Tucson Electric Power is planning to install 1.1GW of new renewable energy capacity by 2030.
The US utility outlined the proposals in a preliminary 2016 Integrated Resource Plan filed on 2 March with the Arizona Corporation Commission, the state public utilities regulator.
The company said it would continue to invest in large solar arrays and other “community-scale renewable resources that add cost-effective capacity to its renewable energy portfolio”.
The 1.1GW plan would raise the TEP’s total renewables portfolio to about 1.5GW.
The company said it is also examining energy storage and smart grid technologies. It expects to start construction on two 10MW demonstration storage projects.
The storage projects will be “used to study how energy storage can help maintain the required balance between energy demand and supply, as well as other energy management requirements”.
TEP also said it expects to use more sensing and measurement devices to respond to the increase of intermittent renewable resources on its distribution system, “effectively enabling some portions of the local electric grid to function as stand-alone ‘microgrid’ systems”.
Image: the Prairie Fire solar plant supplies electricity to TEP customers (Solon)
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By EBS