirs turned on, but the other ones were left out in the cold until they can do what they can. Next slide. Here's my reasoning behind what we should do as tribes. Global warming and climate change.

                                    Climate change is the most profound challenge of our time. Its effects are long-lasting and so significant, they even endanger human kind. Human activity is now spilling 10 billion tons of carbon in the atmosphere annually. This release of carbon outpaces carbon release during the most extreme global warming event of the past 65 billion years by at least an order of a magnitude. That event was the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum or the PETM.

                                    I will allow you guys to look that up yourself and try to understand the implications of what we're doing right now as a global community, but I think tribes should come together and show the path of where we should be going with renewables. Next slide. What can we do? I guess most of us – 95 percent of us – are just doing what this person is doing right here – sticking their head in the sand and just continuing on. But the facts are the facts.

                                    2015 is now the warmest year in instrumental record and February 2016 made the record of being the warmest February on record. Earth's average temperature has already risen by 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit since the beginning of the 20th century, and is expected to rise another 5.5 degrees Fahrenheit to 9 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100 according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, depending on greenhouse gas emissions. We're reaching the average of two degrees Fahrenheit right about now. Next page. EPA Carbon Plan will cause energy prices to soar, but I think it was very important for the federal government to impose the EPA Carbon Plan.

                                    I know a lot of people are against it and don't see climate change as happening, but it's meant to curb carbon emissions. The study found the typical household's annual electricity and natural gas bills were increased by $680.00 annual or 35 percent from 2012 compared to 2020, escalating each year thereafter as EPA regulations grow more stringent. I think this plan is needed, and we should encourage it to continue on, even though many people are – within the last – I think the last 6 months – 3,000 megawatts of coal fire plants have been shut down, and this caused a lot of jobs to go away. I think in 1 month alone – I think around Gillette, Wyoming area – they lost between 400 and 500 jobs in the coal industry. But we should be switching to renewables globally anyway.

                                    Next slide. This is relevant to our reservation. The Cherry-Todd Electric utility here on the Rosebud supplies most of our electricity. There's another utility to the west – that's Lake Creek Electricity. But these are the changes in wholesale rates on the left side from 2003 to 2014.

                                    Basically, the changes have risen to 100 percent change. It's doubled in the past 12 years. Consumer rate increases have – they've been trying to keep it down, but if you're paying $100.00 in 2003, you're paying $150.00 in 2015. And this has kind of raised a lot of concern for the tribe, 'cause people are getting their electricity bills shut off and what not – I mean, their electricity shut off completely. Next slide.

                                    The LIHEAP Program – I'm sure everyone is familiar with the LIHEAP Program, the federal government industry. But on the tribal level, we also put in money, too, to support this. In 2003, it was costing our tribe to LIHEAP $665,000.00 a year. In 2006, it went up to $954,000.00 and it continued to rise to where it's almost $3 million a year. The Federal LIHEAP assistance annually is around $963,000.00 for this tribe.

                                    It comes through the state, so the state basically decides what we get and what we don't get. On the federal level, these monies are decreasing. The remaining monies that you see here – the extra $2 million – is supplied by the tribe and we are – it's becoming quite a burden to the tribe itself right now. We're trying to find ways to deal with this, and I think one of the ways to deal with it is to develop our own company RESCo and to develop a strategic energy plan. Next slide.

                                    The Rosebud Sioux Tribe – they asked me in 2014 to develop a draft strategic energy plan. And so over that time frame, I developed this. It's an over-arching living document that will change in time. People will – some things will happen that we'll have to change, but we will try to align and focus the tribal energy effort, provide a foundation for planning and executing key tribal energy initiatives that will lead to the development and implementation of reservation-wide energy efficiency, cost effectiveness, and self-sustainment for the long term. To document and understand our tribal energy footprint from residential government and business level to the agricultural level.

                                    We have to see how much energy we're using, see where we can save, and see where we need to put in renewable energy devices to try to control this electricity from the grid. Next slide. Tribal government is to enact building and energy codes, laws, and resolutions implementing and supporting this plan to place in effect energy conservation measures; to lower the cost and the waste of our declining federal and tribal resources; and to incorporate renewable energy devices at the residential level or at community scale to produce energy locally for our needs; to create self-sustainable businesses that will lessen the burden and the cost of off reservation generated electricity and fuels. Next slide. They have the draft.

