Seventh Power Plan Homestretch

With the public comment period for the draft Seventh Power Plan closing on December 18, the Council's power committee approved staff recommendations to update a few modeling assumptions and run three additional scenarios.

Taking into consideration new data and comments they have received, staff recommended these updates:

• lower the medium forecast for natural gas prices and wholesale market prices for electricity to reflect the lower gas prices since the draft plan was developed
• use quarterly adequacy reserve margins for energy and capacity and quarterly associated system capacity contribution factors for combined-cycle combustion turbine, energy efficiency, and wind and solar resources. This would better reflect how these resources contribute to regional peak electricity needs.
• modify the regional portfolio model logic to determine renewable portfolio standard requirements based on retail sales. This will reduce the amount of renewable resources developed to meet existing standards.
• model two additional renewable resource options: a 50 megawatt utility-scale solar PV plant on the west side of the Cascades; and a conventional geothermal plant.

The committee also approved running three new scenarios that would examine using renewable resources to lower carbon emissions. The scenarios are:

• coal plant retirements without retiring inefficient natural gas plants
• coal plant retirements without retiring inefficient natural gas plants and without building new gas plants
• coal plant retirements with a carbon cost set to develop renewable resources rather than natural gas plants

"Running these scenarios," noted Power Division Director Tom Eckman, "will give us an opportunity to explore the costs to reduce carbon emissions." 

The draft Seventh Power Plan's resource strategy recommends energy efficiency and demand response resources to ensure a clean and affordable power supply for the next 20 years.

Following the public comment period, the Council will deliberate and update the plan as needed. The Council is scheduled to vote on the final version of the plan on February 10, 2016.