SFPUC staff brief LAFCO on Clean Power SF 2022 Integrated Resource Plan; commissioners press on costs and financing

Clean Power SF staff presented their 2022 Integrated Resource Plan modeling results and told the San Francisco Local Agency Formation Commission that the IRP will be submitted to the California Public Utilities Commission by the November 1 deadline.

Cheryl Taylor, Clean Power SF operations manager, said the plan identifies portfolios of electricity resources to meet customer demand and local policy goals through 2035 and described two CPUC‑conforming scenarios and two alternative portfolios, including a hybrid ‘‘90% time‑coincident’’ case and a ‘‘mayor’s EV and building electrification’’ case that assumes higher future electricity demand.

Taylor and deputy assistant general manager Mike Himes said the staff required all portfolios to include substantial local investment. Staff presented a local‑resource target of over 285 megawatts of local capacity — described in the presentation as including roughly 50 megawatts of geothermal, about 85 megawatts of solar and 150 megawatts of battery storage — and said that local investment represented, in the slides, a roughly "$6 to $700,000,000 commitment" as presented to commissioners.

The portfolios differed in scale and cost: the base case produced the lowest average portfolio cost over the planning horizon, the 90% time‑coincident case was only about 4% more expensive than the base case, while the 95% time‑coincident case had the highest cost (about 30% higher than the base case) because it requires substantially more new capacity. Staff warned that the higher‑renewables 95% case would require selling significant excess generation into the wholesale market, exposing ratepayers to revenue volatility.

Commissioners pressed staff on technical details and financing. Vice Chair Fielder asked why the 95% case showed roughly 100 megawatts less storage and much more solar than the 90% case and raised concerns about where surplus solar generation would go. Mallory Albright, IRP project manager, responded that the portfolios are built from complementary technologies (for example, offshore wind and baseload resources in the 95% case versus more geothermal in the 90% case) and that storage and wind were modeled to balance midday solar and evening demand. "The portfolios are built upon technologies that are complementary to each other and also complementary to our demand shape," Albright said.

On financing, Himes said Clean Power SF is a choice program that relies principally on customer revenues and long‑term power purchase agreements rather than the large capital budgets of monopoly utilities. He noted opportunities presented by federal incentives, including the Inflation Reduction Act, but said the IRP itself does not prescribe a financing plan; he described long‑term power purchase agreements and third‑party financing as the typical approach.

A public commenter, Paul Wormer, commended the outreach and urged staff to consider broader "public energy" framing beyond electric power and to clarify assumptions about heat‑pump efficiency and peak‑period demand for future IRPs.

Next steps: Clean Power SF will present the IRP to the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission on October 24 and — if adopted — will file the plan with the California PUC by its November 1 deadline.