In a striking move earlier this year, Arizona regulators did not endorse the state’s major utilities’ long-term resource plans.
The rebuke of the utilities’ integrated resource plans (IRPs) came along with a short-term freeze on new natural gas plants larger than 150 megawatts. In the two years since the IRPs began to form, the cost of energy storage had fallen dramatically — just one example of how new technologies are outpacing planning timelines.