Despite knowing fully well US President Donald Trump's dislike for renewables, utilities in the country are not shying away from looking at things practically. Increasing the share of renewables makes increasingly more economic sense than just going ahead with inflexible conventional fossil-fuel sources of power generation.
Colorado based Xcel Energy is planning to phase out 660 MW of coal power generation capacity and make way for renewables amounting to 1.8 GW capacity. Early retirement of Comanche 1 and Comanche 2 coal fired power plants has been proposed to be replaced by 1.1 GW of wind power, 700 MW of solar and 275 MW of storage, all embedded in solar plus storage projects. It is also proposing to utilize 380 MW of existing flexible gas resources to ensure system reliability.
It has filed a Clean Energy Plan with the Public Service Company of Colorado that talks of increasing operational flexibility and reliability of its plan by pairing increased renewable generation with dispatchable battery storage and flexible gas generation.
In February 2018, another American utility, American Electric Power shared its strategic vision for a clean energy future, where it revealed plans to expand its renewable energy capacity, with solar power to add more than 3 GW of capacity (see US Utility To Add Over 3 GW Of PV). Another utility Dominion Energy Virginia has plans to develop 3.2 GW of new solar power capacity by 2032, and increase it to 5.2 GW by 2042.
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