Early Coal Plant Closures, Battery Storage in PacifiCorp’s 2019 IRP

PacifiCorp submitted its 2019 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) on October 18, 2019, following an 18-month-long public input process. The IRP is a long-term resource planning document that electric and gas utilities must draft every two years, as part of their regulatory requirements. In this planning document, the utility is required to present a detailed analysis of its future long-term resource needs, its estimated costs and risks associated with alternative means of meeting those needs - resulting in the development of a preferred portfolio (of resources), and its action plan to build that portfolio. The utility’s preferred portfolio should satisfy the least-cost least-risk criterion set in the IRP guidelines.

PacifiCorp believes that its resource plan reflects its commitment to provide reliable service to customers at affordable rates while cutting down greenhouse gas emissions. The IRP identifies five foundational steps that lead up to the final outcome of the analysis based on which the utility designs its near-term (next 2-4 years) resource acquisition strategies. These steps include:

1. A unit by unit economic (cost-benefit) analysis of its coal plants
2. Development of resource portfolios to meet gaps in its load and resource balance
3. Further analysis of these resource portfolios using targeted reliability requirements
4. Resource portfolio ranking based on cost, risk, reliability, and emission levels analyses and selection of the preferred portfolio
5. Development of the near-term action plan to build the preferred portfolio

PacifiCorp’s preferred portfolio includes a blend of wind and solar resources, demand-side management resources, and also, for the first time, significant battery storage resources. By the end of the utility’s Action Plan window (around 2023), the preferred portfolio is shown to include about 3000 MW of new solar resources, more than 3500 MW of new wind resources, nearly 600 MW of battery storage co-located with new solar resources, and over 700 MW of incremental energy efficiency and new direct load control resources.

PacifiCorp plans to retire several of its coal plants during the Action Plan window while integrating more renewables into its system. The utility has laid out substantial investment plans for building new transmission systems, and reinforcing and upgrading existing ones. The company also plans to make short-term purchases in the wholesale power market or “front office transactions” to meet its summer and winter peaking capacity needs. The resource actions also include cost-effective energy efficiency and direct-load control resources, in addition to renewable energy credit actions to meet the utility’s Renewable Portfolio Standard needs.

CUB applauds PacifiCorp’s initiative to accelerate retirement of a greater number of coal plants at an earlier date in the 2019 IRP compared to its previous 2017 Plan. In the coming months, PacifCorp’s IRP will be reviewed by various stakeholders including CUB. CUB will take a closer look at the utility’s coal studies and evaluate the preferred portfolio development methodology and related resource actions. As of now, CUB finds it concerning that the utility’s scheduled retirement for the Cholla coal unit in 2023 is not consistent with its preferred portfolio which shows that it is economic to retire the unit in 2020. CUB will review other aspects of the IRP and ensure that the utility’s long-term plan follows Oregon Public Utility Commission guidelines, and is in the best interest of Oregon ratepayers.

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