New PSE Strategy increases efficiency goals
Puget Sound Energy Files Updated Energy Strategy with State Regulators
Integrated Resource Plan stays focused on energy efficiency, wind, natural gas
BELLEVUE, Wash., July 30, 2009 – Heightened energy efficiency, the development of more renewable power and additional natural gas-fired power generation are the linchpins of Puget Sound Energy’s newly updated strategy for meeting customers’ growing energy needs.
The utility’s 2009 Integrated Resource Plan (IRP), filed today with the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission, guides the company’s efforts for acquiring new energy resources in the most cost-effective and environmentally responsible manner over the next 20 years. PSE revises the plan every two years with an updated forecast of customer energy requirements and exhaustive analyses of the economic, environmental and technological issues involved in securing new energy supplies.
Despite the current economic slump, PSE’s updated resource plan continues to forecast long-term growth in the utility’s 11-county service area. Approximately 1 million more Puget Sound residents will be relying on PSE service 20 years from now, the IRP predicts. Regional growth, together with the potential retirement of aging power plants and expiration of large purchased-power contracts, is driving PSE’s need to secure about 5,000 megawatts (MW) of additional power capacity over the next two decades, according to the IRP.
“Our challenge is not only to meet our customers’ growing energy needs in an economically prudent way, but in a way that protects our planet as well,” said Kimberly Harris, executive vice president and chief resource officer for PSE. “Our resource plan takes the right approach with more energy efficiency and renewable resources, augmented by more clean-burning natural gas generation.”
PSE’s already ambitious energy-efficiency programs should be expanded even further, the 2009 IRP says, to cost-effectively “generate” even more new energy supplies. In 2008, the utility’s energy-efficiency programs helped customers save electricity equivalent to the power usage of 23,000 homes, and enough natural gas to serve the need of 4,000 homes. PSE customers are expected to save about $30 million annually over the life of the energy-efficiency steps taken in 2008.
The 2009 IRP calls for even greater energy efficiency. More than 530 average-MWs of additional power savings can be achieved over the next 20 years, according to the resource plan. Those savings, sufficient to meet the electricity requirements 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.
The new energy-efficiency targets represent 22 percent and 30 percent increases, respectively, in the electricity and natural gas efficiency goals cited in PSE’s 2007 IRP.
Read more on PSE web site
