Phoenix, Ariz. (August 12 2024) – The Arizona Corporation Commission hosted its Integrated Resource Planning Workshop on Wednesday, July 31, 2024. Arizona's regulated electric utilities, including Arizona Public Service (APS), Tucson Electric Power (TEP), UNS Electric (UNSE), and Arizona Electric Power Cooperative, Inc. (AEPCO) delivered detailed presentations to the Commission and stakeholders. Integrated Resource Plans (IRPs) are created to help predict future energy needs and identify resources to meet them over the next 15 years and are usually conducted every three years. They take into account factors like population growth, economic growth, new technologies, and weather. The ACC prioritizes grid reliability, stability, and affordability goals. Resource Planning Advisory Council (RPAC) members, such as Western Resource Advocates (WRA) also provided presentations on their assessments of the IRP’s and asked tough, clarifying questions of the utilities.
In its presentation to the Commission, APS representatives said it expects its peak demand and energy needs will grow by 2.4% and 3.7% a year, respectively, driven by data center growth, large industrial customer growth and electric vehicle adoption. APS anticipates its peak demand will ultimately increase by 40% - reaching nearly 11,400 MW by 2031 and increasing to about 13,000 MW by 2038. APS laid out its plans to add more than 3,000 MW of solar and wind power, along with about 2,800 MW of battery storage by 2027.
TEP anticipates its customers will require nearly 4,000 MW of electricity by 2038, while UNSE plans to expand its energy portfolio by nearly 780 MW. TEP’s IRP calls for adding 2,240 MW of wind and solar power, 1,330 MW of energy storage and 400 MW of natural gas-fired generation. TEP expects its peak load will grow by about 1.2% a year to 2,800 MW in 2038.
APS said the least expensive option in retiring the coal-fired Four Corners power plant early was to wait until 2031. TEP plans to retire about 900 MW of coal-fired generation by 2032 fully. Both TEP and APS told the Commission, they plan to use natural gas resources that can ramp up quickly during the day when customers need electricity the most and make use of existing infrastructure to maintain customer affordability as they transition to renewable energy, battery storage and potentially new technology.
The workshop serves as a technical conference to inform the Commission and Utilities Division staff as they prepared their Recommended Order for Commissioners’ review and acknowledgement at a future meeting.
Public comments may be filed to eDocket in this matter. All documents and IRP presentations can be viewed at https://edocket.azcc.gov/ under Docket E-99999A-22-0046.