For nearly 40 years, we’ve been more than your community-owned electric utility—we’re your neighbors, friends, and family, working by your side to provide an essential service to each community we serve.
Over the years, we have strived to keep you updated and informed on how your utility operates our financial health, and our goals. This year, we are looking back at 2024 to reflect on our successes and challenges while continuing to look forward to new opportunities. We’re excited to share our annual report, offering a window into how we’re working to power our community’s future.
Our mission goes beyond keeping the lights on; we are committed to providing reliable service at the most reasonable cost. We exist to serve you, our friends, and our neighbors, and we believe that you deserve nothing less than our absolute best.
As we reflect on our journey and take a look ahead, we know there will be challenges. Yet, those challenges come with opportunities. We can’t meet these challenges alone or realize opportunities without help from our industry partners. Organizations like the American Public Power Association, California Municipal Utility Association, Utah Associated Municipal Power Suppliers, and Northwest Public Power Association lend expertise and insight. They also provide us with an extensive network of like-minded, community-owned utilities that have similar goals. We can pool our resources and advocate for collective communities.
Our commitment to serving our community with integrity and transparency means we will keep you informed on how your utility is doing. Throughout the year, articles in Ruralite, on our website, and on our Facebook page give you the information you need to stay informed on the issues that concern you most.
As always, if you’d like to voice your concerns or comment on how you think we are doing, I invite you to attend 1 of our monthly board meetings. Meetings are on the fourth Tuesday of each month at 5:30 p.m. in our boardroom at 65 South Roop Street in Uptown Susanville.
Nick Dominguez
LMUD General Manager
Financial Health: Ensuring Rate Stability & Operational Excellence
I’m pleased to share an update on LMUD’s financial position and our ongoing commitment to rate stability. In fiscal year 2024, LMUD demonstrated exceptional financial stewardship of your utility resources. Our annual audit results were outstanding, with our auditors specifically commending our financial position, adherence to best practices, and the professionalism of our accounting and finance staff.
I’m particularly proud to report that overall we performed 20% under our forecasted budget for FY2024. This achievement stems from 2 key factors: disciplined operational expense management and the advantage of abundant, low-cost hydroelectric power due to consecutive wet years. While the hydroelectric savings aren’t guaranteed moving forward, we’re proactively developing industry-leading rate design methodologies to help us navigate power price fluctuations while minimizing the impact on our customers.
Throughout the year, we’ve maintained strong performance across all critical financial metrics, including days cash on hand, debt service ratio, and capital requirements. This has enabled us to support major infrastructure investments, such as the Skedaddle Substation and the hardening of the Westwood transmission line while maintaining rate stability.
Looking ahead to 2025 and beyond, we’re implementing financial strategies to support our ongoing infrastructure rejuvenation. This includes optimizing our funding mix through government bonds, strategic debt funding, and lines of credit. Our financial modeling and analysis ensure these decisions support system reliability while minimizing rate impacts.
What This Means for You
Our robust financial health directly translates to reliable service at stable rates. Through comprehensive financial planning and analysis, modern financial strategies, and an unwavering focus on fiscal stability, we’re maximizing the efficiency of every dollar while maintaining the high-quality service you expect from LMUD. We remain committed to keeping your rates low while ensuring the long-term reliability of your utility services.
Kelli Thompson
Accounting and Finance Manager
Giving Back to the Community We Serve
As a community-owned utility, our focus is on the people we serve. Through our Public Benefits program, 2.85% of our retail energy sales go back to our community. These funds are earmarked specifically for programs that benefit customers, including:
- Rate assistance to those in need. Our Winter Energy Assistance Rate and Emergency Energy Assistance programs are designed to assist income-eligible customers with a helping hand when they need it most. This year, we budgeted $200,000 for WEAR and Emergency Energy Assistance. We expended $175,000, helping more than 300 households reduce their energy bills when use is at its highest.
- Commercial rebates. Reducing energy use can equal big savings for our business customers. In 2024, we spent $35,676 on energy-efficiency projects that saved a total of 161,641 kilowatt-hours.
- Residential rebates. We offer a suite of energy-efficiency rebates designed to encourage our customers to save energy and reduce their utility bills. This year, we distributed $70,978 in rebates and helped our customers save 117,089 kWh.
The total kilowatt-hours saved is equal to powering 30 average homes for a year.
In Your Community
Community outreach is essential to LMUD’s mission. Here are some of the ways we connected with our customers in 2024:
- High voltage safety demonstrations: More than 200 local school-aged kids took part in the demonstrations, learning how electricity powers their lives and how to stay safe when using it.
- Youth sponsorship program: In 2024, LMUD gave $3,000 to local youth programs that enhance our community and foster engagement.
- Jr. Energy Auditor program: The program—a collaboration between LMUD and the Lassen County Office of Education— teaches fourth and fifth graders how to save money by becoming energy-wise.
- Pet Treats for Lights pet food drive: Working with the Lassen Humane Society, customers donated pet items for shelter pets and, in exchange, received a box of LED Christmas lights.
- Customer Appreciation Celebration: This year, 450 customers joined us for lunch, met with LMUD staff, and learned more about how we are serving our community at the annual event.
- Public Power Week: LMUD partnered with Susanville Supermarket to bring our customers, staff, and board members together for doughnuts and coffee to celebrate Public Power Week.
- Magical Country Christmas: Crews helped set up the community Christmas tree and installed holiday lights on Main Street.
- Blue Star Banners: Working with the Soaring Eagle Bluestar Moms, LMUD crews hung banners on utility poles lining Main Street to honor families and local servicemen and women.
- Westwood Back to School/Community Night: LMUD reached more than 80 families with program information free LED bulbs and a chance to win a $25 LMUD energy gift card.
- Community Scholarship Program: 2024 marked the 12th year of this program. This year, 3 students received a total of $3,000 toward their continuing education.
- Strategic Plan and Community Involvement presentation: LMUD staff reached out to several service clubs this year with a presentation that helped them gain a better understanding of how we serve our community.
Reliability You Can Count On
We strive for grid resiliency. Minimizing the number and length of outages is 1 of our strategic priorities and goals. Throughout the year, LMUD crews maintain and upgrade our system, ensuring it’s ready to serve our community. However, no matter how much time and effort we spend tending to our facilities, outages occur.
Most outages that occur are out of our control. Weather and human-caused events, such as a car hitting a utility pole, can wreak havoc on our system. When these types of outages affect our local system, crews respond as quickly and safely as possible to restore power. Outages out of our control, such as those caused by Pacific Gas and Electric’s equipment failure, are frustrating because the cause and the solution are out of our hands.
This is why we have invested significant time and money into the Skedaddle Substation project. The substation will connect us with NV Energy’s Reno to Alturas transmission line. This line will shore up our connection to the grid, providing reliability and resilience as well as opening opportunities for a more diverse power supply.