After a period of public comment, the Illinois Power Agency (IPA) on September 29th filed its 2015 Procurement Plan with the Illinois Commerce Commission (ICC). The IPA was established in 2007 by Public Act 95-0481 to address the provision of electricity and renewable resource supply for the “eligible retail customers” of Ameren Illinois Company (“Ameren Illinois”) and Commonwealth Edison (“ComEd”) as defined in Section 16-111.5(a) of the PUA, who generally are residential and small commercial fixed price customers who have not chosen service from an alternate supplier.
Its goals and objectives are to accomplish each of the following: (1) Develop electricity procurement plans to ensure adequate, reliable, affordable, efficient, and environmentally sustainable electric service at the lowest total cost over time, taking into account any benefits of price stability, for residential and small commercial customers of Ameren and ComEd. The procurement plan is updated on an annual basis and includes renewable energy resources sufficient to achieve the renewable portfolio standards specified in the Act. (2) Conduct competitive procurement processes to procure the supply resources identified in the procurement plan. (3) Develop electric generation and co-generation facilities that use indigenous coal or renewable resources, or both, financed with bonds issued by the Illinois Finance Authority. (4) Supply electricity from any Agency facilities at cost to one or more of the following: municipal electric systems, governmental aggregators, or rural electric cooperatives in Illinois.
The 2015 Procurement Plan proposes to continue using the risk management and procurement strategy that the IPA has historically utilized: hedging load by procuring on and off-peak blocks of forward energy in a three-year laddered approach. The IPA continues to recommend that capacity, ancillary services, load balancing services, and transmission services be purchased, as they are now, by Ameren Illinois from the MISO marketplace and by ComEd from PJM’s. Two new items in the 2015 Plan are proposals to conduct a procurement of energy efficiency as a supply resource for delivery in the summer of 2016 and to also have a 2015 procurement event for Solar Renewable Energy Credits (“SRECs”) and Renewable Energy Credits (“RECs”) from distributed generation resources.