Integrated Resource Plans (IRP) are finally beginning to change.

It used to be that if a utility had capacity to meet summer day peak, that was enough.

There were no worries about nighttime or winter or anything else, just summer day adequacy. Meet the peak and resources were adequate. IRP are a leftover of the period when Coal and Nuclear were king, and wind and solar were at best “Tinker Toys” on the grid. Now wind and solar are the dominate new construction, coal is on the way out, and nuclear builds have opponents too.

Add the fact that electric vehicle owners mostly want to charge at home at night, and building decarbonization will shift use of electricity for residential units to winter nights. Both of which are hard to support with solar, the now dominate new source of electricity.

One utility focused their IRP on reliability and generation adequacy in non-summer peak periods. Renewable advocates have slammed the change in the IRP because it points to times when solar is not the lowest cost resource, in fact it is far from the lowest cost resource, because of the storage required, and the very low production in months like December and January.

The industry is a decade past when the IRP should have changed. If state commissions want to do the right thing to keep electricity flowing 24/365, this kind of change is critical. The IRP will have to look at the changing loads, the costs of storage to firm renewables, and the overbuilds required to support winter peak. They have a short runway, because many utilities will shift from summer to winter peak between 2030 and 2040. Federal energy star programs are working to push that winter peaking earlier.

I for one do not want to have no power in a polar vortex.

How about you?

Heave Ho, the IRP has got to go...