The city of Ames is looking for ways to keep the city from going dark in the next few years by dealing with a quickly approaching power shortage.

Merlin Hove, director of city electric services, said Ames’ power demand is outgrowing the city’s supply. In addition, part of the plant will not be suitable for use after 2007. Hove said steam unit seven, which is almost 35 years old, has been used longer than any other unit.

“In the industry, 35 years is the normal life,” Hove said. “We’ve carefully maintained the plant and have gotten good use out of it.”

The city staff is currently exploring options to provide power to the city and planning an integrated resource plan. A plan is most expected to be presented to the City Council in roughly six months.

Hove said the city currently has three options to find 40 megawatts of power: build a new power plant to provide for the loss of the unit, buy excess energy from other reactors or buy part of a proposed 900-megawatt reactor in Council Bluffs. Hove said most people “are choosing more than one source of power.” He said the city is prepared to purchase power from two other cities.

Assistant City Manager Bob Kindred said buying energy from other sources presents several problems.

“Right now, there are bottlenecks in the grid,” he said. “That’s when energy can’t be moved from one point on the grid to another because lines can’t handle the wattage. You can’t guarantee that that energy will be there when you need it.”

Hove said getting power from the reactor in Council Bluffs, which the city would jointly own with several other Iowa cities, would not cause a bottleneck. The $1.4 billion plant eliminates the problems with clogged power lines by including 230 miles of new power lines and two new substations where voltage changes.

“We’ve had first-hand experience with [bottlenecking] and we’ve always been able to get power through other means,” Hove said. “MidAmerican ensures power to us because the transmission lines come with it.”

Hove said the lines will run to Des Moines, “one of the two places we have no problem getting energy from.”

MidAmerican Energy does not yet have the go-ahead to begin construction on the single-unit 900 megawatt power plant, however.

Steven Imming, manager of jointly owned units for MidAmerican Energy, the company building the Council Bluffs plant, said they have to obtain a generating-facilities certificate from the Iowa utilities board and permits from several environmental agencies before they can begin construction.

“We’ve got 12 towns committed so far and there’s still some folks interested who haven’t made a decision yet,” Imming said. “We may change the size of the unit depending on how many towns are interested, so we have no target number.”

Sheila Lundt, assistant to the city manager, said buying energy from MidAmerican rather than buying into their plant is an option but that doesn’t ensure the power will be there.

“If you buy into that plant, you buy in for 20 or 40 megawatts,” Lundt said. “That’s the only way we’d be guaranteed that power. Just buying energy from them off the grid without any ownership means we don’t have a priority to get it.”