                                    The tribe has the draft and a consult has read it and, at this point, we're looking at actually designing the charter for RESCo. We'll be submitting that probably within a month. And RESCo – it will be the tribal energy utility itself. RESCo is to initiate collection of energy footprint, and within that, I think the target group would be LIHEAP recipients in the beginning. All LIHEAP recipients will permit this group to collect electrical use data from local utilities for the last two years.

                                    All tribal departments within the tribe will permit this group to collect electrical and fuel use data and surveys to be sent out to request energy data use from all tribal members not using the LIHEAP services. This is a way to understand exactly what our energy footprint is and what we have to do to build out and meet that energy need. Next. Next slide. Initial actions and recommendations – target high energy use repeating LIHEAP recipients to walk through energy inspections or full blown energy audits.

                                    Although this is costly – energy audits are running between $200.00-$250.00 a house – I think it's pretty simple to walk through a house and see where the leakage is, where there could be, and maybe address those issues there to try and lower their energy bill. All LIHEAP recipients will be required to attend to recommendations of energy inspections in 90 days or be subject to loss of tribally funded LIHEAP services. Realizing that the LIHEAP recipients are probably low income, there are programs out there through USD to assist these recipients with monies – I think around $3,000.00 a year or 1 time to help them fix up their houses. I think this is one of the things that we should do as a tribe to assist these people to lower their energy costs. If rental units – such as if they are local tribally designated housing entity – they will become responsible for the repairs and it will be mandated by the tribe upon these tribal designated housing entities to fix them.

                                    There's apartments within the tribe here that are on tribal lands – Sunrise Apartments – that belong to a separate entity, but I think that we can mandate laws within the tribe to insist that they fix up their units and make them energy efficient. Next slide, please. Primary step to lessen energy use and cost – tighten up your house. Make it a little bit more tight. I mean, everybody has windows broken and they leak and doors leak.

                                    The effort to try and tighten up or button up the house should be had by everybody. I think this is not being attended to as it should be, but we – that's the number one step. Next slide, please. And to develop your strategic energy plan, you have to understand your local renewable resources and how to use them effectively and efficiently. Since 2003, I've been working with the tribe to develop commercial grade wind development.

                                    And we have plenty of wind here on the Northern Plains. I mean, we don't lack for win. But you've got to measure it. You can use your screen door from being all messed up. A – that's bunk.

                                    That's the wind that did that. It's got to be Met towers put up and to understand where the – even using NREL maps gives you an idea of what kind of wind you have. We have solar here. We have about – according to what I've looked up on the Idaho renewable lab – there's this software called Prospectus Prospector, and it tells you how much water flow is going through your reservation – basically, if you can add it up and figure it all out. And the way I look at it, we got about three megawatts of power going through our reservation constantly.

                                    And then, if you see in the map of the United States – Southern Methodist University map there – we have geothermal resource under our reservation. And, in fact, back around mid-'90s when we built our Esta VA admin building, when I worked there, I insisted that they used ground source closed loop heating system to heat the building. And it runs about 9,000 square foot building and their electric – it's all electric; heating and cooling – and their electric bill is probably running about $3,200.00 a year. So, it's relatively cheap. They have 12 wells on the outside and 3 heat pump systems for that building.

                                    And then there's biomass to biofuel. We have almost a million of acres of land up here for the reservation and there's been some recent interest through our economic development REDCo – Rosebud Economic Development Corporation – to try and understand what the potential is and what the cost would be to develop this resource. It's – I think it's a good approach, and we should look at all our resources.  Right now, we've built – on the geothermal side of it, we've drilled two wells by the White River Healthcare Facility on the northern end of the reservation, and it's enough to heat and cool that particular building. I think it's 11,000 square feet.

                                    And we started that with that grant in 2006 through the BIADMD program, and it's been this long in the taking of it. As time went on, I got a lot of help from Roger Knight from BIA there in Lakewood and he helped me get those wells drilled. So, they go down about 3,500 feet and capture the water. It's a direct heating application. Good deal.

