Once-through cooling generation

This stakeholder activity will establish how the California ISO will address the State Water Resources Control Board policy on restricting the use of coastal or estuarine waters for power plant cooling. The ISO annual transmission planning process will evaluate potential reliability impacts caused by retiring plants, the off line time needed to retrofit them with alternative technologies, as well as the timing issues of when plants will implement their compliance strategies (2012-2020).

 

Outcome

The once-through cooling policy approved by the State Water Resources Control Board became effective on October 1, 2010. This policy calls for the retirement or modification of 16 power plants within the ISO balancing authority that are critical for system and local reliability and to ensure sufficient availability of ancillary services to support renewable resource integration. Compliance dates for most of these plants range from 2015 to 2020. The state's two nuclear facilities have until 2022 and 2024 to comply.

The ISO will study the reliability impacts of the policy implementation as part of its annual transmission planning process and will join with the California Energy Commission, California Public Utilities Commission, California Coastal Commission, State Lands Commission, California Air Resources Board and the State Water Resources Control Board to form the Statewide Advisory Committee on Cooling Water Intake Structures (SACCWIS). The organizations will work together to implement the new policy in a manner that does not threaten the reliability of the state's power supply.

For more details, please refer to the Policy on the Use of Coastal and Estuarine Waters for Power Plant Cooling located at: http://www.waterboards.ca.gov/water_issues/programs/npdes/docs/cwa316/policy100110.pdf.

Implementation

Policy development