BEATRICE – The Beatrice Board of Public Works is recommending city approval of an amended agreement with Radiant Tech, LLC, which operates a facility in the Gage County Industrial Park.
The resolution approved by the BPW makes minor adjustments to the agreement between the city and cryptocurrency business….which is a significant electric power consumer.


BPW General Manager Tobias Tempelmeyer says the business has been stepping up operations for the past six months and the original agreement has been in place for a year.


"Over the course of the last year, we've had a few things in the contract that we kind of want to go through and tweak. Nothing significantly. We changed how we bill them on transmission. Facility costs, before we had a placeholder in there on what we thought it would cost to build out to their service. We now have a final cost and we've put that in there.....which is a little lower than we initially thought it would be. On their deposit, they had asked if they could receive a little interest back on their deposit. They've got a fairly large deposit with us, and so we've agreed that we would put that in an interest bearing account and once every year, we'll apply the interest back as a credit on their bill."


The agreement between the city and Radiant Tech allows the city to shut off power to the facility if needed, under high demand or emergency situations.


"We have not had to, so far. Sometimes, they've turned themselves off for their own reasoning, to get some new equipment in, or testing some things....but we have not."


At a BPW meeting on Thursday, the board recommended the city council also renew an agreement between the city and Nebraska Department of Transportation on shared maintenance of U.S. Highways 77 and 136 through the community…including a section of Nebraska Highway 4.