                                    Anyway, next slide. On this particular one, you can see that southern – South Central South Dakota is – it gets the same solar resource as Florida. And I thought, "Well, we should try this." And we did. We did with – we've had two community buildings with a solar resource put on top, a photovoltaic cell – about a 6KB – and in the individual private home, we got that assisted with solar.

                                    And it works well and hardly ever – nothing happens to it. It's been about seven to eight years now; all we've had to do is change out a fuse that went out – a $14.00 fuse that went out. And then recently, through the help of GRID Alternatives, we had a house equipped with a photovoltaic solar system put on it, and it's saving her quite a bit of money, especially in the summer time. Her bill has gone down from about $80.00 to about $36.00 a month. So, it's about taken it in half.

                                    With this, I engaged – beyond that, I engaged GRID Alternatives to take a look at a grant opportunity with DOE, and we just – the other day, we got the green light on that. Next. Next slide. This is a Wicozani sub-division in Ring Thunder within the Rosebud reservation here. It's SWA rental units, and we partnered with SWA Corporation, the tribal designated housing authority, Sinte Gleska University – the local university, GRID Alternatives, and tribal utilities and we applied for and received a grant to set up these photovoltaics on these particular houses.

                                    Next slide, please. The reason I picked them is because they'd been relatively newly built, so they're highly efficient. I think they were built in 2009, and they're – the housing authority has accepted the ground source close lopped system, so that's being highly efficient. The only thing is in making sure you O&M – you change out the filters on a regular basis. That's the reason why I targeted these 10 units.

                                    The price right there is $205,000.00 for 10 units – $20,500.00 for solar equipment on each one. SWA and GRID Alternatives have shared the match requirements. SGU building trades will be entrained to apply them, and this will help us build our human capacity or understanding of these systems. They're individual 5.83 KW roof mounted photovoltaic panel systems. Grid Interactive is the primary power supply – solar in the daytime, of course – and the grid secondary.

                                    And the local utility [Break in audio] with and they told us that, "We will credit you $0.05 a kilowatt hour or half a cent a kilowatt hour for – $0.05 a kilowatt hour for a kilowatt hour." Anyways – next slide. This is what it was using before. Since we haven't put them up yet, we don't know what they'll do, but they're all the same type of houses. The only thing – some are using more and some are using less, and I would think they've be using – average kilowatt hours would be a 1250 a month, but some are completely up to like, 2500 kilowatt hours a month.

                                    I suspect that there's elderly people living in there, so they turn up the heat on those things, but I'm not sure. I guess we'll have to look at that as we go down the road. We looked at the houses prior to going after this grant. We went through all the houses and cleaned the filters and looked at all the systems and made sure that they're the same and everything, so... This explains how a ground source heat source pump works, basically.

                                    That's the way they work. So, next slide. And according to PV watts, 5.0 peak sun hours a day, this is what we use to figure out what savings or payback – when that will be. I made this slide prior to us knowing that we got the grant, and because of the match dollars and everything, the payback will be – the sixth year and everything after that – the savings through the housing authority because they basically paid the electricity on those houses. And they will belong to the housing authority once they're done.

                                    So, training will also be applied for housing to – they will come in and be able to see how these things are installed and see what has to be done to troubleshoot them, basically. Next. Next slide. The reason behind all this – behind RESCo and the strategic energy plan – is to develop businesses and build human capacity. In my view, cost estimate was developed by GRID alternatives on a 5.83 kilowatt residential solar.

                                    It's about $20,000.00 each. I looked on [Break in audio] and you can find these about $8,000.00 to $9,000.00, so the other part and portion of that is basically cost to put them on the houses. And I think that we can possibly develop and train local electricians how to set up and install these residential solar systems through the Sinte Gleska University and then RESCo to implement large scale from residential to community scale. Repeat this same application when developing residential and community scale wind turbines. Learn the costs, learn the systems.

                                    Build the human capacity, jobs, and businesses. REDCo, which is the economic arm, is to develop these businesses – help them understand taxes and what not. RESCo – to maintain these services, to ensure that these services continue and Sinte Gleska University to teach and build capacity. Okay. Next. Next slide.

