Although most clean energy commitments have come from state policymakers, electric utilities are making efforts to curb climate change too.
Here are five utilities that have committed to net-zero electricity by 2050 or sooner, in accordance with the IPCC’s report that limiting global warming to 1.5°C will require reaching net zero emissions around 2050.
Solarman says
It’s interesting APS was mentioned, as I’ve just gotten a notice in the mail of an ACC review of APS rate increase docket of around 5.6% for ratepayers. This includes “stranded assets” on the four corners coal fired plant in New Mexico. This comes after spending around $111 million in 2015 to retrofit the coal fired plant’s scrubber stacks. “They” say, hind sight is 20-20 and yet there seems to be a disconnect between what APS does and what they say. Instead of selling bonds for an upgrade on a plant that could have been abandoned and another resource used to generate power, the powers that be at APS stumbled on and now want to charge their ratepayers for their poor management decisions.
Another “floundering” of their edict is the upgrading of the gas fired Ocotillo Power plant. It’s fine that APS “wants” to get rid of at least two gas fired heat exchange generators for natural gas fired turbines. But in their proposal that is contained in APS docket# E-01345A-19-0236 there is NO mention of using the RFP process to “see” what the alternative energy construction industry could DO with the same debt that will be “strapped” to ratepayers electric bills for years to come. There seems to be a large section of property available to solar PV installation and construction of a gigawatt energy storage facility could be more useful than intermittently running gas fired turbines to administer the demands on the grid. It has been proven in the past that competitive bidding with companies bidding solar PV and solar PV with storage has been calculated at price points of delivering electricity at from $38/MWh to $19/MWh with solar PV and energy storage. Can APS run this “retrofit” proposal cheaper than $38/MWh of generation? Could it run this operation for less than or equal to $19/MWh?
This type of ratepayer usury needs to stop. You could just as well take the salaries and benefits of the top 24 management types at APS, send the cost for their poor judgement in the past and reduce their immediate wage “overhead” to the company by 30% and use this instead of a rate case to pay for that lousy “stranded asset” in four corners. Find out IF it is appropriate to go with natural gas turbines instead of using the competitive bid process to replace or renew the Ocotillo Power plant with alternative non-fueled energy generation (solar PV) with a massive energy storage facility that can stack ancillary grid services into one asset, instead of cobbling together old technologies and running them “intermittently” like the utility claims, solar PV and wind generation is now, go towards the 100% goal NOW instead of 10 years down the road filing another rate case in front of the ACC for another “stranded asset”, the Ocotillo Power plant and its gas fired generation. Old carpenter’s adage, measure twice, cut once.