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A California Public Utility Commission’s administrative law judge issued a proposed decision (PD) Re:  CPUC rulemaking to continue reviewing electricity integrated resource planning and to coordinate and refine long-term procurement planning requirements. 

The ALJ’s PD recommends the following:

(1) approves or certifies 29 LSE IRPs, determines eight are exempt, and finds that 11 failed to provide required information; 

(2) adopts a Preferred System Plan (PSP) portfolio that “reduces emissions by 28 MMT in 2035 compared to the 2020 electric sector emissions in the California Independent System Operator (CAISO) area, translating to a 58 percent reduction. By 2045, the proposed portfolio reduces emissions by 85 percent and achieves a level of 113 percent clean energy,” given that the level “is based on retail sales and includes exported energy”; 

(3) recommends that CAISO: (i) use the 25 MMT PSP portfolio “as both the reliability base case and the policy-driven base case for study in its 2024-2025 Transmission Planning Process (TPP)”; and (ii) “analyze a policy-driven sensitivity case designed to test the transmission buildout needed for a grid stress case where 15 gigawatts of natural gas generation resources are retired by 2039”; 

(4) denies SCE and PG&E’s joint petition for modification “seeking a two-year extension on the energy required to be procured in D.21-06-035 to partially replace the attributes of the Diablo Canyon Power Plant,” primarily on the basis of “concerns regarding system reliability and equity among LSEs”; 

(5) grants in part, with modifications, the joint petition for modification of California Energy Storage Alliance (CESA) and Western Power Trading Forum (WPTF) seeking “extension of deadlines for procurement of long lead-time (LLT) resources when certain conditions are met,” ordering that “LSEs that require an extension to bring online the required LLT resources beyond the June 1, 2028 deadline must procure generic capacity to cover the shortfall, and still bring online LLT resources by no later than June 1, 2031”; and 

(6) “formally adopts high-level aspects of the reliability framework for IRP that has been used throughout the past two years in the proceeding, including”: (i) “a 0.1 loss of load expectation standard for determining reliability need”; (ii) “a planning reserve margin based on gross peak; and (iii) “resource counting conventions using marginal effective load carrying capability analysis that is updated periodically.”

ALJ Proposed Decision  (01/10/2024)
R2005003 (05/07/2020)

(Rulemaking to Review Electricity Integrated Resource Planning)
Note:  This is a successor docket to CPUC Docket No. R1602007