The surprising role of risk in utility integrated resource planning

摘要: Integrated resource planning, as currently practiced, has a fatal flaw: the revenue-requirements method of evaluating new capacity options improperly ignores risk features. When risk is properly accounted for, the cost of supposed 'high-cost'resources—photovoltaics, for example—drops dramatically while the cost of supposed 'low-cost'resources like natural gas-fired generation goes up.