Black Hills aims to add utility-scale renewable energy projects including wind, solar and battery energy storage capacity through its Renewable Advantage plan.
Additionally, the utility firm anticipates that the plan would open a competitive solicitation process in December 2019. The company states that its new Renewable Advantage plan would deliver significant customer savings as the existing power supplies will be replaced by the energy generated by low-cost renewable energy resources.
Black Hills president and CEO Linden Evans said: “We are fully supportive of efforts to add cleaner, renewable energy in Southern Colorado, especially given the opportunity to lower energy costs for our customers.
“In the coming years, we’ll continue to expand our renewable energy offerings to meet customer and community demand.” If the new proposal is approved by the commission, it is expected to add nearly 60% clean energy to the utility’s Southern Colorado generation portfolio by 2023.
Recently, Black Hills Energy’s 60MW Busch Ranch II windfarm commenced its operations and is expected to help the company to achieve 30% renewables by 2020, while supporting Colorado’s renewable energy mandates.
Black Hills Energy further added that the bidders need to wait until 15 February 2020 to submit their project proposals for the new capacity. The proposals will be reviewed by an independent evaluator overseen by the Colorado commission. After completion of the bidding process, the new projects are expected to come online in 2022.
