Click the link to read the article on the Big Pivots website (Allen Best):
New study says that as electrical output from Colorado River dams declines benefits with a Southwest Power Pool alignment grow
For water geeks, first a bit of alphabet soup from energy geeks:
RTO stands for regional transmission organization, a way of sharing electricity across a broad region to better match demand with renewable energy supplies.
SPP stands for Southwest Power Pool, which provides some of this energy sharing across several Midwestern states. It is trying to provide something similar in Colorado and adjoining Rocky Mountain states. It began offering the first small step, something called the Western Energy Imbalance Service.
Three of Colorado’s four largest utilities have already joined, as have several others of relevance to Colorado, including the Western Area Power Administration and the Municipal Energy Agency of Nebraska. Conspicuously absent is the David of Colorado, i.e. Xcel Energy, which sells more than 50% of electricity consumed in the state.
Now, to the news. A new study by Brattle Group finds the benefits of joining an RTO operated by SPP would yield significantly more benefits, somewhere between $55 million and $73 million per year, depending on hydrologic conditions.
The savings increase to $89 million per year under severe drought conditions. The modeling for reduced hydroelectric production was among several differences from a similar study conducted in 2020. See the report here.
A press release from Tri-State Generation and Transmission, Colorado’s largest electrical supplier after Xcel, also notes potential operational and reliability benefits provided by RTO participants.
Throwing their lot with the Southwest Power Pool, at least in its incipient alignment, are not only Tri-State but also Colorado Springs Utilities and Platte River Power Authority. Not incidentally, all depend upon purchases of hydroelectricity from the Western Area Power Administration which distributes power from Glen Canyon Dam and other federal hydroelectric facilities. As a privately owned utility, Xcel is ineligible to receive what was traditionally extremely low-priced electricity from the federal dams.