Tucson Electric Joins Western Power Market, Expects $13 Million in Annual Savings

Tucson Electric Power Company entered into an agreement to join the Western Energy Imbalance Market from April 2022, according to a May 8 news release from the California Independent System Operator Corporation. Tucson estimates the participation to result in about $13 million in annual energy cost savings for its customers by expanding real-time access to renewable power and other low-cost energy resources.

The energy imbalance market is an automated system that secures the lowest-cost energy to serve real-time customer demand over a broad region spanning across multiple western states. Participating utilities and their customers also benefit from the ability to maximize the use of renewable energy, by harnessing wind and solar power anywhere in the system and efficiently integrating their intermittent output with other dispatchable resources.

Earlier this month, the grid operator announced that the EIM generated about $85 million in savings in the first quarter of this year, with total benefits reaching over $650 million since its launch in November 2014. The market used over 52,000 megawatt-hours of surplus renewable energy that otherwise would have been curtailed.

Current participants include PacifiCorp, NV Energy, Arizona Public Service, Puget Sound Energy, PortlandGeneral Electric, Idaho Power, Powerex, and the Balancing Authority of Northern California/Sacramento Municipal Utility District.

Tucson Electric Power is a subsidiary of UNS Energy Corporation.