In an address to the Four Peaks Rotary Club on Thursday, May 25, Resource Development Manager and Engineer at Salt River Project (SRP), Bill McClellan, discussed the utility company’s energy resource portfolio in one of the hottest regions in the U.S. and SRP’s transformation into a leading renewable energy producer through the next decade.

Reiterating SRP’s goal of reducing its carbon intensity by 65% by 2035, McClellan said a few steps need to be achieved first, including a boost of 2,025 megawatts of solar power to the electrical grid and an additional 1,100 megawatts of battery storage in the next few years.

In 2021, SRP’s energy portfolio was predominately made up of natural gas output (45%) followed by coal energy (23%), nuclear energy (17%) and less than 15% provided by renewable energy which includes solar, wind, geothermal and hydropower energy.

By the year 2035, SRP hopes to have made a 180-degree shift away from carbon-intensive resources with renewables producing 67% of its energy output, 11% from natural gas and less than 20% from coal energy and supplementary energy purchases.

Retiring coal

McClellan says a carbon-free future is an ambitious goal that SRP has already begun moving towards by retiring 1,300 megawatts of coal energy partly through the retirement of the Navajo Coal Generating Station. An additional 1,300 megawatts of coal are on the chopping block no later than 2032 with the impending closure of Units 1 and 2 at the coal-fired Coronado Generation Station.

SRP’s approximately 20% ownership of Palo Verde Nuclear Generating Station west of Phoenix has also helped shift its energy portfolio towards carbon free resources, McClellan adds.

Hot market

As Maricopa County remains the fastest-growing county in the nation, new industrial and commercial growth has major implications for its power grid.

“The Southwest is becoming an advanced manufacturing hub,” McClellan said. “There are data centers being added to the area and those really create a lot of additional customer needs that we need to meet with additional resources.”

He says new residential, commercial and industrial electricity loads are driving an additional 3,700 megawatts of load on SRP’s power system. Last summer’s peak energy demand was 7,620 megawatts. This summer, SRP has enough capacity to meet a forecasted peak energy demand of 7,700 megawatts.

With an increasing demand for power, McClellan points to SRP’s diverse energy portfolio to keep its two million customers on the grid. And with peak summer months nearly here, SRP and other energy providers will be put to the test as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Outlook predicts a 57% chance of hotter-than-normal summer temperatures for Fountain Hills.