Dive summary:
- Dominion Energy South Carolina presented its modified integrated resource plan (IRP) on Friday, including a “preferred” scenario that would withdraw its coal generation fleet by 2030 and convert its Cope Station coal plant to natural gas.
- Most of Dominion’s scenarios included large blocks of solar and solar storage plus battery added between 2030 and 2048, with the potential to add 2,000 MW of solar energy from 2026 to 2048, over 973 MW of solar energy on a utility scale already contracted. , as well as 700 to 900 MW of battery storage.
- Dominion submitted 14 different generation resource plans after regulators unanimously rejected its 2020 order in December, finding that the dealership had misrepresented its fuel costs and had no demand-side management resource options. The South Carolina Public Service Commission (PSC) specifically asked the concessionaire to model an early retirement from its coal fleet, and three of Dominion’s plans assume this scenario.
Dive Insight:
The concessionaire favored a long-term resource plan that would remove large coal plants in a decade and add solar and battery storage resources, taking 1,709 MW of coal offline between three different plants.
Dominion Energy aims to have net emissions of carbon dioxide and methane across all of its service territories by 2050.
“The modified Integrated Resources Plan 2020 features alternative plans that provide customers with a path to clean, renewable energy, allowing technologies to mature,” Dominion spokesman Paul Fischer said in an email. “This 2020 modified GO P highlights details about how, in recent years, Dominion Energy South Carolina has reduced our dependence on coal generation, increased our percentage of solar generation and, as a result, created a cleaner generation fleet. “
Regulators overturned Dominion’s original IRP for delaying storage additions and under-designing the growth of renewable resources.
The preferred resource plan would add 100 MW of solar energy in 2028 and an additional 300 MW in 2032, as well as 100 MW of battery storage in 2032.
The biggest short-term resource additions would be natural gas: 553 MW of combined cycle gas and 523 MW of large internal combustion turbine units in 2028, in addition to replacing 415 MW of coal with natural gas at Cope Station until 2030.
“This replacement generation protects reliability and provides a dispatchable generation base to support the addition of 1,900 to 2,000 [MW] of solar energy and 700 to 900 MW of battery storage from 2026 to 2048 “, wrote the company in the modified process.
“The plan also indicates that the most reasonable and prudent path for the company is a plan to retire Wateree and Williams stations in 2028. Natural gas, solar energy and battery storage resources would be added to the system … Specific retirement studies are being prepared that will inform future decision making and will be presented at a future IRP. “Fischer said.
Proponents of clean energy hailed the modified IRP as a relief for most black communities where these coal-fired power plants are located.
“These communities have fought long and hard for protections that others consider obvious, and now there is hope for real change,” said Will Harlan, senior representative for the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign in South Carolina, in a statement.
“But while we are very happy with the end in sight for Dominion Energy’s coal in South Carolina, adding fractured gas is a [shortsighted] moving that means that communities in Orangeburg County will not have the clean, safe energy they deserve – and we will continue to support them and work alongside them until they do, “he said, referring to the dual fuel Cope Station which would only operate on natural gas after 2030.
South Carolina regulators will make a decision on the revised IRP after the Office of Regulatory Staff (ORS) reports on the “sufficiency” of the modified protocol, according to Dori Jaffe, a senior lawyer at the Sierra Club. The ORS, and other parties that may comment, must act within 60 days of the concessionaire’s presentation, by April 20.