Idaho Power's 20-year Energy Plan Calls for Significant Investment in Energy Resources to Meet Projected Growth

Business Wire

a day ago

BOISE, Idaho--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Idaho Power Company (Idaho Power), a wholly owned subsidiary of IDACORP, Inc. (NYSE: IDA), has released its latest long-range energy plan, which forecasts unprecedented growth in energy demand and lays out the preferred options for serving customers.
The 2025 Integrated Resource Plan was filed with state regulators Friday. It shows that the company needs to add significant energy resources, transmission, battery storage, and energy efficiency. The public utility commissions in Idaho and Oregon will set a schedule for public review and comment before deciding to acknowledge the plan.
'The IRP is a really detailed analysis of how we are going to continue serving our customers with safe, reliable, affordable energy in a responsible way,' said Idaho Power Resource Planning Leader Jared Hansen, who oversees the IRP process.
The utility's preferred portfolio of resources focuses on least-cost and reliability-enhancing generation and transmission projects with an eye toward further reducing wildfire risk.
Growth continues to be driven by increases in population as well as a broad range of commercial and industrial expansion and development across the company's service area. Although new large-demand customers are required to pay for their own costs of interconnecting to the company's system to receive electric service, the company still must plan how best to provide that service while continuing to maintain and improve the electrical grid.
'Our plan really highlights the work we are doing to identify resources that will provide safe, reliable energy for our customers at the lowest cost over the long term,' said Mitch Colburn, Idaho Power Vice President of Planning, Engineering, and Construction. 'We look at a wide range of potential resources that will serve all of our customers well into the future.'
Over the next 20 years, the company's peak demand is expected to grow nearly 45% or 1,700 megawatts (MW), with nearly 1,000 MW of that total coming in the next five years. That 5-year increase in demand is nearly 50% more than the capacity of the company's single largest energy source, the Brownlee hydropower plant.
The IRP also highlights the need for more transmission line infrastructure, specifically the Boardman to Hemingway and Southwest Intertie projects, which are 500-kilovolt lines that will enable the company to import energy when customer demand for electricity is high.
Idaho Power enlists the assistance of its customers in developing the IRP through an advisory panel — the Integrated Resource Plan Advisory Council (IRPAC).
The IRPAC includes major industrial customers, the environmental community, irrigation representatives, state and local elected officials, public utility commission representatives, and other interested parties.
The IRP is available at idahopower.com/irp.
Background Information
IDACORP, Inc. (NYSE: IDA), Boise, Idaho-based and formed in 1998, is a holding company comprised of Idaho Power, a regulated electric utility; IDACORP Financial, an investor in affordable housing and other real estate tax credit investments; and Ida-West Energy, an operator of small hydroelectric generation projects that satisfy the requirements of the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978. Idaho Power, headquartered in vibrant and fast-growing Boise, Idaho, has been a locally operated energy company since 1916. Today, it serves a 24,000-square-mile service area in Idaho and Oregon. Idaho Power's goal to provide 100% clean energy by 2045 builds on its long history as a clean-energy leader that provides reliable service at affordable prices. With 17 low-cost hydropower projects at the core of its diverse energy mix, Idaho Power's residential, business, and agricultural customers pay among the nation's lowest prices for electricity. Its 2,100 employees proudly serve more than 650,000 customers with a culture of safety first, integrity always, and respect for all. To learn more about IDACORP or Idaho Power, visit idacorpinc.com or idahopower.com.
Forward-Looking Statements
In addition to the historical information contained in this press release, this press release contains (and oral communications made by IDACORP, Inc. (IDACORP) and Idaho Power Company (Idaho Power) may contain) statements that relate to future events and expectations, such as statements regarding projected or future financial performance, power generation, cash flows, capital expenditures, regulatory filings, dividends, capital structure or ratios, load forecasts, strategic goals, challenges, objectives, and plans for future operations. Such statements constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any statements that express, or involve discussions as to, expectations, beliefs, plans, objectives, assumptions, or future events or performance, often, but not always, through the use of words or phrases such as "anticipates," "believes," "could," "estimates," "expects," "intends," "potential," "plans," "predicts," "preliminary," "projects," "targets," "may," "may result," or similar expressions, are not statements of historical facts and may be forward-looking. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance, involve estimates, assumptions, risks, and uncertainties, and may differ materially from actual results, performance, or outcomes. In addition to any assumptions and other factors and matters referred to specifically in connection with such forward-looking statements, factors that could cause actual results or outcomes to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking statements include those factors set forth in this press release, IDACORP's and Idaho Power's most recent Annual Report on Form 10-K, particularly Part I, Item 1A - "Risk Factors" and Part II, Item 7 - "Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations" of that report, subsequent reports filed by IDACORP and Idaho Power with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the following important factors: (a) decisions or actions by the Idaho and Oregon public utilities commissions and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission that impact Idaho Power's ability to recover costs and earn a return on investment; (b) changes to or the elimination of Idaho Power's regulatory cost recovery mechanisms; (c) expenses and risks associated with capital expenditures and contractual obligations for, and the permitting and construction of, utility infrastructure projects that Idaho Power may be unable to complete, are delayed, have cost increases due to tariffs or other factors, or that may not be deemed prudent by regulators for cost recovery or return on investment; (d) expenses and risks associated with supplier and contractor delays and failure to satisfy project quality and performance standards on utility infrastructure projects, including as a result of tariffs, and the potential impacts of those delays and failures on Idaho Power's ability to serve customers and generate revenues; (e) the rapid addition of new industrial and commercial customer load and the volatility of such new load demand, resulting in increased risks and costs of power demand