TOPEKA - The Kansas Corporation Commission has scheduled a series of informational workshops to discuss the topic of resource adequacy.

As renewable energy resources continue to grow nationwide and aging gas, coal and nuclear facilities are being retired, careful planning is required to ensure adequate energy generation and reliability in the event of extreme weather events. As part of this inquiry, the Commission recognizes the physical attributes of various generation options must be taken into consideration. These considerations include the intermittency of renewable resources, fuel availability and cost for thermal generation, and outage rates for all generation types.

KCC Utilities Director, Jeff McClanahan addressed these considerations in speaking before the Kansas House Energy, Utilities and Telecommunications committee at the Capitol last week.

“How far can you go with renewable generation given the need for reliability? Given the variability within renewable generation, you can’t always count on it. For example, there is just not as much wind in the winter. You need dispatchable generation out there to balance it all out until we get to long term, longer duration battery storage or other technology that can provide that,” said McClanahan.

Each workshop will feature experts on resource adequacy sharing information and answering questions from KCC Commissioners and staff.

The current workshop schedule appears below with additional dates to be added:

January 25          9 - 11 a.m.                       Black & Veatch

February 8          10 a.m. – 12 p.m.             Midwest Reliability Organization

February 24         9 - 11 a.m.                      Southwest Power Pool                                 

The workshops will be held via zoom and broadcast on the KCC’s You Tube channel.