NEW: Adequacy Assessment for 2027 (published January 2023)
New Adequacy Metric: Council staff is working an updated metric for adequacy. Check out materials from our March 23, 2023 RAAC meeting for more info.
The 2021 Power Plan has been published!
Check out the Plan document and supporting material
In 2013 the Council created the Resource Adequacy Advisory Committee (RAAC) to replace the Resource Adequacy Forum, which was an ad-hoc committee created in 2005 to aid in the assessment of regional power supply adequacy. The RAAC now performs this function as an advisory committee to the Council.
In 2011, the Council adopted its current adequacy standard, which limits the likelihood of a supply shortage (more commonly referred to as the loss of load probability or LOLP) to a maximum of 5 percent. The Council, with the aid of the RAAC, annually assesses the adequacy of the regional supply five years out, counting only existing resources, planned resources that are sited and licensed and the energy efficiency savings targeted in the Council’s power plan. This annual assessment is intended to be an early warning should resource and energy efficiency acquisitions not keep pace with load growth and provides sufficient lead time for new acquisitions to be made, if necessary.
The current assessment indicates that the power supply will be adequate through 2020. However, in 2021, with the retirement of the Boardman and Centralia 1 coal plants (1,330 megawatts nameplate), the supply becomes inadequate with an LOLP of 10 percent. This result is not surprising and utilities have begun developing new resource plans to account for the loss of generation. About 550 megawatts of new capacity has already been planned for development by 2021. While this amount of planned resource is not sufficient to maintain adequacy, the region still has plenty of time to plan for and develop cost effective replacement resources.
We encourage your participation in this process. To join our email list as an interested party, email John Fazio.
All Advisory Committee meetings are public and all are welcome. Meetings have minutes published and are recorded. Recordings are available on request.
