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Third Party Critiques NorthWestern Procurement Plan On Renewables

David J Laporte
/
Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
A third-party review of Montana’s largest electric utility says NorthWestern Energy failed to sufficiently factor renewable energy sources into how it could meet customer demand in the future.";

 

A third-party review of Montana’s largest electric utility says NorthWestern Energy failed to sufficiently factor renewable energy sources into how it could meet customer demand in the future.

The body that regulates energy utilities in the state, the Public Service Commission, hired Massachusetts-based consulting company Synapse Energy to examine how NorthWestern Energy modeled different energy scenarios in its 20-year energy procurement plan. 

One of its major critiques is NorthWestern lowballs estimates for how much electricity renewable energy sources could generate.

NorthWestern Energy analyst Ben Fitch-Fleischmann says calculating renewables is a gamble and wind isn’t reliable. 

“It’s one thing to do a statistical or simulation exercise,” he says. “And it’s another thing to kind of have the real experience of what’s happened in recent history and, during our most recent cold snaps, when loads were peaking in Montana, the wind has been not literally zero but very near zero.”

Ben Fitch-Fleischmann says NorthWestern uses a standard modeling method adopted by the Southwest Power Pool, a Regional Transmission Organization. He says Synapse is advocating for an alternative method of calculating renewables' contribution. 

“Most places that are moving towards a calculation like that have power systems whose supplies are adequate, meaning they have enough generation to meet their loads, and in Montana we don’t have that, so we’re already very short, and so, it’s kind of like taking a big gamble on whether or not the wind is going to be there, and I guess we’re being consevative and Synapse is you’re being too conservative, that’s how it boils down,” he says.

NorthWestern has said it needs an additional 725 megawatts by 2025 to meet customer demand. It says coal and natural gas are the most reliable sources to hit that target.

In its report, Synapse also says NorthWestern overestimates how pricey the operation and maintenance of solar is while underestimating the cost of gas.

Synapse says NorthWestern’s request for proposals for new resources contains “several, severe flaws” that restrict renewables’ ability to compete. Synapse says NorthWestern is unnecessarily requiring on-demand sources, blocking bids for some wind projects and using overly stringent specifications for storage resources not supported by its model.

The PSC did not get back to YPR in time for a comment on the report.

Kayla writes about energy policy, the oil and gas industry and new electricity developments.