Missouri’s Public Service Commission has required the state’s investor-owned utilities to address renewables, DG, energy storage and energy efficiency in their 2016 IRP annual update filings. The list of “special contemporary issues” that each utility must analyze and document includes:

• Reviewing the impact of foreseeable emerging energy-efficiency technologies throughout the 20-year planning period.
• Reviewing the impact of foreseeable emerging energy-storage technologies throughout the 20-year planning period.
• Analyzing and documenting the future capital and operating costs faced by the utility’s coal plants in order to comply with specific federal environmental standards.
• Analyze and document the range of potential levels of DG in the utility’s territory for the 20-year planning horizon and the potential impacts of each identified level of DG — and solar DG and in particular — on the utility’s preferred resource plan. The potential impacts must quantify both the amount of energy the DG is expected to provide to the grid and the amount of electrical energy that DG customers are expected to consume on-site that will offset the amount the utility would normally provide to those customers.
• Describing any assessment of the value of solar performed or used by the utility specifically for its Missouri service territory.
• Analyze and document cost and performance information sufficient to fairly analyze and compare utility-scale wind and solar resources, including DG, to other supply-side alternatives.
• Analyze the impact of emerging efficiency technologies throughout the planning period.

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