Utah lawmakers propose bill to prevent PacifiCorp from ‘double counting’ renewables

Wind turbines generate electricity at the mouth of Spanish Fork Canyon on Sunday, Feb. 4, 2024. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)

A bill changing the direction on how the Utah Public Service Commission should evaluate PacifiCorp’s integrated resource plans — which offer a long-term view of the company’s energy portfolio — is smoothly advancing in the legislature, with Republican lawmakers arguing it would help keep energy reliable and affordable in the state. 

But clean energy advocates say the legislation may actually have the opposite effect, as it could discourage the utility from advancing solar and wind energy investments and disrupt the market.  

HB201, sponsored by Rep. Colin Jack, R-St George, makes clarifications to large electricity companies for the resource blueprints they submit to the state. It requires that if the utilities want to add solar and wind resources to their plans, they need to have an additional energy resource capacity to balance the intermittency of renewables.

After the full House gave the bill its approval, the Senate Natural Resources, Agriculture, and Environment Committee voted 3-1 on Tuesday to advance it to the Senate floor for consideration. 

“In the desire to keep electricity affordable and reliable, we need to account for all resources properly,” Jack told the committee.

In that spirit, utilities would be required to count both the energy used to charge up storage devices plus their full-charged capacity as one resource.

The only lawmaker who voted in opposition to the bill in the committee was Sen. Nate Blouin, D-Millcreek, who questioned how the state would account for storage resources powered by wind and solar. 

“They provide fast frequency responses, all those fun sorts of ancillary services to the grid as well, so that they provide a benefit to everyone,” Blouin said about batteries fed by solar and wind. “I want to make sure we have an equitable distribution there, and not just lumping that directly in with one resource type based on our preference there.”

But, Jack argued that counting both the dispatchable capacity of a battery in addition to the energy used to charge it would essentially be “double counting” resources.

The legislation also tackles how companies like PacifiCorp would take into account demand management and energy efficiency programs.

While the strategies utilities implement to influence customers’ energy consumption have helped electricity companies to manage loads, Jack said, there should be a distinction between them and “dispatchable” resources — those that could be turned on and off on demand. 

“As you’re looking at your integrated resource plan, you have your loads, and you have your resources. You project where your loads are going to be, and you have to then plan resources to match those loads,” Jack said. “And so this simply says that all of your demand side management programs, they go into the load side of the equation and not to the resource side, because you don’t control those.”

This new legislation is a follow up to HB191, which the Legislature passed in 2024 as part of a package of bills that sought to prevent what the state considered the premature closure of coal-fueled plants. 

The Utah chapter of the Sierra Club opposes Jack’s proposal, said Maria Archibald, a coordinator at the organization during the public comment hearing. She described the legislation as “a major departure from regulatory best practice.”

In the organization’s view, the bill assigns arbitrary costs to renewable energy sources and disrupts fair competition in the energy market, especially when it comes to wind and solar, Archibald said, which could ultimately lead to higher costs for Utahns. 

Interrupting how energy companies integrate demand management programs could also be problematic, she said.

“Forcing the utility to overlook the full benefits of demand management measures and resource planning will lead to an overbuilt system,” she said, “burdening ratepayers with an unnecessary bill that boosts utility CEO and shareholder profits in exchange for an inflated load that serves no public benefit.”

However, Sen. David Hinkins, R-Ferron, defended the bill, saying that it makes an effort to keep all resources on the same playing field.

“The subsidies shouldn’t be for coal, or gas, or renewables,” Hinkins said. “Renewables have come a long way, and they should stand alone. And I think that’s what, basically, we’re trying to do.”