                                    We did a lot of commercial grade wind development on the Rosebud. We build the first commercial wind turbine, which was the 750 KW Akicita "Little Soldier" wind turbine. It got commissioned in March of 2003. We've had issues with it. And it's down right now, but we figure it'll cost us about $150,000.00 to get it back up and going again.

                                    Initial cost of this was about $1.4 million. Half of it came from the DOE as a grant, and the other half we borrowed as an RUS loan – USDA RUS loan. Paying on that quarterly. We continue to pay on that. But it has paid a good portion of that cost back to in order – when it was working.

                                    So, we'll get it back up and running again. I worked on the 30 megawatt Owl Feather War Bonnet Wind Farm. It started in 2003. We did all of the preconstruction studies, jumping through the hoops for the above requirements – cultural requirements, environmental requirements. The avian studies – systems impact studies the whole thing, so we're ready. We're shovel ready and we've been shovel ready since 2008, but we just cannot get a power purchase agreement that will help it get developed and built and sustain itself for 20 years.

                                    It's just the wholesale price of electricity is around 2 and a half cent or $25.00 a megawatt, and it's – we're in there, but we just can't get a PPA. It's just really tough out there right now. In 2009-2010 – somewhere in there – I engaged with Citizens Wind. We began a project of 190 megawatts. Oh, by the way, Owl Feather was funded – the pre-construction costs were funded primary by a DOE grant around $475,000.00 back in 2003, and we started with Citizens Wind, and they were gonna fund the whole cost of the pre-construction in the beginning.

                                    And it cost about $1.5 million per 100 megawatts to do all the pre-construction cost studies. 190 – Citizens Wind offered us some initiatives where we could get part of the developer fee back to the tribe, which is a good deal. We went ahead and applied for a grant through the DOE, and we got a grant of $1.5 million to assist us with a $3 million pre-construction cost studies. We are about 85 percent of the way through, and I think that once we get these projects underway in the changing environment with the shutdown of coal fire plants, we may very well get a power purchase agreement for both of these here in the near future. I'm just crossing my fingers.

                                    It's been a long time. Takes about five years to do all the pre-construction studies for a project this large. I think the 190 megawatt is about 15,000 acres and the 30 megawatt Owl Feather is about 680 acres. So, this – we've taken account in everything from land ownership and everything. So, we're pretty sure of what we're doing.

                                    It's a long-term investment as far as I can see and I think it will go – it'll hold out for us eventually. Next slide, please. Why an energy plan? I think our most important asset is our children and our grandchildren. I think we need to do this for them because they need a future.

                                    Next slide, please. All right. I've got the draft energy plan. Those of you that want to have a copy of it, I'm free to give it to you. My email is Ken_Haukaas@yahoo.com, and that's my phone number.

                                    Tribal Utilities Commission also has a copy of it and that's their phone number right there. And that's all I have.

Randy Manion:           Thank you, Ken. Excellent. Tim, give me a moment to pull your slide deck up and we'll get you going. Okay, Tim. It's all yours.

Tim Willink                 Great. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah. My name's Tim Willink and I am the director of the tribal programs for GRID Alternatives. I'm originally from Coloquintado, New Mexico in northwest New Mexico on a Navaho nation.

                                    My presentation will provide an overview of GRID Alternatives and the tribal program as well as highlight some successful partnerships we currently have with tribes. Next slide, please. GRID Alternatives is a non-profit solar installer whose mission is a successful transition to clean energy that includes everyone. Our mission is also to make renewable energy technology and job training accessible to underserved communities. We do this through three components – people, planet, and employment.

                                    We install solar on income qualified folks – the homes of income qualified folks – and families save money with the solar PV installations. "Planet" is we introduce clean, renewable energy to communities who may not necessarily have the access to this, and "Employment" is also we're a volunteer based model. So, as Ken mentioned, we train folks up who are interested in solar and we provide training opportunities for these volunteers. And they could be students or prospective solar students who want to get into the industry and get the hands on experience and build up their resumes, or they could be folks who just want to give back in their community who maybe never even have picked up a power tool before. We take all folks involved, it's just they have to go through a little bit of a process of being a volunteer, but I think we've made it pretty easy and straightforward.

