§7276 Regulations to Require Integrated Resource Planning

Summary

Require customers buying power under long-term firm contracts from the Western Area Power Administration to use integrated resource planning. The Administrator must update the agency’s existing guidelines (from August 21, 1985, and later changes) within 1 year after October 24, 1992, and those customers must start integrated resource planning within 3 years after October 24, 1992. For small customers with total annual sales or use of 25 Gigawatt Hours or less who are not in a joint action agency or a generation-and-transmission cooperative with power supply duties, the Administrator may make different rules. Those rules must still make the small customers consider demand-side options, new renewable resources, and other ways to give retail customers electricity at the lowest possible cost while minimizing environmental harm as much as practical.