US energy utility Puget Sound Energy’s energy strategy focused on energy efficiency, wind power and natural gas

1 June 2009

tExpanded energy conservation and renewable power development, augmented by more natural gas-fired power generation, continue to anchor energy utility Puget Sound Energy’s strategy for meeting customers’ growing energy needs, according to the company’s resource plan.

Despite the current downturn in the economy, the draft 2009 Integrated Resource Plan forecasts long-term growth in the 11 Washington counties PSE serves. PSE’s energy-efficiency programmes will be expanded even further, the draft 2009 IRP says, since achievable conservation measures in Puget Sound homes and businesses remain a cost-effective way to generate new energy supplies, the company said.

‘As our plan notes, energy efficiency is still the best strategy for avoiding the costs and the risks of a volatile energy market,’ said Kimberly Harris, executive vice president and chief resource officer for PSE. ‘For us, conservation is still our first choice for providing the new energy resources this region needs.’

The updated IRP also confirms PSE’s long-standing goal to develop more renewable-energy resources, primarily wind power. Today, PSE’s Hopkins Ridge Wind Facility, in Southeast Washington, and Wild Horse Wind Facility, in Central Washington, make the company the Pacific Northwest’s top utility producer of wind power. The wind facilities’ 386MW of generating capacity is enough to serve 100,000 homes.

The IRP suggests that PSE develop another 1,200MW of wind power by 2029. The expansion would ensure PSE compliance Washington’s Energy Independence and Security Act (Initiative 937). The voter-approved law requires large utilities to obtain 15 percent of their power supply from renewable resources by 2020.

Other forms of renewable energy, such as solar, biomass and geothermal, may have long-term potential if they can be developed cost-effectively on a utility scale, the draft plan notes.

Aggressive conservation measures and increased renewable-power resources could provide 41 percent of the 5,500MW of additional power capacity PSE projects it must acquire over the next two decades to serve its customers, according to the draft IRP. Nearly all of the company’s remaining power-supply acquisitions will involve natural gas-fired power, the plan states. That is because economic, political and environmental considerations virtually preclude the development of new hydro, nuclear or coal-fired power resources in the region.

The draft IRP also cites more than 530 average-MW of achievable power savings for PSE over the next 20 years through energy-efficiency services to customers. Those savings, sufficient to meet the entire electricity requirement of 400,000 households, would forestall the need to build four average-sized natural gas-fired power plants. The plan also identifies 90 million therms of achievable natural-gas savings by PSE customers, enough to satisfy the total gas needs of 108,000 households.

In comparison to the utility’s 2007 IRP, the 2009 plan’s conservation targets represent 22 per cent and 30 per cent increases, respectively, in PSE’s electricity and natural gas efficiency goals.

Puget Sound Energy serves more than 1 million electric customers and nearly 750,000 natural gas customers.

Copyright © 2009 newnet

Tags: energy efficiency, transmission, wind

This story was published on Monday, June 1st, 2009 at 5:31 pm and is filed under North America, companies, energy efficiency, water. You can follow any responses to article entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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