Special Open Meeting - AU-99999A-26-0010 - 2026 Summer Preparedness Workshop

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Arizona Corporation Commission 3h 58m 8 agenda items transcribed 3 days ago official recording ↗

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What opening remarks and procedural items are covered at the start of the meeting?

Unknown 0:00

Okay. All right. We will call this meeting to order. And we'll start with the commissioner opening statements. Welcome to our summer preparedness workshop. All right. We've got Chair Myers on the line and Commissioner Thompson on the line. Any issues, gentlemen? I don't think so. Can you hear me okay? Yeah. Excellent. Thank you.

Sean Botkin 0:31

I think I'm good too.

Unknown 0:33

Awesome. All right. Well, welcome. And we will get started. And we'll go in our usual order. But I'll go last, chairing the meeting. But Commissioner Marcus Peterson, do you have any opening comments you'd like to make? Yes,

Marcus Peterson 0:47

thank you. And good morning, everybody. Thank you for participating today. I think this conversation is vitally important. It's something that I'm glad we're starting with WECC and kind of getting that western regional approach and then we'll talk about each of our utilities. One question I wanted to ask at the beginning and ask that each utility address this please. is please talk about the load projections, including large loads such as data centers, and how you arrived at these projections. I'd like to know what sources you considered. Are the sources confidential? And just wanted to speak to that, please, as each of you present. But thank you again for participating today. Commissioner Thompson.

Unknown 1:26

I apologize for not being there and just getting over an illness that lasted over the weekend. Yes, thank you all for being here today. I'm looking forward to seeing how our utilities will be able to handle what should be another record-breaking summer. And, you know, especially since you've added more load to your grid, you know, meeting the capacity on our 120-degree temperature days is no small feat. And so I'm just interested in learning more about how you're going to keep the lights on across Arizona. So thank you. Chair Myers. Yeah, thank you. As the others have said, I just want to thank everybody for participating today. I think it's going to be an interesting discussion. We've had some pretty big announcements this last year, so I'm looking forward to seeing how all that plays into how we're going to make sure to maintain the reliability going forward throughout the summer.

Unknown 2:29

So thank you all again for being here. Commissioner Lopez.

How does the WECC presentation explain regional risk, load growth, and large‑load definitions?

Lopez 2:33

Yep, express my appreciation also. Looking forward to the presentations. It gets a little preview, so have some queued up questions also. But then, again, everybody's already kind of mentioned the talking points of wanting to make sure that we're going to be good for the summer, what planning you're using for future predictions. Oh, kicked on. And then that kind of set me off. So thank you very much for being here.

Unknown 3:02

All right, thank you. And one of the things I'm interested in is discussing the reserve power and if there's been a standardization of how we calculate that reserve. So thank you, everybody, for being here. And I will turn this over to our staff.

Thomas Abshire 3:23

Good morning, Chairman, Vice Chairman, Commissioners, and stakeholders. Thomas Abshire for Utilities Division staff. Welcome to the 2026 Summer Preparedness Workshop. Today, we will have summer preparedness presentations from our electric and gas utilities and gas pipelines. For those presenting virtually, staff will be controlling the slides, so please let staff know when to move to the next slide. After the presentations, we will have time for questions, public comments, and closing remarks. Thank you all for your participation in today's workshop. And then I believe we have WEC first.

James Hansen 4:32

All right. Chair, vice chair, commissioners, I'd first like to start off by thanking you for inviting us to participate in this summer readiness workshop. It's a pleasure to be here. My name is James Hansen. I'm the manager of the operations analysis department at WECC. Within operations analysis, we have the delegated functions of event analysis, performance analysis, and situational awareness. We're on the RAPA side of the organization. RAPA is reliability, planning, and performance analysis. And within that group, we build relationships. There's a department that builds the base cases.