Idaho Public Utilities Commission accepts Avista Utilities Integrated Resource Plan

The Idaho Public Utilities Commission (PUC) recently accepted Avista Utilities’ Integrated Resource Plan (IRP), which outlines how the company plans to meet customer demand for electricity over the next 20 years.

The IRP indicates that Avista can meet its customers’ energy needs through 2026 with company-owned or contractually controlled generation resources, conservation, and market purchases. Avista’s preferred resource strategy over the longer term calls for plant upgrades, energy efficiency measures, solar, demand response, energy storage and natural gas-fired generation.

Avista’s 2017 IRP calls for conservation measures to offset 53.3 percent of the projected growth through 2037.

Avista’s expects growth to slow to 0.47 percent annually through the end of the planning period as compared to the 0.6 percent annual rate projected in its 2015 IRP and delays the need for additional generation from 2020 until 2026.

The differences are due to the expected slowdown in load growth, recently signed contracts for hydropower, energy efficiency measures and programs that temporarily reduce energy demand.

The plan anticipates less reliance on natural gas-fired peaker plants and energy efficiency than in the 2015 plan. The 2017 IRP calls for the construction of three natural gas-fired plants that would add a combined capacity of 353 megawatts (MW), a 15-MW solar facility for commercial and industrial customers and two energy storage facilities to provide a total of 2.5 megawatt-hours (MWh) of storage. Improvements to the utility’s hydropower plants will increase their generating capacity.

Avista found that its 222-MW share of the output at the Colstrip coal plant would remain cost-effective through the end of the planning period in 2037.

Commission staff suggested that Avista should have modeled scenarios that included renewing its power purchase agreement (PPA) with the owners of the Lancaster Plant, a combined-cycle combustion turbine facility, before deciding to construct a new natural gas peaker plant in 2026.

Avista responded that it is open to extending the Lancaster contract, which ends in 2026, if it would be beneficial to customers and the company.

“We encourage the Company to continue evaluating all options regarding these resources, and to consider the best interests of its customers when developing the 2019 IRP,” the Commission said.