Media contact: Magen Howard, AEPCO
For immediate release
Arizona Corporation Commission approves financing application for additional generation
By a 3 to 2 vote on Wednesday, October 12, the Arizona Corporation Commission (ACC) approved Arizona Electric Power Cooperative’s (AEPCO) financing application for additional natural gas-fired generation at its Apache Generating Station. The generation will be crucial to ensuring reliable electric service, balancing load from increasing renewable energy integration, and meeting the requirements of evolving energy markets.
“We benefitted from a huge outpouring of support from the cooperative and public power communities across the state in advance of the meeting,” said Patrick Ledger, AEPCO’s executive vice president and CEO. “Our employees and cooperatives worked with their community members to secure nearly 1,200 comments in support of our project, along with dozens of letters from local business and government leaders. AEPCO’s board of directors, all class A member CEOs, and dozens of employees and community leaders were also there in person to demonstrate their support.”
Because these new resources will be sited at AEPCO’s Apache Generating Station in Cochise, Arizona, they will use existing natural gas and transmission infrastructure and will be operated and maintained by AEPCO’s existing labor force. The additional units will also allow AEPCO to site a large solar and battery storage system at Apache Station in the next several years and will contribute to lowering emissions over the long term.
“The new gas units will have significantly lower emission rates than older gas units, and they can ramp up and down quickly and also support more renewables on our system,” Hatch says. “The new units will have selective catalytic reduction, or SCR, technology installed to limit the emissions of nitrous oxide and carbon monoxide while generating power during both regular operation and when we need to quickly ramp up or ramp down.”
AEPCO plans to bring the gas units online in 2024 and the large renewable energy and storage system on in 2025.
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Arizona Electric Power Cooperative, Inc., is a not-for-profit generation and transmission cooperative that provides wholesale power to 420,000 people in Arizona, California, and New Mexico and provides transmission and energy services to members and customers throughout the Southwest. Its sister organization, Sierra Southwest Cooperative Services, maximizes solar and other renewable tax credits through cooperative lenders. Together, they operate as Arizona G&T Cooperatives.