Integrated resource planning

Tell me what it has involved and how then do we get South African entrepreneurs at the SMME level, particularly those that are owned by women and perhaps coming from areas that have been largely excluded, as you have suggested earlier on.

Yes, so the IRP is the integrated resource plan, and essentially it provides a framework for our electricity planning.

So when we think about the energy transition, it's thinking about what does that look like and how are we shifting towards more renewable energy sources, et cetera.

So it really guides us and gives us that indication, as you've said, in terms of those numbers.

And hopefully next session, there can be some changes to these laws that allow the environmental and ratepayer concerns of these decisions being made by utilities to be better scrutinized and questioned of the longevity of that investment.

The mechanism I think that we're talking about gets called integrated resource planning or IRP.

And I think people are kind of shocked to hear that Wisconsin does not have a plan.

We don't have a plan to look at our energy system as a whole and to determine what's needed and what's not.

Moving to the Nevada IRP.

Envy Energy filed its 2026 Integrated Resource Plan a full year ahead of schedule to address data center load growth, projected to go from 5% of electricity sales today to 64% by 2046.

The proposed portfolio includes 4,550 megawatts of new renewable energy, 5,305 megawatts of utility-scale battery storage, and 1,223 megawatts of natural gas peaker generation.

And the proceeding has drawn competing testimony from major tech companies, clean energy coalitions, and the Nevada Bureau of Consumer Protection.

There's a lot of, of things happening.

And while, you know, TVA recently passed its integrated resource plan, which does include, uh, pretty large amounts of, of solar and energy storage on the utility scale side, you know, it's basically, uh, twelve gigawatts of solar on, you know, new solar on grid by twenty forty and six gigawatts of, of BESS.

Uh, but also, you know, you saw by a lot of CEOs that were speaking, a lot of the munis, uh, and co-ops both, um, doing a lot of solar and storage projects on their own.

Um, and TVA has given increased flexibility for their, what, what we know here in this valley as local power companies to lead and, and to innovate.

The utility's new twenty-year plan leans heavily on gas and pushes back coal retirements as data center contracts pile up, and it leaves open questions about emissions and who carries the cost.

Ameren Missouri filed its twenty twenty-six Integrated Resource Plan with the Missouri Public Service Commission on September twenty-eighth, and the headline change is coal.

Two units at the Labadie Energy Center, previously slated to retire by the end of twenty thirty-six, would now run until twenty forty-two alongside the plant's other two units.

The plan is non-binding, and each project still needs its own approvals.

DTE proposes gas plants, storage, renewables, and IRP.

DTE Electric is pitching an all-of-the-above-except coal energy mix in its 2026 Integrated Resource Plan, reaffirming its commitment to end coal use by 2032.

FERC approves $425,000 in NERC penalties.

FERC approved penalties against TransAlta, NLPC, and PEPCO for violations of NERC reliability standards.