Idaho Power Company (Idaho Power), a fully owned subsidiary of IDACORP, Inc., has unveiled its most recent long-range energy plan, which outlines the preferred alternatives for customer service and projects an unprecedented increase in energy consumption.
State regulators received the 2025 Integrated Resource Plan on Friday. It indicates that the business needs to increase energy efficiency, transmission, battery storage, and energy resources significantly. A public review and comment period will be scheduled by the public utility commissioners in Oregon and Idaho before they decide whether to accept 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,” stated Idaho Power Resource Planning Leader Jared Hansen, who oversees the IRP process.
With a view toward significantly lowering the danger of wildfires, the utility’s preferred portfolio of resources concentrates on generation and transmission projects that are least expensive and improve dependability.
Population growth and a wide spectrum of commercial and industrial expansion and development within the company’s service region continue to be the main drivers of growth. The business must still plan how to deliver that service while continuing to maintain and upgrade the electrical grid, even while new, high-demand consumers must pay for their own interconnection to the company’s system in order to obtain electric power.
“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,” stated 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.”
The company’s peak demand is anticipated to increase by about 45%, or 1,700 megawatts (MW), during the next 20 years, with almost 1,000 MW of that amount occurring in the following five years. The demand has increased by about 50% during the last five years, surpassing the capacity of the Brownlee hydropower plant, the company’s main energy source.
The Boardman to Hemingway and Southwest Intertie projects, which are 500-kilovolt lines that will allow the firm to import energy when customer demand for power is strong, are two examples of the transmission line infrastructure that the IRP particularly emphasizes as being necessary.
Through the Integrated Resource Plan Advisory Council (IRPAC), an advisory council, Idaho Power solicits input from its customers in order to build the IRP.
Members of the public utility commission, state and municipal elected officials, irrigation representatives, the environmental community, large industrial users, and other interested parties make up the IRPAC.
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