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Truckee Donner PUD GM Details Plans to Add Renewable Energy, Carbon-Free Resources

In a recent interview with the American Public Power Association, Brian Wright, general manager for California public power utility Truckee Donner Public Utility District, offers details on the utility’s plan to add additional renewable energy and carbon-free resources to its overall resource mix in the years ahead.

In early November, the PUD’s Board of Directors approved the submission of the utility’s 2023 Power Source Disclosure Report and Power Content Label to the California Energy Commission.

The report notes that in 2023, Truckee Donner PUD reported its power came from 47.3 percent eligible renewable resources and 60.3 percent carbon-free resources.

“At Truckee Donner PUD, we've been proud of our efforts to date achieving a nearly 60% renewable carbon free portfolio,” Wright said in a recent episode of APPA’s Public Power Now podcast. “There's a lot of challenges ahead of us in the future, so we're pretty well positioned for California's 2030 mandate,” he said.

“Our challenge is...going to be in hitting that 100% carbon free mandate for 2045.”

He added, “I think a lot of our public utility partners in the West in particular are faced with a lot of the same challenges. Some of the keys to our success are going to be balancing some of these renewable and carbon free mandates with affordability and reliability.”

The utility’s plan moving forward “is working closely with our partners at UAMPS and NCPA, CMUA --our advocacy groups in California to really establish a plan and follow those metrics,” he said.

“We're pursuing, to the extent we can, a lot of renewable carbon free projects through the UAMPS pool -- new projects there. It's just that -- as I think what everyone's seen in the Western region -- there's a little bit of a traffic jam there in terms of interest and some of the construction delays, some of the transmission requirements, are really putting a lot of delays in those procurements.”

Wright said that what “we're happy about in terms of long-term planning is as you mentioned, our board... approved our first integrated resource plan.”

It's the first time the district's “taken on a long-term planning effort in this and addressing some of the pressures that we see in the future. Our key partners again will be UAMPS because we have a lot more buying power as a pooled entity, as opposed to being an individual utility seeking some of these generation sources,” he said.

“We're going to continue to pursue geothermal, solar plus storage, wind and continue to pursue those in alignment with our integrated resource plan.”

Energy Storage

In November 2023, Truckee Donner PUD’s board awarded a contract to NV5 for a Battery Energy Storage System assessment, which the PUD said is a key first step to designing, locating and constructing a battery energy storage system project in Truckee. If successful, the project would be located at one of the PUD’s substations.

Wright provided an update on this assessment.

“This is a new approach -- in terms of the technology, we're not the tip of the spear here but...our community battery project or energy storage project is something new. It's a new approach for us,” he said.

“We've seen across the utility sector that these types of infrastructures are typically utilized for peak shaving, load peak shaving or managing some of that load that you see in other service territories.”

Wright said that “Our particular use on this is really going to be about maximizing our generation sources. It's really more of an economic endeavor to mitigate some of the cost that we'll see.”

For example, “this battery project will likely be installed at one of our...larger centralized substations and used in terms of the concept of bringing in carbon free energy, whether it's wind or solar, storing that and banking it to extend out that shoulder during the day, that generation profile, extending solar further into the evening where it's not available.”

He said that this “does a couple of things for us. It helps us also reduce our transmission costs through NV Energy, so we're not procuring and transmitting energy during peak pricing times. And so we're looking at it as somewhat of a pilot project. Our community has an appetite, our board has an appetite for local community solar projects.”

He thinks “solar plus storage in conjunction with or an additive to some of the behind the meter programs that we can offer is a long-term strategy for us, so we're excited about this.”

The PUD has done the initial engineering study. “We're out for procurement for what looks like it'll be probably a 2.1, 2.2-megawatt storage facility -- I think we looked at about an 8.4 megawatt hour capacity there. So we're excited about it. It's something that if it works well for us, we would look to expand in the future.”

The full transcript of the Q&A is available on APPA’s website.