Vernon is a predominantly industrial city located southeast of Los Angeles. Considering its industrial and business customer base, VPU’s overriding goal is reliability. VPU remains one of the most reliable electric utilities in the country, averaging only 38 minutes of power outage annually (compared to an almost 300-minutes outage average nationwide). Thus, a primary goal of its IRP was to develop a plan that maintained its topnotch level of reliability while meeting energy forecasts and state renewable and zero-carbon generation requirements.

Solari worked closely with VPU resource planners and Ascend analysts to write the 2023 VPU IRP to meet VPU’s near-term planning needs. The IRP discussed the background and goals for VPU’s resource planning, its planning drivers, and energy and peak demand forecasts. Using this information as a basis, the IRP reviewed the current energy efficiency and transportation electrification programs, the transmission and distribution plans, and VPU’s resource mix. Market resource portfolios formed the basis for the modeling and analysis conducted to derive a recommended conclusion for resource adequacy additions—230 MW of renewable generation coupled with 110 MW of energy storage—to meet state requirements and forecasted demand, and to maintain VPU’s high level of reliability.