Platte River Energy Authority’s board of administrators permitted the utility’s 2024 Built-in Useful resource Plan (IRP) on July 25, together with the really helpful “optimum new carbon” portfolio that provides 760 MW of recent renewable vitality initiatives between now and 2030.
“We’ve heard from quite a few group members all through this course of and I respect how clear Platte River continues to be about how they’re fixing this problem,” mentioned Kevin Gertig, Platte River board chair and director of Loveland Water and Energy in Colorado. “The Useful resource Diversification Coverage mandates that we preserve Platte River’s foundational pillars—reliability, environmental duty and monetary sustainability—all through this vitality transition, and we’ve a duty to the residents of the 4 proprietor communities to just do that.”
The 2024 IRP is a part of an ongoing useful resource planning course of that Platte River conducts to determine the vitality assets wanted to fulfill the electrical energy demand of Estes Park, Fort Collins, Longmont and Loveland, all cities in northern Colorado, over the following 5 to twenty years. In 2020, Platte River filed the primary IRP for the reason that board adopted a Useful resource Diversification Coverage that directs Platte River’s CEO to proactively work towards the purpose of reaching a 100% noncarbon vitality combine by 2030, offered the three foundational pillars may be maintained. The COVID-19 pandemic impacted the assumptions that framed the 2020 IRP advice and prompted Platte River to refresh the plan in 2022 to higher perceive these impacts.
The 2020 IRP, the refresh in 2022, and outcomes from 1000’s of hours of evaluating, analyzing and modeling eventualities for the 2024 IRP reaffirm the necessity for dispatchable capability to help a extremely renewable vitality portfolio throughout excessive climate occasions and darkish calms, or durations of no solar and wind.
The extra 760 MW of recent renewable vitality proposed within the optimum new carbon portfolio would require a three-pronged strategy to dispatchable capability: constructing out a digital energy plant with the proprietor communities; implementing each short- and long-term vitality storage when commercially viable; and utilizing the bottom carbon-emitting combustion turbine know-how that’s hydrogen succesful to help reliability whereas offering a path for deeper decarbonization.
“Whereas some group members query the necessity for brand spanking new gasoline generators, each portfolio we’ve modeled that meets the necessities of our three foundational pillars provides renewable assets and aeroderivative models,” says Jason Frisbie, normal supervisor and CEO of Platte River. “We aren’t alone on this conclusion; different utilities with related decarbonization objectives in Colorado and all through the nation are arriving on the similar conclusion.”
Although work is already underway to construct a digital energy plant, modeling and information from consultants estimate it’ll take near a decade to develop a totally practical useful resource. Whereas short-duration battery storage helps handle some intermittency of wind and photo voltaic assets, long-duration battery storage reveals better promise to help these renewable assets for a number of days at a time.
Platte River famous that this know-how possible is not going to be commercially obtainable at scale till after 2030. Modeling from the 2024 IRP solves the reliability and monetary duty necessities by putting in aeroderivative gasoline models as the popular choice to fulfill state coverage objectives and obtain a deep degree of decarbonization by 2030.
“Since 2018, the purpose has been to proactively work towards a 100% noncarbon vitality combine by 2030,” mentioned Frisbie. “This yr we produced a plan that will get us nearly all of the best way there and we are going to proceed our pursuit of a noncarbon vitality future.”
—POWER edited this content material, which was contributed by the Platte River Energy Authority communications crew.