                                    Next slide, please. A little bit of history of GRID Alternatives – it was founded about 15 years ago by 2 co-founders, Erica Mackie and Tim Sears. And again, their vision was that solar should be accessible to everyone. Their first installation was in 2004 and then now, we have 10 regional offices, including 7 offices in California, all the way down from San Diego up into the North Bay area. We also have expanded out to Denver Colorado office where I currently work out of, and also the New York or tristate office in D.C.

                                    We have a number of different initiatives including – we're promoting diversity in the industry. We call it a RISE initiative – it's Realizing an Inclusive Solar Economy – as well as we try and work to introduce women and encourage women to get into the trade. Overall, we've done over 7,000 residential installs, and it's close to 25 megawatts worth of solar. Next slide, please. A little bit of history on our tribal program – in working in California, we had a rebate program, and we really – three offices – regional offices – where a lot of tribes are in their service territory.

                                    San Diego, the Inland Empire office, and our north coast office have done a tremendous – the majority of our installs. They've developed partnerships and us, as a whole at GRID, have worked close to 40 tribes total. And again, with tribal communities, we've done over 430 tribal installations – about 1.7 megawatts of clean, renewable energy. And the 434 tribal installations means that there's 434 families who now have systems on their homes that are benefiting from solar. We're also over 300 tribal volunteers who have come out to volunteer on our job sites.

                                    Part of my job is to work with our regional offices to provide any type of support they may need. The other part of my job is to work in areas where we actually don't have regional offices. We're working in the Great Plains in Montana with the Chippewa Cree, also in South Dakota with Rosebud, and the southwest, as Darien mentioned, with the northern Pueblos. And also the Navaho Nation in Arizona where this photo was taken where are refurbishing some off-grid system. The homeowner is the elder woman in the right side of the picture with the lime green shirt who – and it's an off grid system.

                                    We're also working in northwestern – the Spokane tribe in Washington. Next slide, please. We also try to – again, we're a volunteer based model, but we also work with – try and encourage folks to come out, particularly Native American veterans, volunteers. We've had over 25 Native veterans come out to our installs. And then also, we have a solar core program funded by the Corporation of National Service. And we have, this year, we've had five tribal members do a year of service – mainly in Denver – but also in some of our other regional offices.

                                    They get to build their resume. They do OCEA-10 class, do an online class – classroom work – but they also do a year of service of solar installations. And again, we've had over 70 Native American women volunteer as well. Next slide, please. What is GRID's approach in working with tribes?

                                    Again, we would like to partner with tribes, not come in and do a lot of the work. We're definitely a collaborative effort. We want to find what I call the champions in the community who are really excited about solar and really want to get this done. We have great partners what we have currently. They could be community members or within the tribal government.

                                    We're also interested – we want guidance and feedback from the tribes. Every tribe is different about their needs and interests and their strategies. We really ask questions about demographics of how many people there are in the tribe. What's the housing stock like? How many houses are there for potential solar?

                                    What kind of condition are they in? Are they in new condition? We also look at – ask if they have strategic energy plans, as Ken has mentioned. Randy, do you mind scrolling down a little bit? Strategic energy plans in partnership with NREL – they're very well thought of. We also look at, again, partnering with the tribal colleges to build that local capacity, as Ken mentioned.

                                    The other thing is, who owns the homes? Is it the housing authority? Are they renters? Is it other folks? We also encourage to recognize other stakeholders within the tribe like the LIHEAP office or maybe they have an energy department or corporation.

                                    And then, again, potential labor force – seek guidance from the tribe on who they are, identifying folks who may be interested in a career path or developing skills as becoming volunteers for some of our installs and learning about solar. We also encourage the partnerships with the federal agencies, particularly DOE. I can't say enough good things about Lizana and her crew and also the folks at NREL and helping out with strategic energy plans, and also Randy, on his side, who provide a lot of technical assistance and planning. Next slide, please. What do we ask of our tribal partners?

