Georgia Power, the largest of Atlanta-based holding company Southern Co. utilities, has unveiled an updated integrated resource plan (IRP) almost certain to generate new controversy for a utility mired in controversy for more than a decade over its investment in large, new nuclear units. The company’s push for new natural gas generation will generate new political heat.
On Oct. 27, the company said it is updating its 2022 IRP because customer growth has been more than 400 MW higher than the electric utility said in January 2022 it would see by 2030. The earlier plan predicted demand would be 6,200 MW by the end of the decade, and the utility is revising that to 6,600 MW.
“Many businesses coming to the state are bringing large electrical demands at both a record scale and velocity,” Georgia Power CEO Kim Greene said in a news release.
The company has spent more than 15 years and some $30 billion trying to bring 2,000-MW of new nuclear capacity online at its troubled two-unit Vogtle 3 and 4 Westinghouse nuclear units. The company insisted on completing the plants, arguing that nuclear was the least-cost way to cope with demand growth. The first unit went into service in July and the second is scheduled for early next year.
While the updated resource plan filed with the Georgia Public Service Commission includes 1,000-MW of company-owned battery electricity storage, the heart of the IRP update beats with gas. The fossil energy plans the utility outlined in its update are:
- Completing a deal to buy 750-MW of gas-fired capacity from its Southern Co. sister Mississippi Power, which is facing over-capacity and the financial fallout from the 2017 failed Kemper lignite gasification and carbon capture project.
- Execute a 215-MW power purchase from LS Energy’s Santa Rosa 275-MW combined-cycle gas-fired generator in Pace, Fla., that sells into the wholesale market. LS Power bought the plant from Calpine Corp. in 2014 as a package of six combined-cycle projects.
- Build three new gas-or-oil fired combustion turbines, with a capacity of 1,000-to-1,400 MW, including fuel oil storage at its current Plant Yates. Yates is a former coal-fired, plant that went into service in 1950 with seven units. Georgia Power converted two units to gas in 2014 and retired the other five in 2015. The plant now has 700 MW of capacity.
The published IRP does not discuss how much the new utility-owned capacity will cost (nor has it had a good track record of predicting costs in the past). Its cost estimates are in a technical appendix that is not available online. The total cost of the new IRP, including purchased power, is likely to be in the billions of dollars.
Under Georgia’s utility rules, the utility must own 70% of the power it sells to the public. If the company were to supply all of the power it says its needs by the 2030-2031 winter through purchased power, its ownership share of the generating resources would fall to 55%, and would plunge lower in subsequent years. That’s why it proposes to build and own the battery storage system and the new gas-fired generation, the company said.
The utility plan is already drawing fire from environmental and climate activists. In a written statement on the day the utility filed its off-cycle IRP revisions, Jennifer Whitfield, senior attorney with the Atlanta-based Southern Environmental Law Center, issued a statement saying, “We are deeply troubled Georgia Power is walking back the incremental steps it has taken in our state’s clean energy transition and instead doubling down on dirty, expensive fossil fuels. It’s shocking that Georgia Power would ask to invest so heavily in methane gas just months after volatile fossil fuel prices caused a nearly $16 a month hike in customer bills. This is a bait and switch for companies bringing green and renewable manufacturing jobs to our state, and a financial risk to families already saddled with some of the highest power bills in the country.”
Whitfield added, “Pushing for more oil and gas is completely at odds with Georgia Power’s parent company, Southern Company’s goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Georgia can and should instead meet our energy needs and customer demands by expanding clean, affordable renewable options like solar power, battery storage, and energy savings programs.”
–Kennedy Maize
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