PROMOTINGTHECOMMUNITY
 

PGE draft resource plan focuses on diversity and reliability
 

Recently, Portland General Electric shared its draft resource plan with stakeholders, regulators and the public. Jim Piro, President and CEO, Portland General Electric, said, “This plan outlines what we think will be the best mix of resources we can marshal over the next 20 years to provide reliable, responsibly-generated and reasonably-priced electricity that will serve the needs of more than 1.5 million Oregonians.”

This is a solid plan, Piro explained,  to help lay the groundwork for Oregon’s energy future, reflecting customers’ priorities and making good use of existing resources. It took 18 months of research and analysis to develop it, including six day-long public workshops with customer groups, environmental advocates, energy experts, and regulators, as well as countless hours of computer modeling — all aimed at finding the resource portfolio with the best combination of cost and risk for customers. PGE took into account environmental impacts, fuel supply availability and price volatility, resource diversity, and the ability of different kinds of resources to reliably meet demand.

Much of the resulting draft can be boiled down to something your grandmother knew a long time ago — it’s a bad idea to put all of your eggs in one basket. Every different resource for generating electricity has advantages and disadvantages; if we rely too heavily on any one resource our customers face increased costs, risks, and reliability problems.

A PGE spokesperson added, “As we look to balance our customers' need for reliable, reasonably priced and environmentally responsible power, this plan calls for using energy efficiency to meet nearly half our load growth through 2020, working with our customers on demand side reductions to meet peak load, acquiring an additional 122 MW of new renewables to meet the Oregon renewable power goals, and building new state-of-the-art natural gas-fired generation and new transmission capacity. In addition, the IRP retains the Boardman plant as part of a diverse and cost effective portfolio of generation resources, and incorporates our plan to make aggressive upgrades to reduce the environmental impact of the plant.”

The public comment period on the draft is open through October 5.  PGE expects to file a final plan with the OPUC later this fall. More information, including a copy of the draft IRP and the presentations from the public meetings can be found online at  http://www.portlandgeneral.com/about_pge/current_issues/energy_strategy/default.aspx