KMEA Honors 100 years of Electrical Production in Baldwin City
Baldwin City Electric Utility Facts
This December, the Kansas Municipal Energy Agency honored the City of Baldwin City for 100 years of operating an electric utility. The recognition took place at the City Council's regular meeting on December 4, 2006.
In the fall of 1905, a city-wide vote showed residents were 3 to 1 in favor of building their own electrical power plant. It was then in April of 1906 that the City Council approved the construction of a new power plant at the cost of $1,250.00. 
A local Baker University professor, William C. Bauer, was commissioned to design the plant and the construction of the new facility began in the fall of 1906. The plant was officially placed in service and began producing power for the City's residents on February 5, 1907.
The power plant's initial configuration consisted of two engines, one 80 horsepower unit and one 25 horsepower unit. Together, these two engines could produce a combined 70 Kilowatts. This production at the town's new power plant allowed citizens to receive electrical service from sundown to sunrise at a cost of 10 cents per Kilowatt/hour. It wasn't until 1908 that around the clock operations of the power plant allowed the citizens to receive electricity 24 hours a day.
Power Plant #1, located at 605 High Street was manned 24 hours a day, seven days a week from 1908 to 1995. 
Due to the retirement of several key personnel and a changing landscape in the electric utility industry (where electrical power is purchased from outside organizations in order to meet consumer demand) power plant operations were scaled back in 1995 to daytime operations only, Monday-Friday. The City currently operates two shifts at the power plants only in the summer generation months.
Throughout the years, Baldwin City's ability to generate electricity for its residents has steadily matched the demand required. Equipment upgrades, engine replacements, more efficient operating procedures, and the construction of a new state-of-the-art Power Plant in 2004 located south of town at 1100 Orange Street have now taken the once small 70 Kilowatt utility to new levels of productivity and efficiency. Baldwin City's electrical production capacity now resides at 11.7 Megawatts. 
Although Baldwin City's current electrical production capacity is more than adequate to power the entire city on the hottest day of the summer, much of the electrical energy consumed by the City's residents is contracted at low rates from outside utilities with the City's own plants generating electricity at crucial peak times throughout the year. This strategy allows the City's utility to maintain considerably lower prices for its customers while maintaining an independent utility that is not entirely susceptible to outside rate hikes by other production entities. The contracted capacity along with the city's own generation capabilities brings our total power available to 17.2 Megawatts. At 5:00 pm on July 19 of 2006, the city set a new record of peak consumption at 9.462 Megawatts. Of that 9.462 Megawatts, almost 6 Megawatts was being generated locally at that time.
In 1980, Baldwin City joined the Kansas Municipal Energy Agency as a member city. This membership has led to increased cooperation among neighboring cities across Kansas for production, cooperative purchasing, and mutual aid agreements in maintaining and repair of facilities and distribution networks.
The fall of 2005 saw yet another new era in the City of Baldwin's electric utility growth and future. The cities of Baldwin City, Gardner, Garnett, Osawatomie, and Ottawa saw the potential for achieving substantial benefits for their municipal electric customers by coordinating their interconnected electric systems under a central dispatching center. For this reason, they entered into the Energy Management Project #1 as a joint project within the KMEA. By sharing capacity, exchanging electricity at peak and non-peak times, and jointly planning new electric power supplies, these five cities have created a cooperative union that benefits each member of the partnership and its customers.