                                    Again, the main thing is what is the vision for solar? What is the plans? I know we try and encourage them and provide some guidance and feedback on what's feasible and what's not on a technical basis, but we also want to know – how does this fit on with the whole direction of where the tribe wants to go in terms of economic development and job creation.  We also ask knowledge of their communities. Like I said, a lot of the housing stock, who are the stakeholders in the community?

                                    What's the local interest in the renewable energy projects? And also, what's the opportunities for positive impacts? Do some tribal members pay – have exorbitant bills for electricity or it's causing a big hardship for them? Maybe they're elders. Maybe they're folks who are fixed incomes.

                                    And so we ask for this feedback. Maybe they're going through what we call a cycle of energy burden where they're paying a disproportionate amount of their monthly income on electricity bills and so it really leaves them in a quandary when they try and think about long-term investments. We also ask the identification of funding resources to work with us so that we can develop those resources for some of our projects. And then federal, state, and private – rebates or incentive programs or grants – those types of resources, financing mechanisms, and also to collaborate with GRID on the funding proposal. But there's a lot of legwork involved when we do this, as Ken will attest.

                                    Answering emails, phone calls on a weekly basis. One of the biggest things is getting utility bills from the clients and the tribal entities and the utilities, and also helping with paperwork. We have application process and contracts and also recruiting volunteers helping us out to get the word out on upcoming projects. And then finally, like when we're doing grant proposals, tribal resolutions and letters of support. These are definitely not all of the legwork, but this is kind of what we ask of our tribal partners.

                                    Next slide. What does GRID provide? GRID provides, first of all, a lot of energy awareness. What is the cost of electricity in the area that you're at? What is the net metering policy?

                                    Who's the local utility? What is the interconnection process? What is the inspection process? Also, conservation is a big one. We highly recommend that energy efficiency be taking place before we work on solar.

                                    The next thing is technical knowledge – project development, identifying these homes. Are they south facing? Are they good candidates for solar? Are they tight? Weatherized?

                                    And what is the infrastructure for the utility? Can we interconnect? We also do the designs and take the utility bills from the clients and design the systems as such and can they fit on the roof. Again, helping out with the interconnection process with the utilities. A lot of times, these are pretty straightforward, but it just takes a while and we need to know how to do it.

                                    We also do this – we try and do this hand in hand with the tribes to let them know if they have people interested and want to learn this process. And also, the inspection process – some tribes, they don't have an inspection process and they sign out. We have licensed electricians sign off. Other times, in the case of Rosebud, we go through the state of South Dakota and their inspection process, so we comply with that. Training and safety – definitely safety, if you notice in a lot of our photos, everybody's wearing a hard hat.

                                    The gentleman in this photo is a 79-year-old army veteran from the western part of the Navaho Nation, and has done a bit of solar, but he's never refurbished. And again, he's wearing safety glasses and a hard hat. We comply, if not exceed, with OCEA standards, 'cause again, we feel like this is good skill development for folks on the ground who want to get into solar – how to set up a ladder, fall protection. Solar, statistically, is one of the most dangerous occupations you can get into, but if you've done correctly, if you have the proper training and background, you'll be very safe. And the training – again, the install process – it's a hands on training method, so people get their hands dirty and really participate and learn a lot.

                                    We also have fundraising capacity where we go out and look for grant proposals and other financial resources. And finally, we have equipment partnerships with a lot of companies that are in the business like Sun Power or Enphase. We work with them on getting donated equipment and bringing those to the table. Next slide, please. We also – a big emphasis is workforce development, and that's partnerships with the tribal colleges and vocational programs.

                                    We work with the professors. And again, this training is mainly hands on to supplement the work in the classroom. And a lot of times, there's not a lot of opportunities for this type of training, but at least it's something to put on their resume as they go forward. And a lot of these are transferable skills. You can say that you know about personal protective equipment and safety talks and fall protection.

                                    Also, we fully customizable training depending on the tribe's needs and what they want. If they want to develop their own businesses, that may be a little different from somebody just getting into the industry and starting as an installer. It may be longer, it may be more intense, and there's also maybe other certification requirements. And then again, finally, service. The benefit of the workforce development – our volunteer method – is that we finally have service to the tribe through the installations.

