Southwestern Electric Power Company 2024 Integrated Resource Plan
Synapse supported Sierra Club in its engagement in Southwestern Electric Power Company’s (SWEPCO) 2024 Integrated Resource Planning (IRP) process in Arkansas. Synapse attended a number of stakeholder meetings on behalf of Sierra Club and otherwise represented the club in the Stakeholder process. Synapse also supported Sierra Club in drafting data requests, comment letters in response to several stakeholder meetings, and in drafting sections of the Stakeholder Committee Report. Synapse and Sierra Club comments and analysis focused on SWEPCO’s modeling assumptions, transmission analysis, and coal plant retirement plants.
We found that overall, SWEPCO continued to fall short of best practices in resource planning. First, SWEPCO selected a portfolio that relies heavily on fossil fuel despite the marginal difference in cost between the preferred portfolio and a cleaner portfolio that is compliant with enhanced environmental regulations and thus has lower regulatory risk. Second, the load pocked in Northwest Arkansas continues to be a key stakeholder concern and SWEPCO continues to defer addressing it. Third, SWEPCO views transmission investment as completely outside the IRP process which is inefficient when a load pocket – which could have both transmission and generation solutions – is at issue. Fourth, evaluating retirement of existing fossil resources, specifically Flint Creek, is within the scope of the IRP and SWEPCO should be conducting modeling runs to evaluate the question as part of its IRP process. Fifth, SWEPCO relies on new resource costs that systematically bias the model towards conventional fossil resources and away from renewables. And finally, SWEPCO’s evaluation scorecard for its IRP is incomplete and omits a metric to quantify the portion of its energy supply that comes relies on volatile fossil fuels.
The Stakeholder report was filed in February 2025.