potentially exceeding available supply; (f) the potential financial impacts of industrial customers not meeting forecasted power usage ramp rates or amounts; (g) impacts of economic conditions, including an inflationary or recessionary environment and interest rates, on items such as operations and capital investments, supply costs and delivery delays, supply scarcity and shortages, population growth or decline in Idaho Power's service area, changes in customer demand for electricity, revenue from sales of excess power, credit quality of counterparties and suppliers and their ability to meet financial and operational commitments and on the timing and extent of counterparties' power usage, and collection of receivables; (h) changes in residential, commercial, and industrial growth and demographic patterns within Idaho Power's service area, and the associated impacts on loads and load growth; (i) employee workforce factors, including the operational and financial costs of unionization or the attempt to unionize all or part of the companies' workforce, the cost and ability to attract and retain skilled workers and third-party contractors and suppliers, the cost of living and the related impact on recruiting employees, and the ability to adjust to fluctuations in labor costs; (j) changes in, failure to comply with, and costs of compliance with laws, regulations, policies, orders, and licenses, which may result in penalties and fines, increase compliance and operational costs, and impact recovery associated with increased costs through rates; (k) abnormal or severe weather conditions, wildfires, droughts, earthquakes, and other natural phenomena and natural disasters, which affect customer sales, hydropower generation, repair costs, service interruptions, public safety power shutoffs and de-energization, liability for damage caused by utility property, and the availability and cost of fuel for generation plants or purchased power to serve customers; (l) advancement and adoption of self-generation, energy storage, energy efficiency, alternative energy sources, and other technologies that may reduce Idaho Power's sale or delivery of electric power or introduce operational vulnerabilities to the power grid; (m) variable hydrological conditions and over-appropriation of surface and groundwater in the Snake River Basin, which may impact the amount of power generated by Idaho Power's hydropower facilities and power supply costs; (n) ability to acquire equipment, materials, fuel, power, and transmission capacity on reasonable terms and prices, particularly in the event of unanticipated or abnormally high resource demands, price volatility (including as a result of new or increased tariffs), lack of physical availability, transportation constraints, outages due to maintenance or repairs to generation or transmission facilities, disruptions in the supply chain, or reduced credit quality or lack of counterparty and supplier credit; (o) inability to timely obtain and the cost of obtaining and complying with required governmental permits and approvals, licenses, rights-of-way, and siting for transmission and generation projects and hydropower facilities; (p) disruptions or outages of Idaho Power's generation or transmission systems or of any interconnected transmission systems, which can result in liability for Idaho Power, increased power supply costs and repair expenses, and reduced revenues; (q) accidents, electrical contacts, fires (either affecting or caused by Idaho Power facilities or infrastructure), explosions, infrastructure failures, general system damage or dysfunction, and other unplanned events that may occur while operating and maintaining assets, which can cause unplanned outages; reduce generating output; damage company assets, operations, or reputation; subject Idaho Power to third-party claims for property damage, personal injury, or loss of life; or result in the imposition of fines and penalties; (r) acts or threats of terrorism, acts of war, social unrest, cyber or physical security attacks, and other malicious acts of individuals or groups seeking to disrupt Idaho Power's operations or the electric power grid or compromise data, or the disruption or damage to the companies' business, operations, or reputation resulting from such events; (s) Idaho Power's concentration in one industry and one region, and the resulting exposure to regional economic conditions and regional legislation and regulation; (t) unaligned goals and positions with co-owners of Idaho Power's existing and planned generation and transmission assets; (u) changes in tax laws or related regulations or interpretations of applicable laws or regulations by federal, state, or local taxing jurisdictions, and the availability of expected tax credits or other tax benefits; (v) ability to obtain debt and equity financing or refinance existing debt when necessary and on satisfactory terms, which can be affected by factors such as credit ratings, reputational harm, volatility or disruptions in the financial markets, interest rates, decisions by the Idaho, Oregon, or Wyoming public utility commissions, and the companies' past or projected financial performance; (w) ability to enter into financial and physical commodity hedges with creditworthy counterparties to manage price and commodity risk for fuel, power, and transmission, and the failure of any such risk management and hedging strategies to work as intended, and the potential losses the companies may incur on those hedges, which can be affected by factors such as the volume of hedging transactions and degree of price volatility; (x) changes in actuarial assumptions, changes in interest rates, increasing health care costs, and the actual and projected return on plan assets for pension and other postretirement plans, which can affect future pension and other postretirement plan funding obligations, costs, and liabilities and the companies' cash flows; (y) remediation costs associated with planned cessation of coal-fired operations at Idaho Power's co-owned coal plants and conversion of the plants to natural gas; (z) ability to continue to pay dividends and achieve target dividend payout ratios based on financial performance and capital requirements, and in light of credit rating considerations, contractual covenants and restrictions, cash flows, and regulatory limitations; (aa) adoption of or changes in accounting policies and principles, changes in accounting estimates, and new SEC or New York Stock Exchange requirements or new interpretations of existing requirements; and (bb) changing market dynamics due to the emergence of day ahead or other energy and transmission markets in the western United States and surrounding regions. Any forward-looking statement speaks only as of the date on which such statement is made. New factors emerge from time to time and it is not possible for the companies to predict all such factors, nor can they assess the impact of any such factor on the business or the extent to which any factor, or combination of factors, may cause results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statement. IDACORP and Idaho Power disclaim any obligation to update publicly any forward-looking information, whether in response to new information, future events, or otherwise, except as required by applicable law.