Supply of Electricity and Gas

Description

This Prior Information Notice is intended to raise awareness of an upcoming opportunity to act as Leeds City Council's energy supplier for electricity and gas. Leeds City Council's current electricity and gas supply contracts will expire on 31st March 2024, and as such the council will be undertaking a procurement exercise to appoint an organisation to provide these services to ensure continuity of supply from 1st April 2024. A competitive procurement exercise will be carried with the intention that the tender documents will be issued around March 2023 via the council's electronic tendering system YORtender. A market sounding document with a draft of the service specification and a number of questions for interested organisations has been issued via YORtender. Interested organisations are encouraged to review and respond to that document to understand more about the specific contract requirements, and to help inform the Council's thinking. A summary of the requirements under the new contract are set out below. •Supply electricity to approximately 1,900 non-half-hourly metered sites, 360 half-hourly metered sites, and a single unmetered supply for the city's street lighting (also including a limited number of other street furniture related supplies which have yet to be moved over to separate metering); •Supply gas to approximately 750 metered sites owned by LCC; •Procure, appoint and manage the Meter Operator/Data Collector for all supplies (except where specified otherwise); •Provide comprehensive, accurate and timely monthly billing of all gas and electricity supplies; •Manage the Council's increasing portfolio of export supplies, including providing contracts for export from the Council's or its partners' energy generation infrastructure. This also includes the procurement, supply and operation of hardware and software for the remote operation and optimisation of the 2 x c1.2MW gas generators located at Merrion House in the city centre (i.e. does not include management or maintenance of the generation infrastructure itself); •Provide a brokerage service for the forward purchasing of energy by the Council to commence immediately following contract award, including provision of regular expert market insights into the energy markets for gas and/or electricity and advice and recommendations to the council regarding forward purchases. In addition to the routine purchasing from the wholesale market, the Service may also include the identification, brokerage and supply by the Supplier of electricity volumes through corporate power purchase agreement(s), although the Council reserves the ability to procure such volume under separate arrangements; •Provide arrangements for sleeving into the Contract any volumes of electricity from separate power purchase agreement (PPA) arrangements or other similar agreements for renewables generation that the Council has entered into either prior to or during the Contract Term. This may also include volume exported from the Council's own portfolio of export supplies where this represents value for money; •Sleeve into the Contract the volumes of gas and electricity that the Council has already forward purchased with its previous supplier for periods that fall within the Contract Term, and at the prices secured via the previous supplier; •Sleeve over any gas and/or electricity forward purchased via this Contract for delivery beyond the Contract Term to a new supplier on termination or expiry of the Contract at the previously traded prices and at no additional cost to the Council. To access the Market Sounding Exercise please visit https://yortender.eu-supply.com/ and search for the reference 65735 - Market Sounding Exercise - Supply of Electricity and Gas. Lot 1: See section II.1.4. Short description above.