                                    Next slide, please. So, one of our success stories is with the Rosebud Sioux tribe. We were actually introduced to Ken through – there was some stem students from Rosebud who came to Boulder on an install and their leader or chaperone was Leo Campbell, and he said, "You need to come out to Rosebud. We'd like to do this, and there's a guy I want to introduce you to." And so we had a meeting and we agreed on a lot of stuff and moving forward. Last fall, in October, we did a demonstration project for our Tribal Solarthon, which is to raise awareness with tribes in solar.

                                    It was through a Wells Fargo grant. It was pretty successful. The client is currently – enjoys lower electricity bills at the moment, and it was a good time. In this photo, also, you see one of our solar core members holding up that book and with the blue shirt on. Her name is Cheyanne Poorbear.

                                    She's originally from Pine Ridge and she was a volunteer at one of our installs out on Pine Ridge. And after her year of service in the north coast, she led the whole installation up on the roof, and she's teaching a bunch of – a lot of the tribal college students that are behind her. And also, to the right, is a gentleman with the housing authority. He's an electrician who knows a lot about electricity. He's a licensed electrician, but never done solar before.

                                    He was pretty excited about it. So, this is what we talk about – the training and building local capacity. As Ken mentioned, we collaborated – took the demonstration project and collaborated on the DOE funding, and now we're planning on installing on 10 homes in a subdivision on Rosebud. Again, our partnerships there are with Sinte Gleska University, RESCo, and the housing authority SWA Corp. Next slide, please.

                                    Some of our other success stories are with our Inland Empire office working with the Bishop Paiute Tribe. Some of their keys to success are outreach. Again, they had a champion, Brian Etkins, who was at their environmental department and saw – you know, GRID reached out to him, I believe, and he saw the potential. They started on some smaller projects, and then continued on and developed into a really great partnership. We also had a funding mechanism in place with our SASH program and a rebate program – incentive programs in California – which was able to fund a lot of the projects.

                                    We also met a lot of their tribal goals for energy self-sufficiency. The rebate funding program is slowly reducing as we go forward, and so we've had to collaborate on DOE funding, and so they were able to do that last year where they collaborated on 22 projects. And this year, I believe, it's up to 43 projects with DOE funding as a match. And then finally, implementation – total of projects is 80 total projects installed – again, 80 families, over 300 kilowatts DC. And then the photo you see here is our Solar Futures program in 2016.

                                    There's five youth from the Bishop Paiute Reservation. They participated in five in-class sessions, and they completed – were able to participate on four projects total. You can go ahead and scroll through those, Randy. And then again, this is the future for the Bishop Paiute and I think it's been really successful. That's it for my presentation.

                                    I'll hand it back to you, Ken – sorry, Randy – and then we'll just answer some questions if we still have time. Thank you so much.

Randy Manion:           Thank you, Tim, and thanks to all our speakers – Lizana, Liz, Darien, Ken, and Tim again. And we're pretty much out of time, but let me just pull up our original slide deck that has the webinars on it so the audience can make sure they register for those events. Let me see which of these – instead of doing the written questions this time, let's see if there are any raised hands. There are. Let's just do a few raised hands.

                                    Liz had to sign off, but Lizana is still on and she can try to answer any questions that are directed towards Liz. So, first raised hand is Andrew Boyd. Andrew, I'm gonna unmute you so you can ask our panel your question. Go ahead Andrew. Andrew, you're now unmuted.

                                    Okay. I'm gonna re-mute Andrew. Raise your hand again, Andrew, if you want to ask a question. Let's see if there are any other raised hands. There are not.

                                    Let me just go to the written questions real quick and see if there are any that – the webinar and the slides will be posted on the Office of Indian Energy Policy and Programs website in about one week, and everyone that attended and did not attend that registered will receive a follow-up email with a link to those slides. Some very positive feedback to you all from the audience on great presentations. Really, no other questions, so with that, again, thanks to all our speakers and hope to have you all back on the next webinar which is August 31st on project regulatory considerations. So, thank you so much, and have a great day. Bye-bye.

Lizana Pierce:            Good-bye.

[End of Audio]