Arizona Public Service, PacifiCorp and other Western Resource Adequacy Program participants aim to delay by a year to mid-2027 the launch of binding operations, when penalties can be levied for lacking required amounts of capacity.
“We have encountered significant new headwinds in addressing resource adequacy challenges,” the WRAP participants said in a Monday letter to stakeholders. “Supply chain issues and other challenges have slowed our ability to deliver and interconnect new resources.”
Regional peak load is growing faster than expected, driven mainly by electrification and data center expansion, and extreme weather has challenged assumptions about how much capacity will be needed to maintain reliable operations, they said.
The voluntary program, managed by the Western Power Pool, aims to make sure the West has enough power supplies through a regional approach that is expected to be more efficient than a utility-by-utility framework. It was approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in February 2023 and is operating in a non-binding phase.
The WRAP includes two main components. Its “forward showing program” requires participants to show seven months ahead of winter and summer seasons that they have enough capacity to meet a required planning reserve margin based on their peak load. They must also show they reserved at least 75% of the transmission needed to deliver energy from the capacity to their load, FERC said. Participants that fail to satisfy those requirements face penalties, starting in 2026.
However, some WRAP participants are concerned they may not be able to meet the program’s forward showing requirements and therefore have to pay penalties, according to the letter.
“We have recently concluded that we will not have a critical mass committing to binding operations for summer 2026,” the program participants said.
The participants said they plan to develop a proposal for a revised transition plan for binding operations to begin in 2027. They intend to submit the plan for review by stakeholders and the WRAP board of directors, in line with the program’s governance process.
“We remain unwavering in our support for WRAP and achieving the benefits of binding operations as soon as is practical,” they said. “We plan to continue our best efforts to acquire and interconnect sufficient new resources to meet load growth as we strive to meet WRAP’s regional resource adequacy metrics.”
In response, the power pool said it will focus on gaining commitments from a critical mass of participants for binding operations starting in the summer of 2027.
“We all need to look at the transition period in a new way,” the power pool said. “While the program is still non-binding, WPP will focus on how we can collect more and better data from participants. We can use that information for more transparent regional discussions about events where capacity is constrained.”
WRAP participants include: APS; Avista; Bonneville Power Administration; Calpine Energy Solutions; Public Utility District No. 1 of Chelan County; Clatskanie People’s Utility District; Eugene Water & Electric Board; PUD #2 of Grant County; Idaho Power; NorthWestern Energy; NV Energy; PacifiCorp; Portland General Electric; Powerex; Public Service Co. of New Mexico; Puget Sound Energy; Salt River Project; Seattle City Light; Shell Energy North America; PUD No. 1 of Snohomish County; Tacoma Power; and The Energy Authority.
